That there are now more overweight humans than starving humans is one of mankind’s greatest achievements.
– Damien Counsell has said it many times. Good for him.
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Samizdata quote of the dayBrian Micklethwait (London) · Health & medical · Historical views · International affairs · Slogans & Quotations June 26th, 2018 |
 31 comments to Samizdata quote of the day |
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In the future, how long will our robot slaves put up with their obese masters and their self-destructive demands before deciding that mercy-killings should be initiated involuntarily?
Just a thought about the future, with fat people and automation co-existing….
It would be more accurate to say that it is one of capitalism’s greatest achievements, especially considering how much communist starvation capitalism has to offset
Fake news.
Obesity is a modern problem, but hunger (or malnutrition) is still much, much bigger.
Nice thought, though. Fake but true.
Fuck off, Jacob, starvation is now very rare globally
I mean, in the US, possibly, obese people are more numerous than hungry people.
In the rest of the World – it’s the reverse, by far…
“Fuck off, Jacob, starvation is now very rare globally”
You live in an imaginary world.
Malnutrition affects about 1 billion people, globally, according to UN statistics.
As you obviously did not read the quote, Jacob, here it is again with emphasis. So I second Bulldog’s sentiments 😉 Obesity is now becoming an issue in urban China 😆
Hey Jacob! You ACTUALLY believe ANYTHING the UN says?
“You ACTUALLY believe ANYTHING the UN says?”
I believe nothing the UN says, but I traveled in India, South America and a little bit in Africa.
According to Indian Government statistics, about one third (1/3) of the Indian population subsist on less than 1 or 2 dollars a day, and my eyes confirmed that. I don’t know how many obese people are in China… I didn’t see any in India. By far…
I would be interested to know how obese is being defined. In the UK there is an obesity epidemic caused entirely by classifying even very slightly overweight people as obese.
It’s an issue in India for sure
‘Overweight’? By what standard?
Did Mankind come with an Operating Manual with a section detailing what our weight, height, waist measurement, etc is? Evidently I lost mine; must have dropped it as I came out of the birth canal.
We are now taller than our ancestors during Tudor times, are we then ‘overheight’?
Overweight is a funny measurement. Some years ago in my 40’s (ahem) when I was running 50-75 miles a week and regularly bench pressing 275+ (lbs, not kg), and had a 36″ waist (I miss that) the nurse at our family practice told me I was “borderline obese.”
Because numbers, not common sense.
Having said that, I was in WalMart last night to get some weed killer and, wow, I felt like a dang runway model.
-XC
It is an odd way of putting it – but I agree that the reduction of starvation by improvements in farming over time, is the greatest human achievement.
And it goes back a long way – for example without the Agricultural Revolution of such men as Coke of Norfolk (whose house Mr Ed kindly took me to visit – and was indeed from the same family as the great Chief Justice Sir Edward Coke of the early 1600s) there could have been no Industrial Revolution. Workers need to be fed.
As for those people who still (centuries later) oppose the Agricultural Revolution and the Industrial Revolution of the 1700s – and hold that most people should be on small peasant plot farms….. Well this alternative path was followed in IRELAND. Check out what happened there in the 1840s. And do not bother with the lie that it was a “British plot to kill off the Irish” – your policy (no Agricultural Revolution – and most people farming via small peasant plots using old methods) was followed in Ireland, and the results were HORRIFIC.
Sadly to this day entertainment television shows idealise small scale (peasant plot) farming and so on – even communal farming (which is even worse). If “village community farming” is the way to go – why do people go from Mexico to Texas (Texas – the land of the great private landowners), rather than the other way round?
I used to very slightly overweight but, according to the infamous BMI scale, I was borderline obese. At the age of 55 I took up doing triathlons. Now just short of 60 I’m the same build as I was in my twenties. My waist measurement is now 31 inches
According to Indian Government statistics, about one third (1/3) of the Indian population subsist on less than 1 or 2 dollars a day, and my eyes confirmed that.
The Indian government might be bigging it up, the poverty ($1.90/day) rate in India is around 12.5%.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_India
I don’t know how many obese people are in China… I didn’t see any in India. By far…
Well, 30 million obese people is hard to hide
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_India
P.S poverty is going down and obesity is going up in India, as per the OP.
One of the main issues in India, which has a space program and nuclear weapons, is the government distribution of food (and wealth opportunities) and the continuing social trends. But still, they move (or not in the case of the fatties).
I initially read that as ‘…went to WalMart to get some killer weed’ and had to wonder if Walmart had introduced a new exciting product in Colorado…
It doesn’t say much for mankind’s intelligence, administrative abilities or altruism that there are any starving people left at all given that the number of obese people clearly shows that there is enough food for everyone to have an adequate diet and to avoid both hunger and obesity.
With luck, they won’t be programmed by NHS nurses.
Yes and no. Starvation is rare but very serious. Obesity is now common, but nowhere near as serious.
I doubt however that obesity is as common as we’re commonly told.
Obese?
Well, you see…according to latest studies, .I think you might be borderline on the spectrum……
SEE: “Wall-E” movie.
ap, how soon before the Governments of the World declare a war on fat, and obesity? Being fit will be defined as a human right.
Terminator and Skynet now make perfect sense.
The remarkable thing is the advance in agricultural technology- actually the industrialization of food production. About 100-120 years ago ~80% of the population was employed in growing food – manually. Today maybe <2% produce much more food, for a much bigger population.
The rest are free to engage in art, or law or study gender studies in a liberal college.
😆
Do the fatties ever get credit for acting as ‘carbon sinks’? Think of all the CO2 that would be released if every fatso were to burn off a stone of fat. Has Her Majesty’s Government considered those potential environmental impacts when running its ‘5-a-day’ and anti-food campaigns?
Everyone is either obese, or starving, q.e.d. There is no money, power, or prestige in a cure, only in the treatment. And in order for there to be treatment, there must be a malady. So malady there will be.
The six largest fatal diseases in America are all obesity and smoking related. The two factors disproportionately represented by America’s poor. The poor (i.e. within the lowest quintile of income) are far more likely to be obese and much more likely to be smokers than any other economic demographic. Our government defines “the poor” as those who earn the in the lowest 20% of income, yet imagine how absurd that would seem if the average income was 200k/year. Well, it’s still absurd when one compares America’s “poor” to REAL poverty in poorer, less developed nations. America’s poor has a higher standared of living than Spain’s middle class, and are rich by world standards.
The UN is fake-news land, where moronic and dishonest political activists and dictators have carte blanche.
In large parts of the world the problem isn’t how much they eat, but rather how much they excrete.
Dysentary is a stone cold f*king bitch.
John Harington should have been *sainted*, not just knighted.
Also “we” should really do something to honor the memory of Normal Borlaug.
Let’s not pretend that we don’t know what fat-ass means.
You just undermined the credibility of your own reference.
30% or more of your body’s weight being composed fat is the usual standard. Overweight and Obesity are not the same thing of course.
Because the “fast and dirty” ways of determining BMI are garbage. It routinely classifies “muscle men” as obese. ‘Better to use fat calipers or even better, use the boyancy test. (Yes, you get in a tub of water, that old Archemedes ‘Eureka’ test, but you don’t have to run through the streets naked afterwards the way he reportedly did).
See Michael Bloomburg banning large sodas in NYC, and America’s “twinkie tax”. Remember, Leftists love putting puntive disincentive taxes on things they hate, like tobacco, sweets and job creation.
That UN statistics are unreliable (as unreliable as any Govmnt stats) does not mean that there are no hundreds of millions (near a billion) undernourished and underweight men and women in the World.
There are.