Gaining On the US: Most Europeans To Be Overweight By 2030 329
An anonymous reader writes "Welcome to the club, Euro friends. A World Health Organization analysis concludes that within 15 years a majority of Europeans will be obese or severely overweight. In almost all countries the proportion of overweight and obesity in males was projected to increase – to reach 75% in UK, 80% in Czech Republic, Spain and Poland, and 90% in Ireland, the highest level calculated. Women fare a little better. In reviewing the results, the lead researcher said: "Our study presents a worrying picture of rising obesity across Europe. Policies to reverse this trend are urgently needed.""
As they say: (Score:3)
Re:As they say: (Score:4, Interesting)
They also say:
"In a poor country, only the rich can afford to get fat."
"In a rich country, only the rich can afford to stay thin."
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Taste of propaganda more like it. It's really simple. People are spending wayyy more time sitting on their asses than 40 years ago, either messing with their phones, laptops, computer, ipads, or driving. If you want to fix obesity, promote exercise. End of story. Also I'd have serious questions about their statistics, 90% obesity in Ireland is nonsense unless you're using some imaginary definition of obesity.
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90% obesity in Ireland is nonsense unless you're using some imaginary definition of obesity.
"Overweight or obese", and males only.
It doesn't really take that much to fall into the "overweight" category on the BMI scale. As a matter of fact the start of the "overweight" scale is actually what I'd consider to be optimal weight. At my height 5'10" you're officially overweight starting at 175 lbs - I personally wouldn't want to be much under that.
People live longer (Score:2, Insightful)
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Or heart disease, cars cause obesity, lack of exercise. Bicycles are the cure.
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Sitting n an office chair for 8-12 hours a day doesn't help much either. I miss my old job where I was on my feet all day long. Now I am in a chair for the entire day and it sucks.
What we need to do is to automate management, and accounting systems and go work on our feet all day. Obesity will disappear.
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dude, lots and lots of people work manual labor jobs and are still fat. the reality is more like caloric consumption would increase to about 105% of the increase in expenditure. it's like being married and getting a raise.
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Huh? My impression was that the fat people mostly died from cardiovascular problems aka old body can't take the strain while the thinner mostly died from cancer. Sure, you have somewhat more cells that could go cancerous but I've never heard obesity being a big risk factor for cancer.
BMI is 2d but people are 3d (Score:4, Insightful)
The formula for BMI is weight(kg) / heigth(m) * height(m). This formula only has two terms for height, but in reality I'm a 3d person. What I mean with this is that it is easier for a short person to be "normal weigth" in BMI. As people on average get taller and taller more and more people are going to be overweight. On the other hand many of my male friends are lifting weights and they are all "overweight" while clearly they are not fat.
So, while the problem is probably real and severe, I'd like to see a better way of measuring this stuff.
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I agree, BMI is a horrible metric. It would be much more meaningful to use body fat percentage to evaluate if someone is overweight.
And even then, it doesn't always hold up for individuals. My BMI is ~31.5, my body fat is right around 30%, but I'm in extremely good health, good cholesterol numbers, no diseases, good blood pressure, stable blood sugar levels, no diabetes, all of those things. But I lift weights and I'm not into the cut and striated bodybuilder thing. Sure, I'd love to lose some fat, but not
Re:BMI is 2d but people are 3d (Score:4, Informative)
Send us a postcard from Stockholm. (Score:2)
Congratulations, I'm sure nobody has noticed that before.
I mean, It's entirely impossible that people don't scale up like, say, solid bronze statues would. Furthermore it'd be ludicrous to suggest that the formula wasn't an empirically derived approximation but was just made up by someone who wasn't as math-smart as you.
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The formula for BMI is weight(kg) / heigth(m) * height(m). This formula only has two terms for height, but in reality I'm a 3d person.
Congratulations, I'm sure nobody has noticed that before.
I mean, It's entirely impossible that people don't scale up like, say, solid bronze statues would.
Well, if I cut through the sarcasm here, (1) people have noticed this before, and (2) people do NOT scale up like solid bronze would. On the other hand, your sarcasm doesn't make an exponent of 2 true or an accurate approximation, nor does it make the exponent 3 as the GP suggests. The actual value when derived from various empirical studies falls in an exponent range of 2.3-2.7. If you separate out men and women, you can narrow that range somewhat. If you take other factors into account, you can get ev
Re:Send us a postcard from Stockholm. (Score:4, Interesting)
That was a surprisingly good summary of what I've concluded from my own readings. I guess there are two types of nerds: speedy nerds and slow nerds. Generally what passes for intelligence here is News for Speedy Nerds.
I'm in the second group. I'd have to check myself into the Ally McBeal foie gras buffet emporium if I ever got down to the bottom end of my "healthy" BMI bracket using the dumb old formula. I used to weight about that much during my growth spurt, despite devouring large meals between larger meals. Strangers standing beside me in elevators used to worry whether my body could withstand the acceleration, and suggest to me that I eat more. On one work term there was a one-plate lunch buffet restaurant I used to frequent where I discovered the technique of using the sturdy vegetables and lettuce to cantilever the plate's diameter. I was a serious eater, and still I had no shadow.
Here is an equally simplistic BMI that works better at the extremes: Ponderal index [health-calc.com]. It works for me because I eventually filled out into a "scaled up" normal person with no (recent) African genes for shedding heat.
After taking a closer look I concluded that some individuals are such a bad fit for the regular BMI, the use of BMI in the medical setting with these individuals amounts to borderline malpractice. How many people are taking a cholesterol drug because their BMI factored into their GP's uncritical perception?
Anyone else remember the old expression: garbage in, garbage out? Coefficient 2.0 of the BMI formula needs a serious make-over.
Re:BMI is 2d but people are 3d (Score:4, Interesting)
BMI isn't supposed to be used for measuring this stuff. It was developed to be an expedient way to gather data on large populations of people. Its inaccuracies become smoothed out with a large enough sample size. It is always wrong to apply it to an individual and make decisions based on it.
The better way exists in the form of the US Navy body composition assessment which includes the circumference of the neck and waist. Nobody wants to take the time to do that in a clinical setting so it isn't used in the civilian world.
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Yes, a better way of measuring would be nice.
My point was that in addition to the other problems that BMI has it also has a problem of making tall people overweight. And as populations get taller and taller on average, this measurement problem increases the percentage of overweight people. For this simple problem it would be enough to just create a new formula using height and weight or even just use something above 25 as the overweight limit for taller people.
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True enough. Wilt "the Stilt" Chamberlain was overweight and tending toward obese by BMI standards.
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So, while the problem is probably real and severe, I'd like to see a better way of measuring this stuff.
The trick is finding something similarly cheap and easy to measure. For something that can be determined with just a bathroom scale and a tape measure, most of the more effective competing metrics I'm seeing involve equipment you wouldn't see outside of a major hospital.
Re:BMI is 2d but people are 3d (Score:4, Informative)
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There is a "new BMI formula" here:
http://people.maths.ox.ac.uk/t... [ox.ac.uk]
Tall people get a slight bonus on BMI, but less than you might think, and the measure doesn't seem to be much better than the old BMI.
You are 3D, but if you're healthy, you grow preferentially along one axis.
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"Down with fat-shaming!" (Score:5, Interesting)
People like Gok Wan that make people take pride in how awful their bodies look is partially to blame for this epidemic.
People are no longer ashamed to be fat larding morons wobbling around the streets.
Fat-shaming NEEDS to be a thing. Despite what those childish tumblr-tards say. You shouldn't be happy you are fat. You shouldn't at all. It is an abnormality. The human body hasn't evolved to deal with it. And it shouldn't evolve to deal with it. It shouldn't even be happening.
And while I have mentioned this, these people only make it accepting. It is the bad fast-foods, the premade foods and ready-meal generation that are corrupted.
THESE need to change more than anything. All these companies can put as much spin on it as possible, "oh, our meals are only meant to be one-offs every so often", or whatever other bullshit they can come up with, they are partly responsible for this.
Quite frankly, I say make people pay double for healthcare if they become obese through circumstances out of their own hands. (illnesses, genetics, and some medications like the steroidal types)
And if they haven't fixed it by 10 years, make it official and roll it out across the countries. There is no reason to be fat unless you have severe illness, genetics or medications. No reason at all. (NHS UK included. I am from UK and I would be for those changes. Screw equality, these people aren't equal any more, equality was based on averages, they are well outside the range of these averages!)
Even WHEN eating all these fattening foods, you can still exercise it off completely.
More physical classes in school should also be a thing. Hell, go experimental, have classes on foot if possible. Teach people while walking around the school, a forest, a school garden, whatever. There are various classes that could be taught on foot. They don't even need to be long classes either, they can be spaced out in amongst other classes, 15-30 minute classes on foot, standing about, writing on a notepad (with backing to make it sturdy), gets them used to being outside, standing while doing other things instead of sitting down to do things.
Seriously, fund it. If that doesn't breed an active generation, I don't know what will.
Nothing beats relaxing after exercising. Relaxing all the time? It is sickening. I don't know how people can be a semi-permanent couch potato day-in day-out.
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Re:"Down with fat-shaming!" (Score:4, Insightful)
In many parts of Europe (I can speak for the Balkans for sure), it's perfectly normal to comment on weight and friends and family. It's not said out of malice, it's with best intentions. And if anything, when everybody you know starts commenting on how fat you are getting, you start and think if it's time to go on a diet. It also usually means that you can get some support from family and friends if you need to change your lifestyle to lose weight, so it can work out good.
It's different with children though - they can be rough and tease/bully you for being fat. For some kids that can be an incentive to take up a sport, for some it will be nothing but trauma.
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In many parts of Europe (I can speak for the Balkans for sure), it's perfectly normal to comment on weight and friends and family. It's not said out of malice, it's with best intentions.
In Finland, the topic is avoided, and if mentioned, is interpreted as mild malice. Only among very close friends and family members can overweight be openly discussed. A random coworker, for example, will never talk about it.
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Yeah I've noticed that in France too. I was out shopping with some friends and one guy had a hard time finding a t-shirt that fitted him, so he mumbled something about big bones. The woman next to him promptly said "FAT BONES!" loudly and without a bother.
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While I don't agree with much of what you say, I do agree that there is something to be said for social pressure against being fat, and losing that social pressure is on balance a bad thing.
I noticed maybe 10 years ago that it had become acceptable for teenage girls to wear low cut jeans and short tops with rolls of fat sticking out. Girls would wear this fashion with pride regardless of their physique. This is very different than when I was a teenager in the 80s and looking like that would generally subj
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One of the most astounding thing I encounter with "OB-city" threads is that everyone seems to know the solution to cure obesity. Do this and do this and do this. Everyone has their own pet theory that they think is absolutely right.
Well, here's my pet theory to cure obesity. Fund obesity researchers and let them conduct scientific experiments.
I have bat-shiat crazy theories on this. Walk barefoot in the hook-worm infested latrines in Africa. Seriously, that is one of them. Our ancestors ate raw food and
Re:"Down with fat-shaming!" (Score:5, Interesting)
Fat-shaming NEEDS to be a thing. Despite what those childish tumblr-tards say.
Later in your post, you say there should be exceptions for illnesses, genetics, etc. How exactly do you plan to explain when it's appropriate for kids to shame other fats vs. when they can't, for example? Or is it okay to shame everyone for their appearance if it might imply something bad about their character? A lot of black people commit crimes (on average, more so than some other groups) -- should we shame all black people too on the basis of their appearance?
It is an abnormality. The human body hasn't evolved to deal with it. And it shouldn't evolve to deal with it.
It's good that we have an AC to decide how the human race "should evolve." Congratulations: you've now entered into the exciting field of eugenics!
All these companies can put as much spin on it as possible, "oh, our meals are only meant to be one-offs every so often", or whatever other bullshit they can come up with, they are partly responsible for this.
Great -- the corporations are partly responsible. How much do you plan to charge them to contribute to healthcare for their "responsibility" for the fat people? Or do we only charge the fat people more, even though you claim some other people share the blame? (Just looking for the logic here.)
Quite frankly, I say make people pay double for healthcare
Yeah, this always comes up when morbidly obese people and smokers are discussed. (For the record, I'm neither -- but that shouldn't matter now, if we're discussing logically, should it?)
What's the argument here? Fat people (and smokers and whoever the demon of the week is) cost more in healthcare? Yeah, they do, on average -- on an annual basis. But guess what? They die earlier. There have been a number of studies that show a clear cost savings over the lifespan of an obese person. Why? Because old people need more health care. Who do you think will cost more over the course of retirement? The fat guy who dies in his mid-60s and basically never retires, but costs more for his 5 years of diabetes care or whatever? Or the skinny guy who lives to 95, spends 30 years drawing government retirement money, needs a couple knee replacements for the all the running he did by his late 60s, falls and breaks a hip and spends a year recuperating in his 70s, and then needs 10-15 years of care during his 80s and 90s as his brain slowly turns to mush from whatever random degenerative disease? Fat people die sooner, so even though they have more years of concentrated medical costs at a younger age, over their lifespan they cost significantly less. (And that's just healthcare costs -- factor in extra costs for the government to pay out retirement money, etc., and fat people cost society a LOT less.)
If you live in a country where you pay for health insurance, by all means, charge fat people more for their premiums. It makes sense from a cost-benefit analysis. But if you have a nationalized health system (or even if you don't), you should actually be giving these people a tax break -- if your goal is to save the system money.
It sounds counterintuitive, but most studies don't take into account decrease longevity when they talk about how fat people "cost more." (And governments downplay the few studies that have looked at this question, because they don't want to encourage obesity.) It gets even better for cigarette smokers -- a few different studies show that for ever pack of cigarettes someone smokes, they save society about 30 cents because they are likely to die sooner. I'm not kidding. And that's not even counting taxes on cigarettes.
(illnesses, genetics, and some medications like the steroidal types)
Exactly how do you determine which "genetics" are bad enough to justify that it's okay to be fat? I mean, the human race evolved
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Fat-shaming works...to an extent. The problem is that it carries over into places it really shouldn't.
Specifically, I'm thinking about what happens currently when overweight people try to get in some exercise to improve their situation. Fat-shaming is already alive and well when those people show up at the gym or start jogging around town. An overweight person may not feel out of place when they're surrounded by the general public (i.e. other overweight people) all the time, but dress them in clothes that i
Bugger (Score:2)
That means we won't have anything to tease them about.
health advice is 30-60 mins exercise per day (Score:3)
I have lost 2 stone / 28 lb / 13kgs over the last 18 months after I scrapped my car and started cycling to work (7 miles each way). I have no interest in going to the gym - no time for that - and I'm not particularly bothered about sport. If I had kept my car I would inevitably drive whenever I was going to be late for work, which would be all the time. So what worked for me was to leave myself no option other than to do exercise every day.
Pretty logical (Score:3)
As a society becomes more technologically advanced there is less and less actual physical work being done by most of its citizens.
Couple that with more readily available food ( both good and bad kinds ), and a general lack of personal control, being overweight makes logical sense in many parts of today's world.
an effective solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Commuting becomes very fast as bicycles do not need traffic lights.
There are cargo bicycles too for supplying shops. Strangely people will eat less as they move more. Anyone who was on a long distance cycling tour could not to fail to notice it. People overeat due to to an anxiety. And regular physical activity reduces anxiety dramatically.
As a by-product we get that there will be no bad areas in a city due to traffic noise and pollution.
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Although this is an obvious "solution", it's not very realistic.
However, there is one trend I noticed over the last years: I see a lot of young, healthy people riding on motorized scooters that do not require wearing a helmet. They are limited to 25 km/h (16 mph) which is a bit faster than a bicycle (though many are 'unlimited' afterwards), and I wonder "Why don't they take the bike?" It takes only slightly longer to do the same trip on the bike, it costs fuel and thus money and it is not very healthy, sinc
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Thank you commrade Max for your suggestions on how to control other people's lives.
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Commuting becomes very fast as bicycles do not need traffic lights.
Speaking as a pedestrian and one who spends some time in Amsterdam, "Yes they do!"
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Closing cities to all automobile traffic. This is it.
I tried to get one street closed for rush hour for one day of the week and have it reserved for only bicycle traffic and that was next to impossible.
Alcohol (Score:2)
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Crapola (Score:2)
OMG! People are (insert adjective, adverbs, nouns as appropriate)! We must do something! Somebody make a policy, quick!
The role of government is not to be Mom or Nanny. Will the government next send a message to their TV's 'You have reached your maxium TV dose for today, go outside and play now. The TV is off until tomorrow!"
Perception of Normal (Score:3, Interesting)
I live in the US. 6 feet, 145lbs, lift weights regularly, eat rice/beans/vegetables, no sugar. Roughly a third of my family regularly tells me I'm way too skinny and they're concerned about my health. They think I'm going to die of starvation. I've had quite a few women make comments about how I'm too skinny and not strong (one thought she could beat me arm wrestling). My favorite is when I'm with someone and a seriously in shape bicyclist passes by and they compare the bicyclist to a holocaust survivor.
We've entered a dark place when people start shaming fit people because they don't even know what a normal person should look like.
Obesity is complex (Score:3)
There are many factors in obesity.
1. The greatest is willpower. Pure, sheer wilpower. The willpower to eat less, the willpower to exercise.
2. Luck. I happen to have the luck to be able to sleep with a mostly empty stomach. It is surprising how much that helps. I also have the luck that I like biking and live in the Netherlands, where almost everybody bikes. Some people have the bad luck to have a body that gains easy and looses difficultly.
3. Food. I do not mean quantity, that's covered in 1. I mean types. There seems to be some indication that some types of food set the body to gain weight. How that works exactly is not yet known as far as I know. Apparently I don't eat much of them, or I compensate for it sufficiently.
4 and onwards are unknown to me. However, due to the complexity I expect them to be there.
I am 1m96 and weigh 95 kg. My ideal weight according to my doctor would be 88kg. I have dropped from 106kg in 6 months. That was easy, I halved my portion size and upped my bicycling distance significantly.
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Me, 2+ sugars in tea 4 times a day, biscuits, ice cream cake sweets.
I'm 5'11 and 142pounds / 64kg
It's not just sugar. I cycle. How many overweight people do you know that cycle regularly?
Re:Sugar (Score:5, Funny)
> How many overweight people do you know that cycle regularly?
I only know logrotate, you insensitive clod.
BMI is a lie! (Score:2, Interesting)
If you cycle, then I suggest doing your BMI maths to find out how obse you are, BMI FUCKING SUCKS! Muscle is heavier than fat, bmi is your weight in relation to you high. therefore if you have a maximum about of muscle then you come in at Obse on this stupid fucking scale.
Fuck all fat on me, mostly skinny build, have some nice leg muscles, no real arm or back muscles, no fat gut, im 183cms and 95KGs..
Overweight to the point that if I put on more weight i'm Obese!
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If you are concerned with obesity BMI is good enough. It can falsely flag you as overweight, but if it marks you obese you have a serious problems. (Even if it mostly muscle your steroid abuse should have killed you by now.)
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It can falsely flag you as overweight, but if it marks you obese you have a serious problems.
It depends. Overweight seems to be very healthy and results in a quite significant reduction of mortality. Obesity class I (BMI 30-35) seems to still provide a slightly lower mortality than normal weight. "BMI and mortality: results from a national longitudinal study of Canadian adults." [nih.gov] So do you also consider normal weight to be a serious problem?
Re:BMI is a lie! (Score:5, Insightful)
Bah, 99.9% of the people who complain that their BMI is high because of muscles don't have that much muscles. This [klikk.no] is Olaf Tufte, former olympic champion in rowing and overall tough guy, he's 193 cm and 95 kg for a BMI of 25.5. In other words, despite being almost pure muscle he's barely overweight by BMI standards. To be "obese" he'd have to add 17 kg worth of fat to that body. It's not a body for power lifting but he'll easily carry a 50kg backpack up a mountain side if you ask him, he's outrageously well trained. Even sustaining 10 kg worth of extra muscle is a lot of work and doesn't affect the BMI that much. Fat is a different story, you can easily be 20 or 40 kg overweight. I've been your weight (adjusting for height), it's by no means skinny and only normal if you compare yourself to other overweight people.
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Well, that's an example of a guy who, as you say, are almost pure muscle. Go and Google for "strongest man competition". Most of those guys have quite a bit more fat, but I doubt that their overal body fat percentage is that high.
Re:BMI is a lie! (Score:4, Informative)
If you cycle, then I suggest doing your BMI maths to find out how obse you are, BMI FUCKING SUCKS! Muscle is heavier than fat, bmi is your weight in relation to you high. therefore if you have a maximum about of muscle then you come in at Obse on this stupid fucking scale. Fuck all fat on me, mostly skinny build, have some nice leg muscles, no real arm or back muscles, no fat gut, im 183cms and 95KGs.. Overweight to the point that if I put on more weight i'm Obese!
BMI is not perfect. However, unless you are a weightlifter or outrageously fit (not just "skinny fit", but bulging muscles) it's a pretty good indicator. And it's pretty easy to know if you are in the extremely fit part - if you're thinking about it, you aren't.
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However, unless you are a weightlifter or outrageously fit (not just "skinny fit", but bulging muscles) it's a pretty good indicator.
Not at the overweight scale. This is well documented. People have collected actual examples of people together with their BMI and you'll see that there are plenty of examples of "overweight" people which are perfectly fine.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/... [flickr.com]
Here's another overweight person:
http://www.klikk.no/multimedia... [klikk.no]
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I went through the first 21 or so of those photos, and the BMI classification doesn't seem at all wrong to me. The most "contraversial" one might be the 3rd photo - woman in front of the pumpkin - but the photo doesn't really show you her shape, and the stripes also hide it. She doesn't look skinny though.
That photoset basically affirms the utility of BMI as a heuristic diagnostic, for me. (I'm a hair under overweight, which I think is pretty fair).
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BMI is not perfect. However, unless you are a weightlifter or outrageously fit (not just "skinny fit", but bulging muscles) it's a pretty good indicator.
No it is NOT. SERIOUSLY. It is absolutely NOT a good indicator.
See, for example, this actual study [nih.gov] on correlation between BMI and obesity measured by bodyfat percentage. The main finding, according to the study: "A BMI >= 30 had ... a poor sensitivity (36% and 49 % [in men and women], respectively) to detect [Body-fat %]-defined obesity."
In other words, the current BMI cut-off of 30 only correctly identifies 36% of male obese people correctly, and only 49% of females. Does that sound like a "pre
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But a pound of gold does not .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T... [wikipedia.org]
Re:Sugar (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Sugar (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah but in the 70's and 80's foods were not nearly as laden with sugar, and the portion sizes were different -- and people ate at home more often. It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to reason out that human beings do not need a 54 ounce soda. And the availability of drinks in such quantities coincide quite nicely with the rises in obesity.
I was born in 1982 -- growing up, 16 ounces was the standard size for a bottle of soda. then it was 20, and now it's moving on up to a liter. Prior to the early 80's soda sizes were even smaller.
I'm singling out soda because it kind of serves as a yardstick that other portion sizes can be compared to -- which, are out of control. Gigantic, out of control portion sizes at restaurants and fast food places that we frequent more than ever before.. serving a menu comprised mainly out of simple, refined, processed to hell carbohydrates. Oh and we're gulping down pure sugar by the gallon.
This shouldn't be a fucking mystery.
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Yeah, portions have increased. It's especially noticeable when you compare plate sizes. I did this last time I was at my mother's: We compared the old plates she still had from the 70s, to the more modern plates we use today. The modern ones are much bigger. The old dinner plates, you'd use them for lunch or cakes or appetisers today.
Re:Sugar (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah but in the 70's and 80's foods were not nearly as laden with sugar, and the portion sizes were different -- and people ate at home more often. It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to reason out that human beings do not need a 54 ounce soda. And the availability of drinks in such quantities coincide quite nicely with the rises in obesity.
In the 90's the health kick began and it was determined, at the time, that weight gain and clogged arteries were tied to the amount of fat that we consumed. There was no distinction between fat types. So, the food industry reduced the total amount of fat in foods. However, this also affected the taste so they added sugar and, worse, high fructose corn syrup, to boost the taste. Current research indicates that eating fat actually results in a lower amount of weight gain as eating high fructose corn syrup or sugars.
Personally, I would rather have real sugar in my foods than high fructose corn syrup, but that's all that you can get in the US. I try to avoid it as much as possible. High Fructose corn syrup should be banned...
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You think they didn't have sugar, fatty foods and exercising decades ago?
They did, but now it is in every thing you eat. Because we love the taste of fat and sugar.
Instead of a special occasion of the day when you eat sugar, it is eaten routinely. That is what is new.
For instance, replacing a piece of bread with a thin layer of bread and jam in the morning with a muffin (so essentially eating cake for breakfast).
Drinks also have vast amounts of sugar in them. A typical Starbucks coffee contains tons of fat and sugar to make it tastier, whereas black coffee does not.
Animals are g
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"Our bodies are so well attuned to processing wheat, that bread causes a faster sugar high than Coca Cola"...
Does that apply to brown wheat or just white flour products?
Not the way we have carbs now (Score:4, Informative)
The amount of sugar and other carbs in our current diet is way higher than it was. Also, we stopped using fat as our energy source since some studies suggested (falsely) that fat was the cause of cardiac diseases and obesity. Those studies have since been proven wrong and the new consensus is that our current high carbs intake is responsible for the enormous amount of obese people and diabetes type II patients.
A human can live healthy with 0 carbs intake for an entire year, providing they use fat to substitute for energy intake. A human will die within 6 months if they have 0 fat intake, regardless of what they use to substitute that.
The whole "omega fat" and cholesterol story is way more complicated and correlation and causation between fats, omega fats, cholesterol (various sorts of it) and cardiac disease is currently highly debated. Much research is finding that previous research is wrong and new things are being found every few months. Several papers that have been proven by independent re-trials seem to point out that the whole omega fat theory holds no statistical advantage and there are indications that it may actually be contra productive, but those results are too inconclusive.
We used to have natural fats, natural carbs and way less carbs in our diet 70 years ago, compared to now. High fructose corn syrup didn't exist yet the way it does now and breakfast wasn't sugar frosted. We didn't limit our fat intake "because it's bad for your heart and you'll get fat" the way we do now and yes, we did often exercise more than we do now. Our whole culture has moved to prepared food instead of home cooking and our taste buds made us buy the food with the "richer" taste. We don't look on the labels to see what's in it, we just want it to taste good and end our appetite. That lead to a totally different diet currently, which leads to obesity.
To make it more difficult, carbs and especially sugar are actually addictive and our modern stomach fauna will produce chemical substances to make our brain feel good if we eat carbs. We have to go through actual withdrawal symptoms if we don't have our trice daily fix of carbs (feeling faint and woozy) and we get a reward "after dinner dip" if we eat.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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If you don't want to get obese, don't go on calorie control diets; they just don't work
Actually that is the problem for many, they're eating reasonably healthy but they're simply eating too much. And then the obvious answer is: eat less. What happens in practice though is that you get hungry, eat only your allotted calories but get more and more hungry as the backlog builds until the dam bursts and you're so hungry you binge eat something. It's not nutrition management that is the killer, it's hunger management. The most obvious point is that eating food late at night is pointless because yo
Re:Not the way we have carbs now (Score:4, Informative)
Complete nonsense. Ketone bodies are produced from fat in the liver:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K... [wikipedia.org]
You really don't need carbs in your diet.
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You can cause health problems that make eating less impossible by eating less sooner than you would cause healthy weight loss. There's an old story that I found in an old fechtbuch. An english fencing master complained of a spanish argument that you if you always held your point as far towards your opponent as possible would strike him first, and he compared this argument an old story of how a man goes to woman for a cure against seasickness
Re:Not the way we have carbs now (Score:4, Interesting)
There's a lot of calories in cardboard, but you won't get fat by eating it. Availability of calories matters, as does speed of digestion. You get fatter from eating the same amount of calories if those calories are from high-glycemic-index foods.
Most people who have dieted for a while have noticed the difference between foods that give them a quick boost but leave them feeling hungry (or sleepy) later, and boring foods that are filling but don't give that sense of having eaten a large meal.
tl;dr: short peaks of overfeeding are still bad, even if the day's calories aren't.
Re:Not the way we have carbs now (Score:5, Interesting)
If calories in > calories burned then FAT.
Sure, but that is about as helpful as telling a homeless person that if they spend a lot less than they earn, they'll be able to save up and buy a house.
Your statement carries an unstated assumption that the amount of calories consumed or expended is easily controlled, and thus they simply need to be adjusted. Any idiot knows that if they eat less they'll lose weight, and yet we have an obesity epidemic.
I've been on a low-carb diet and while I'm not as lean as I'd like to be it took fairly little effort for me to lose about 20% of my weight bringing me just under the obese threshold and keep it off for a year. When I've tried other strategies like strict calorie-counting with nutrient balancing I've never lost this much weight and I felt like I was ALWAYS hungry (despite eating 6 fairly equal portions per day - and I weighed anything that went into my mouth other than water).
In both cases I am eating less than I'm burning, but there are ways to go about it that make it MUCH easier to adhere to, and I suspect that there are far better methods that have yet to be discovered.
Re: Sugar (Score:2)
Snacking is what's new. 5 isles of the supermarket and most convenience stores are all about snacks. You can eat 3 fairly significant meals a day for 2000ish calories. However a typical "lunch" deal (Sandwich-600, Soda-200 and Chocolate Bar/Muffin/Cake-300) could easily be half of that.
Theres a whole industry and part of the economy that relies on this eating between meals. It's high calorie and doesn't tend satisfy actual hunger for very long.
I sometimes feel that exercise is overplayed in these discus
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I grew up in the 70s and early 80s in western europe. We had sweets and sugar, but there wasn't the abundance of sweets then as there is today - is my vague memory. Least, I remember getting sweets being special, and not getting many of them when I did.
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240 lb. is the NEW thin...
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I only ever cycle, I do fitness 3-4 times a week. I'm still quite a bit overweight. And I fucking hate people like you who thinks it all comes down to getting some exercise. Having muscle will help metabolism, however, it is a big fucking mistake to think that hitting the gym will lower your weight, in fact quite the opposite happens for most overweight people.
Hitting the gym with the object of losing weight will be very detrimental to your efforts, 1. you will gain weight from the additional muscle. 2. rai
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I think eating a lot of fruit helps, another easy thing I do is use brown pasta, brown rice and mostly brown bread when I cook.
One food to steer clear of is chocolate ice creams and chocolate, so high in fat and sugar. Whilst cake is not good, some cake is much lower in fat. When I gave up smoking I gained 3 stone and decided to diet, but I was lazy so I just counted sat-fats intake - and it worked!
I'm thinking of replacing sugar in tea with sweeteners but am put off by potential side effects.
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You'll get the chocolate from my cold dead fingers...just cut the sugar content. 18-22% is plenty.
Do you want to live forever?
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It sounds like you're in serious need of a psychologist. That's a personal, mental problem, not a societal problem.
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Yes I oversimplified, diet is of course important. The food industry has a lot to answer for, so much food is made with adulterated flour and rice, pizzas really don't need to be made with white flour, brown rice tastes fine to me, whole grain pasta is almost identical to the bleached stuff. Bleaching food and removing the nutrients may not have seemed like a bad idea in the 19th century but we really should know better now.
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There's a whole other potential issue that's being reviewed: Our heavy use of antibiotics. We've changed our gut flora through antibiotic use. It's not entirely clear how that's affecting humans. The studies are showing a similar effect on animals -- you feed one group of animals antibiotics and another group gets the same feed but no antibiotics and guess which group ends up weighing more.
There's another point to be made as well: There are no absolutes. It's not food only, or processed sugar, or a
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I only ever took antibiotics briefly in my teens for whooping cough so it could indeed be a factor. Genetics seems to be a big factor with me.
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Another object of research is caesarean births where the infant does not pass through the birth canal and misses picking up the flora present in the vagina which jump starts their gut flora. Between mothers being given way too many antibiotics, infants not getting inoculated with their mothers gut flora, infants and children being given too many antibiotics and the attempts to raise children in a sterile environment, people are very deficient in gut flora.
Antibiotics, while having saved more lives then most
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How old are you? Specifically, are you still in your twenties? I'm late thirties, ~178 cm and 73 kg, which I maintain by cycling and limiting sugar and snacking. Cycling alone is not sufficient to control my weight. To really not have to watch what I eat, I'd have to be doing professional-cyclist levels of it (i.e. many hours each day, and >500 kilometres / week).
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Watching what you eat is different to different people, I'm over 40, my doctor has recommended I keep the saturated fats down and eat lots of fibre. I have a sweet tooth but limit it by simply not buying too much junk, that way when I get a craving there's not much I can do about it. but I suspect some peoples cravings are much more than mine, I very rarely binge, I just don't feel like it. I also place fruit strategically so that it's 'centre stage' it helps me eat healthily.
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Yeah, that's what I do too. When I'm at home I sometimes crave food, but I can control myself when shopping. So the trick is to buy only healthy and filling stuff. Unfortunately, my other half is the opposite - can't control herself in the shop, but has no problem not eating the junk once it's at home. ;)
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I'm lazy, I like ready meals, what bugs me is the lack of healthy ready meals, they all lack enough veg, they typically use wheat or rice with the nutrients removed, they are low in fibre etc.
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But it's a strong hint.
Right. It couldn't possibly be that you have to be smarter to actually be admitted as a math major, could it? And even if it did, that wouldn't be causation, I suppose?
Re:Sugar (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm skinny. Everyone comments on it. At 35 you can put your fingers around the widest parts of arms without difficulty.
I basically live on sugar. I drink Coca-Cola endlessly (do not drink hot drinks, tend to have sugar in them when I do). I pig out on high-fat, high-sugar food and lived off fast food for many years. I eat sweets like a child and have to curb my appetite for sweets only because I work in a school and they are banned there for the kdis themselves (so I have to hide them, etc.). I also don't really exercise. At all. Ever. Never been to a gym in my life.
Yes, I have a "health" problem that's going to catch up with me in the end. Until then, I enjoy my food. And sweets. And crisps. And everything I feel like eating.
And people in work keep asking how I stay so skinny. How I have so much energy. I'm still the guy work colleagues ask to move heavy cabinets etc. when they need moving.
Blanket rules curb the average, but it does not mean there's an instant 1:1 relationship with every person's metabolism and diet. I'm sure my cholesterol and blood sugar are off the scale at points in the day. But my health, generally speaking, is pretty damn good.
I've been to doctors about 3-4 times in the last TEN YEARS. Once to have a toenail removed. Once to be diagnosed with swine flu (but had 5% of the symptoms of everyone else who had it, I just needed it confirmed as I work in schools and had to be certified off-work - I've probably had less than 5 sick days in the last five years). Three times to register with new doctors (so not medically-related, just administration). Who all take my BP, quiz me, and then never mention a thing about my health - probably because I look thin.
I live in a country with free healthcare, so I'm certainly not self-medicating here - in fact I don't medicate... people know I'm really bad if I ask for a paracetamol as I just don't take ANYTHING generally speaking (not some hippy-drive, just don't take pills for things unnecessarily and the rare headache I have will go in the same amount of time, pills or not).
The problem is not the general availability of high-sugar, high-fat foods. The problem is that humans are NOT all the same and BMI, in particular, is a REALLY bad measure (technically I'm underweight so advice would be to eat more of the bad stuff....). The focus on a metric rather than the person is part of the modern medical degeneration of personal contact. "I don't care who you are, you're over this number, eat less."
I trust doctors implicitly. I consult them when required. I regard them as qualified experts in their field who don't need me bothering them for a sniffle but will trust my life to them any time. However, I also have not been to doctors in years, and also have had to go with friends to doctors and tell THEM what the problem is (and then had it confirmed by GP, consultant specialist, etc.).
Health != skinny. Health != fat. Health != a number. It's a statistic and thus, as a mathematician, almost certainly a lie chosen to suit the intended outcome.
Don't ban sugar, or tax it. Start with a health system that has time for patients and to listen, and go from there. People are adults who can make their own choices and who can understand the consequences in seconds if they want to. Regulating sugar - of all things - is the ultimate nanny-state.
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That lifestyle will catch up with you, you are likely aging you heart and increasing your risk of cancer. (pot kettle black here). IMO to be healthy just excercise (get a bike) and eat plenty of fruit+veg+fibre and when buying foods pick the ones with lower sat-fats.
Re:Sugar (Score:4, Interesting)
I suspect that you are in the "lucky bacteria club." Your stomach bacteria manage to break down sugar at a sufficient rate. Most people are not so adapted and hence sugar acts pretty muck like a toxin to them.
Now if this were 10,000 years ago, you would have died off as humans seem to have mutated a long time ago to have a large brain and subsist on less food than it would take an animal with a normal metabolism. Pound for pound, humans are one of the weakest mammals -- and I believe the trade off was just for this reason. We are also the 2nd coolest Mammal temperature wise.
It has been show over and over that a little "Nanny state" regulation can do a lot to improve health in the general population. If someone can eat glass at a carnival, we don't just "allow glass" in food do we? If someone has a thick scull, we don't just say; "everyone has to wear seat belts but you get a pass."
I don't want the state to tell me what to do -- but corporations that might impact the health of the population? If it's a good idea -- we should try it. Letting people "just be" doesn't seem to a great society. Yes; education is ideal and awareness -- but we've ceded a lot of that to corporations with profit motives and we've lowered taxes so now we can't afford to "hope that everyone is just smart" -- that's not the USA anymore.
Re:Sugar (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm skinny. Everyone comments on it. At 35 you can put your fingers around the widest parts of arms without difficulty. I basically live on sugar. I drink Coca-Cola endlessly (do not drink hot drinks, tend to have sugar in them when I do). I pig out on high-fat, high-sugar food and lived off fast food for many years. I eat sweets like a child and have to curb my appetite for sweets only because I work in a school and they are banned there for the kdis themselves (so I have to hide them, etc.). I also don't really exercise. At all. Ever. Never been to a gym in my life.
I hate to be the one to tell you, but you're 'skinny-fat'. You're thin because you have no muscle anywhere on your body to speak of, because you probably don't eat enough protein to start with, too much carbs, and zero meaningful exercise to speak of.
Furthermore: Someone like you, making the statements I quoted above, should not at any time be giving unsuspecting, naive people any sort of advice on diet, exercise, or fitness, because you are the absolute poorest of examples. Don't believe me? Go get body composition analysis done. Wouldn't be surprised if your bodyfat percentage is something like 30-40%, and afterwards the doctor insists on consulting with you regarding your possibly being anorexic. Additionally with your 'lifestyle' you're at serious risk for diabetes because of the high simple-carbs intake. I also wouldn't be surprised if you develop digestive issues from overgrowth of certain intestinal flora from all that sugar, tooth decay from all the sugar and carbonation, and generally declining health as you start getting older because of all the above.
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A courtesy message about "the diabetus":
When someone says "you have the diabetes" -- that's a reference to the pronunciation of Wilford Brimley and his stern message on the topic;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
So the person was being cute -- not ignorant.
And it isn't an issue for people to give an ID (Internet Diagnosis) -- it's an issue if people accept it and start boiling their shorts in garlic and whacking their head with a large Halibut because someone on the internet told them to.
IANAID (I Am Not An
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I don't have a sugar free diet by any stretch. I do have an innate loathing of excessive amounts of sugar and eat candy sparingly but it isn't by conscious choice.
For the lazy, a metric/imperial BMI calculator.. (Score:3)
http://www.heartfoundation.org... [heartfoundation.org.au]
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It's not becoming more socialist, the Lisbon treaty demands our gov'ts sell all govt property, everything is supposed to be run by corp's - that's EU law!.
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Europe does not subsidize corn production or corn sugar like the US does. Even coca cola here is made with real sugar. Some countries even have sugar taxes, but obesity rates are still going up. Something else is wrong too.
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The problem is that we are looking at problems and trying to find an easy fix to them!
If we ban or stop this one thing than it will all be better.
Sure we know if Calories in > Calories out = fat.
However counting calories in real life is difficult. Also they are foods that are Calorie dense but also have nutrients and other stuff that makes us feel satisfied longer so we don't eat as much. Then we have "Diet" foods low in calories, but low in nutrients too, so after we eat it, we get hungry again and ag