… then nothing is an emergency.
This post was inspired when I was yet again kvetching to my boyfriend about how RIDICULOUS my job is. Meh. But, I will also link this back to the “obesity epidemic”… here I ramble…
One of the worst things about the job I am currently leaving (2 more work days left!!! whooo hooooo!!!) is that everything seems to be an emergency. OMG!!!! There is an unexpected $2.00 management charge – nevermind that this is a Fortune 100 company. *headdesk* You’re at lunch!!! Why don’t you always answer your AIM INSTANTLY???!!!! OMG!! Some big shot found an unexpected $16.00 charge to his account and he wants us to drop all our truly important responsibilities just to see what this charge is (in the end, he charged the $16 himself… and forgot… GAH!). Of course, these are some of the more extreme examples, but there always seems to be some version of this urgency passing around my team like a virus. Sometimes, I feel like I’m trapped in that movie “Office Space.”
I really just needed to vent that. Now, onto the acceptance bit.
I’m sure you’ve all heard about the ‘Obesity Epidemic’ that is sweeping the US, Canada, UK, Australia and lots of other countries that don’t speak English as well. Even India and Japan have hopped on the bandwagon. The more… the… ummmm… merrier? Somehow, I doubt it.
Are you the leader of a traditionally hungry (and otherwise slim) country? Do you want to jump on the epidemic bandwagon too? Find out how: “How To Create an Obesity Epidemic in Hungry Countries” (thank you SWFFreedomLover for the post!).
In my daily reading of various blogs, I found this awesome study that PeggyNature posted recently. As sciencey stuff goes, I found this particular study by The Oxford Internal Journal of Epidemiology, this is a pretty easy and engaging read. I highly recommend it.
Some neat-o blurb-a-reenos (for those of you who do not want to muddle through the report verbage, I offer my own summaries and commentary in red bold between each paragraph):
The claim that we are seeing an ‘epidemic’ of overweight and obesity implies an exponential pattern of growth typical of epidemics. The available data do not support this claim. Instead, what we have seen, in the US, is a relatively modest rightward skewing of average weight on the distribution curve, with people of lower weights gaining little or no weight, and the majority of people weighing 3–5 kg more than they did a generation ago.3 The average American’s weight gain can be explained by 10 extra calories a day, or the equivalent of a Big Mac once every 2 months. Exercise equivalents would be a few minutes of walking every day. This is hardly the orgy of fast food binging and inactivity widely thought to be to blame for the supposed fat explosion.
Technically – there is no obesity epidemic. Overall, most people are only a little bit bigger than previous generations. One generation is usually BIGGER than the last, so this would make sense, yes? We are eating a WHOPPING 10 calories more a day. Be afraid… very afraid…
While there has been significant weight gain among the heaviest individuals4 the vast majority of people in the ‘overweight’ and ‘obese’ categories are now at weight levels that are only slightly higher than those they or their predecessors were maintaining a generation ago.
The heaviest people are the only people who have significantly gained weight. Oh, do you think this could have anything to do with the fact they are stigmatized and shamed and some folks have prolly come to the point where if they’re going to be accused of being lazy, undisciplined and gluttonous – they might as well just do it them. Some poor souls are prolly so brainwashed by our culture that they don’t even realize they could live another way.
As noted by the authors, ‘the resulting empirical findings from each of the four race/sex groups, which are representative of the US population, demonstrate a wide range of BMIs consistent with minimum mortality and do not suggest that the optimal BMI is at the lower end of the distribution for any subgroup’… ion to the health risks of underweight is needed, and body weight recommendations for optimum longevity need to be considered in light of these risks. W]hen epidemiological studies have compared BMI with percentage of body fat as a marker for disease risk, BMI is consistently superior to percentage of body fat.23–25 This suggests that body build rather than fatness may be the source of risks associated with high BMI.
A wide range of BMI’s exist in the US and most of them don’t have any extra mortality rate. However, why aren’t people studying the health risks of a lower end BMI (like 18.5%), because BMI’s towards the lower end are more of a problem than they are given credit for.
Improvements in insulin sensitivity and blood lipids as a result of aerobic exercise training have been documented even in persons who actually gained body fat during the intervention.32,34 This outcome is entirely inconsistent with prevailing beliefs about body fat and health. It is also important to note that these are not new findings. Despite having been available to the scientific community for 35 years, these ‘non-conforming’ findings remain largely ignored.
If you’re diabetic and overweight, if you improve your lifestyle (think HAES – exercise, eat well, etc.) – even if you GAIN WEIGHT – you will most likely become HEALTHIER. And yet, these stats are ignored in the mainstream.
Thus public health interventions designed to lessen rates of obesity and overweight are striving to achieve a presently unachievable goal of unknown medical efficacy. In contrast, as noted above, many studies have found striking health benefits associated with lifestyle changes that produce little or no long-term weight loss.
There is no reason to believe that all these government obesity interventions help anyone. It’s healthier to focus on a healthy life-style – this is more likely to benefit health – even if you gain weight.
Back to the title of this post. When obesity panickers wonder why everyone isn’t running around trying to find their emergency helmets, maybe they should ponder the title of this post. The tone of much of this obesity hype is so shrill as to become a dog whistle. To many people, it’s just background static.
Perhaps the real epidemic here is decapitation of innocent fatties.
–AngryGrayRainbows
Angry Gray Rainbows 
Those people on the heaviest end of the BMI? What do you want to bet that they’re the ones who have dieted multiple times, lost and gained and lost and gained and lost and gained so many times that they have ended up much fatter than they would have if they had never dieted at all? All that yo-yo dieting has fucked their metabolisms so badly that there is no way in hell they will ever be able to get back to where they started before they ever went on their first diet. I started out at 175 lbs (as an adult, at 5′ 9″, and was considered fat by some), went to 235 with my 1st pregnancy, dieted back to 175, went to 325 with my second pregnancy, dieted back to 220, gained to 350, dieted to 280, gained to 350, had WLS, went to 280, gained to 395. I’m now at 375 (or I was last year, who knows now, I don’t weigh myself, but I’m still wearing the same size in clothing). And most of the gaining I did was while I was still dieting. To keep losing weight, or maintain the weight loss, I would have had to quit eating altogether (and I’m not fond of starvation as a way of dying, thank you very much, no matter how much the fat-phobes think it’s a good idea). There is no epidemic of TEH DEADLY FATZ, it’s a marketing gimmick to sell more diets, more diet drugs, and more WLS so greedy asshats can get our dollars into their pockets. Well, they can’t have my money, I’m smarter than that, finally.
Vesta, you have lovely timing. Here I was getting sad that I have had no comments recently.
I think you’re spot on about people dieting themselves to the highest BMI’s. The diet industry complains about our fat, but as far as I can tell – they are contributing more to fatness than anyone else out there.
I remember a 60 minutes segment on weight loss. It went through this woman who started out overweight or obese… and over the course of the time they spent with her, her metabolism was grinding to a halt. By the end of the months she was dieting, she was eating 800 calories a day and her weight wasn’t budging. So, ya know, if she were to eat normally, her weight would balloon, of course – dieting her weight up the scale, so to speak.
The first time I became obese, it was after my first big diet attempt. I lost 40lbs. I gained at least 100. I hate to think about what my yo-yoing has done to my health. Thank goodness I understand that health doesn’t equate to thin… because I’ve started to find some real health results and I’d rather be healthy than thin.
AGR, perhaps you aren’t getting many comments because you do such a thorough job with the post in the first place?!
I think the rather depressing fact is that OO was first published in 198?. In that they quote the scientific studies showing that 95% of diets don’t work. It doesn’t seem to matter what science there is on this side of the argument, it is just washed over with a massive tide of pro-dieting. Even after twenty years that message has still not been honestly presented to the masses.
Of course, if we are all worried about food and whether or not we are allowed it then we are less focused on what our armies are or aren’t doing, where our taxes go, the decline of communities etc etc
LOL Sophie. Thanks for the compliment. 🙂
Pessimistic as it may be, I think you’re right about fat being a diversion from more important subjects. In my own life experience, I can see how dieting came to trump basically anything else… even whether my boss was abusive, if I was being paid fairly… and forget politics or the community. I hardly had enough energy to get through the day as malnourished as I was.
I wanna read “Fat is a Feminist Issue”. While I know men are starting to be targetted as well, traditionally it’s been the job of women to stay slim. I remember someone posting a snippet about how historically the reaction to women getting more freedom usually resulted in a much thinner figure coming into fashion. A half-starved woman is a more easily manipulated one… Just as a half-starved population will ask fewer questions and make fewer stands.
I wonder if the diet craze had anything to do with George W. Bush being elected twice as president over here and our resurgence of the anti-science attitudes? Interesting thought anyway….
[…] already realized that fat isn’t necessarily unhealthy. (Blogged about and expanded upon here.) The real health risks seem to be associated with weight cycling (yo-yo dieting) alone. Sure, […]