Being as I work in the field and this is a potential thesis topic for me, I'm going to tackle it break my self-promise to not post in P&N.
Hold on to your hats.
Overweight 'top world's hungry'
Overweight person being measured
The number of people overweight has topped £1bn across the world
There are now more overweight people across the world than hungry ones, according to experts.
US professor Barry Popkin said all countries - both rich and poor - had failed to address the obesity boom.
US professor Barry Popkin has a PhD in Agricultural Economics. Perhaps he forgot the fact that there are currently definitions within the Healthcare Community that explicitly distinguish 'overweight' from 'obese'. Using the terms interchangeably is a fallacy because they are universally recognized as different.
He told the International Association of Agricultural Economists the number of overweight people had topped 1bn, compared with 800m undernourished.
Speaking at an Australian conference, he said changing diets and people doing less physical exercise was the cause.
Professor Popkin, from the University of North Carolina, said that the change had happened quickly as obesity was rapidly spreading, while hunger was slowly declining among the world's 6.5bn population.
The biggest increases are being seen in parts of Asia with certain populations more susceptible than others
Professor Tony Barnett, of Birmingham University
He told the conference at the Gold Coast convention centre near Brisbane: "Obesity is the norm globally and under nutrition, while still important in a few countries and in targeted populations in many others, is no longer the dominant disease."
Again, equivocation. overweight != obese
He said the "burden of obesity", with its related illnesses, was also shifting from the rich to the poor, not only in urban but in rural areas around the world.
And this is where I cry foul. Yes, being obese has been shown historically in epidemiological studies to increase the rate of morbidity and mortality. Same case with being overweight, but to a lesser extent. However, when this phenomenon is studied, researchers always stick hard and fast to their arbitrarily, but rigidly defined definitions. Overweight is generally defined as having a BMI between 25 and 30 and obese is generally defined as having a BMI between 30 and 35. Next comes morbidly obese, which is anything over 35.
Now, to understand my arguement, you need to know how BMI is calculated - BMI is a continuous measure that is calculated by (weight / (height ^2)) - where weight is measured in kilograms and height is measured in meters. The problems comes in when analyses are done based upon such broad categories. Performing a categorical analysis with such a lack of precision on a continuous variable makes as much sense as measuring with a microscope, drawing a cut line with a Sharpie, and cutting with a chainsaw.
Now, within the last year or so, [somebody who's name i don't have handy at work right now...] performed a semi-parametric anaylsis of BMI vs. morbidity and mortality. His BMI categories weren't measured as five unit categories, but as 0.1 unit categories. He found that people who were mildly 'overweight' actually had a lower rate of morbidity and mortality on the whole, than those who were at a 'normal' BMI. [Again, wish I had this handy, because I could shoe the graph, the sample size, the methods, etc.] He also found a non-significant difference between the risk factors of 'overweight' and 'normal' folks' rate of morbidity and mortality. Now, he did find that being 'obese' still has a higher risk factor for morbidity and mortality than being 'normal' weight.
This is just a very long way of reiterating that there is a big difference between being overweight and being obese - particularly in the context of morbity and mortality.
China typified the changes, with a major shift in diet from cereals to animal products and vegetable oils accompanied by a decline in physical work, more motorised transport and more television viewing, he added.
And he urged governments to begin to develop better strategies to combat the problem.
He said food prices could be used to manipulate people's diets and tilt them towards healthier options.
"For instance, if we charge money for every calorie of soft drink and fruit drink that was consumed, people would consume less of it. "If we subsidise fruit and vegetable production, people would consume more of it and we would have a healthier diet."
And University of Minnesota's Professor Benjamin Senauer, who has compared lifestyles in the US, which has high obesity rates with Japan, which has low rates, agreed.
"The average Japanese household spends almost a quarter of its income on food compared to under 14% in the US."
'Cheap food'
While a direct tax on food in the US to reduce obesity would not be politically acceptable, agricultural subsidies which resulted in cheap food could be reduced, he added.
I agree here - most of your sugars in today's manufactured foods come from corn syrup and government subsidies to corn farmers keep the prices low.
But he said other factors, such as exercise, also played an important role.
"Japanese cities are based on efficient public transport and walking. The average American commutes to work, drives to the supermarket and does as little walking as possible."
Professor Tony Barnett, head of the diabetes and obesity group at Birmingham University, said: "It is becoming increasingly clear that the number of overweight outnumbers the malnourished.
Again, we're talking about changing public policy on the national scale across the globe - it'd be nice if we could stop equivocating terms.
"What is also clear is that this is not just happening in developed countries, the developing world also has serious problems.
"The biggest increases are being seen in parts of Asia with certain populations more susceptible than others. If we do not get to grips with this, problems associated with obesity, such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease, are going to increase rapidly."
I agree. I have no problem with what this article is trying to say. It's just that the bait and switch tactic of citing the number of overweight people in the world and then talking about the dangers of obesity sensationalizes this article and equivocates two different things. Like saying 'The number of people who Drink is at an all-time high' followed by 'Drunk Driving kills X people each year' - one can lead to the next, but the first isn't necessarily bad if it can be controlled. Arguably, being overweight can lead into being obese and I don't deny that. However, I contend that being overweight, by the definition of the word, is not as 'bad for you' as everyone wants us to believe.
And that's all the $0.02 I've kept to myself for the past 2 months here at AT. I'm not trying to start your everyday flamewars, and I don't particularly care to argue. I'm not saying that the article is trash, and I appreciate the fact that the OP posted it. I also haven't made any policy-recommendations (I steer clear of those when I can...) besides noting that gov't subsidies lower prices on junk food. Is this a problem? Depends on how you look at it - from a social justice perspective, yes - from a healthcare perspective, not immediately. Should preventative policies be put in place? Depends on what they are - and I'm not going there...
I just couldn't bite my tongue here. Have a nice Day! :beer:
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