Global population of obese and overweight tops 2.1bn

I HAVE A QUESTION.... IS THIS USING BMI or ACTUALLY MEASURING FAT LIKE THEY USED TO DO? if its using BMI the numbers are WAY OFF. Just another study made by scientist and health companies to make more money.

a reply to: yuppa

OK - this is absolutely ridiculous

1 - BMI is a meaningless measurement. It doesn't differentiate between fat and muscle!

2. The definition of normal BMI was changed in 1998 and instantly 25 million formerly normal-wieght americans were instantly made fat.

edition.cnn.com...

Millions of Americans became "fat" Wednesday -- even if they didn't gain a pound -- as the federal government adopted a controversial method for determining who is considered overweight.

Voila - instant obesity crisis that will take billions of dollars of lobbying to solve! boy aren't we glad those lobbiest are so concerned about our health.

3. The OP stated that some number of persons in the world were obese and some were merely overwieght. How did that simple statement morph into 1/3 of the world is obese?

Well - it was intended that you should misunderstand the statistic. It starts off talking about obese and overwieght and then never mentions the word overwieght again.

What if 98 percent of those people are, in fact, only 1 pound overwieght. Are we still in a crisis.

4. Overwieght people tend to live longer. How do we know what is the healthiest wieght for each person without taking into account their specific genetics? Do we want people to be normal wieght but not live as long? Is that the goal?

or maybe the OP is posting straight up propaganda?

Tired of control Freaks

a reply to: TiredofControlFreaks

op is posting what he can see with his own eyes

Of course anyone with a BMI of 30 is pure muscle no? for you people the majority are or there is no problem no? yeah right

a reply to: Indigent

What you can see with your own eyes is called anecdotal evidence and has absolutely no merit whatsoever. How many people do you think you see. Maybe a million, maybe 20 million. How does this accurately represent over 7 billion people?

So how many people in the Ops artical are obese and how many are merely overwieght (do you see that anywhere)

Tired fo Control Freaks

originally posted by: dollukka
Staying away from fast carbs and artificial sweeteners alltogether and choosing food with low glycemic index would improve a lot these statistics. Also using a lot of cooking oil is not so good as cooking oils are almost 100% energy.

The problem is NOT the fricking intake!

A can of pop or two, a coffee with sugar and even greasy and oily fries won't make you fat IF YOU BURN THE FAT WITH SUFFICIENT EXERCISE.

The problem is not that there must be an obsession with calorie counting or avoiding McD....but instead LOOK AT OUR OWN LIFE STYLE. And..while you're at it, compare, say, the US with Europe. (Although now in Europe the number of obese people is increasing as well).

Typical day for a middle-class American:

Get up in the morning, get into the car (SITTING), arrive at work, 5 steps to the office desk. Spend 8 hours SITTING. Drive home again, DRIVE (SIT) by the bank, grab food at the drive-thru at McD..SITTING in the CAR.

Come home at night, SIT DOWN. Eat.

Watch TV or be on the computer. Sitting. Go to bed.

The entire exercise for the day was a few steps from the door steps to the car and from the parking lot to work, maybe 50 seconds "exercise" in total.

So..now...this is really extremely difficult rocket science (little joke)..if you sit on your a*** 16 hours a day you don't burn calories..and if the body doesn't burn calories/energy..you get fat. It's science a 5 year old can grasp!

If you stand straight naked,
look down and cannot see your man parts,
then you ARE obese .
(at one point this applied to me, until i decided to do something about it).

Many people are in denial about their body image, and no wonder.
Such realization can be hard to accept. What we see in mirror
is most probably NOT what other people see, just like hearing your own voice.

a reply to: TiredofControlFreaks
Either way, here in the UK our cash strapped NHS is desperate to cut the numbers of obese people due to the huge numbers these days.
I guess it must be conspiracy or something and there really is no problem going on with a large percentage of our population just consuming more energy than they use.../sarcasm

a reply to: TiredofControlFreaks

go look the paper and it will say, where is your evidence?

Overwieght people tend to live longer. How do we know what is the healthiest wieght for each person without taking into account their specific genetics? Do we want people to be normal wieght but not live as long? Is that the goal?

Prove this, where is your data?

Here you got a disease that is result of overweight



Let me know how you live longer when your overweight starts to have complications

Here you have data


Obesity in adulthood and its consequences for life expectancy: a life-table analysis

a reply to: NoRulesAllowed

Thats a common sense if you don´t do nothing you get fat if you keep eating over your need of energy. Obesity is not only adults trouble its also been seen in adolescents too. There are children with obesity which actually get exercise but still the energy intake is higher than what is needed.
I was coutching a boys gym class with a teacher who´s son ( obesity and taller than any other of his class) was in the gym group, he was active and had no troubles running etc. His mother (obesity too ) said she has no idea what causes his big size and after every class she gave his son a full package of cookies which he ate ALL...
There is another trend too and its that newborn babies are getting bigger every year ( fetal macrosomia ) and this is not only concerning the babies of diabetic mothers but also mothers who has weight problems. Macrosomia is caused by excessive insulin in the body of mother. These kids quite often are born with hypoglygemia ( too much insulin in body ).

a reply to: Indigent

Overwieght people live longer - evidence provided as requested.

www.nhs.uk...

This and related headlines come from a large review of previous research that found that those categorised as overweight were around 6% less likely to have died by the end of a study than those of a healthy weight.

It was a peer-review study of previous research.

You are confusing having a chronic disease with dying. The two are slightly different things.

Now - where in the OP does it differentiate between obese and overwieght? How did you figure out that 1/3 of the world is obese?

Don't bother asking me for any more evidence until you produce your own evidence.

Tired of Control Freaks

a reply to: TiredofControlFreaks

I sincerely hope you don't trust the math of this 'peer reviewed study'!

Relative to normal weight, both obesity (all grades combined) and obesity grades 2 and 3 (BMI ≥35) were associated with a significantly higher death rate. All obesity grades combined increased death risk by 18%, whereas the more severe grades (2 and 3 combined) had a 29% increase in risk.Grade 1 obesity was not associated with a significantly higher death rate.

Lol...
All obesity grades combined (1/2/3) = +18% death risk.
Obesity grades 2 & 3 combined = +29% death risk.
Obesity grade 1....= -11%? - this is a "not associated with a significantly higher death rate"...

Damn...we should all be significantly overweight...like, grade 1 obese kind of overweight!

Whoops...I guess.

a reply to: TiredofControlFreaks

It's funny how you completely disregard the real peer reviewed article cited by 500 other articles where it shows how much less overweight people live.

Oh well stop wasting my time

You ought to look at what constitutes being overweight. The Body/Mass Index is often used, but what is that? It's a chart that simply compares height to weight. You find both on the chart and see if that makes you "overweight" or not. Here's one right here:



Are you overweight? For me, I'm 5'11" and I weigh 175 pounds. The chart says I'm overweight. The chart also says that I would be considered "normal" weight at just over 130 pounds.

Think about this. What would a person nearly 6 feet tall weighing 130 pounds look like?

Are you beginning to get the picture here? The point at which the CDC calls you "overweight" is ridiculous. The point at which the CDC still considers you normal, even though you are pencil-thin, is ridiculous. They have set the bar low, and the result is that can make sweeping pronouncements that people are "overweight."

Calling the nation "overweight" is nothing but a political statement. Yes, there are overweight people, morbidly so, and we see them everyday, but if the bar were set differently, even by a few pounds, the number of "overweight" people would plummet.

C'mon, everyone here questions authority and the MSM on a regular basis. Why not here on this subject?

i have always struggled to put weight on. at 48 years i weigh about 68 kilos. i have noticed that in general people seem to be getting heavier. maybe there is a genetic component to one's tendency to gain weight?

a reply to: peck420

Why are you so determined to confuse obese and overwieght? Do you recognise that there is a difference?

So answer the question. In the OP article - how many people are actually obese and how many are merely overwieght. From the article I posted, it would appear that there is about a 20 lb variation from normal before you hit the obese categories

You know - it occurs to me that one of the first actions that the government would like to do to combat the "obesity" crisis is to tax food.

Taxing food is not something that the population ever supported. But if you can convince the population that it is a necessity because some people don't make the proper choices of food intake and exercise, that you have the whole smoking thing going on where there is now popular support to tax food.

Looks like win-win for the government here. They are seen to be "doing something" to help people be healthier, they have a whole new funding source.

I guess there really is absolutely no reason to "confuse" people about the difference between "obese" and merely a few pounds overwieght. Its so much more alarming to the population if you can convince people that 1/3 of people globally are obese when they really mean that only a small percent are actually obese but a larger percentage are merely overwieght.

So in the original article - how did you calculate that over 1/3 of the global population are obese - how many are merely overwieght?

Don't want to admit that you don't know and that you are reading propaganda and politicalised science for hire (OR THAT YOU EVEN KNOW THE DIFFERENCE).

Read the article again and this time try using critical thinking and common sense to see the scam.

I am not really eager to see my food bill increase substantially and do be doing communal jumping jacks in the red square.

Tired of Control Freaks

Tired of control Freaks

So sad that the worlds population is becoming obese, but the truth is that while adults are responsible for their own health, children depend on adults decision for theirs, more and more children are having the same health problems this days that once was seen as a genetic disorder and only within the adult population.

I see obesity as a side effect of modern day way of life in developing countries that no longer face the problems of hunger

When food is easily available is easily abused.

a reply to: grainofsand
188cm, 77kg here.
I have to make a point to eat, otherwise I lose weight.

And I agree with you about people with 'glandular problems'.
Point blank, people are fat because they consume more calories than they burn.
The math is simple, burn more calories than you eat.

Also strange how you never see fat people in sustained famine conditions - must just be lucky westerners who can put on weight when consuming less energy than they use. Or most fat people just lie about how much food they munch each day. - See more at: www.abovetopsecret.com...

Absolutely!

Oh, and how many times have I seen an obese woman eating potato chips at the bus stop?
A lot!
Hardly ever see non-obese women eating chips at the bus stop.

originally posted by: Toadmund
a reply to: grainofsand
I have to make a point to eat, otherwise I lose weight.

I consume massive amounts of calories in my working day because I burn them off in often very physical work and need the energy.
When I wore a suit to work in the past though I ate much less because I obviously didn't need as much energy. I would also often choose to say 'no thanks' to the cakes and biscuits which were always on offer at the desks of fat colleagues.

I have hovered around the 80-83 kilo weight since I was aged 12 when I reached 185cm, I am comfortable that my current 83 kilos are optimum for healthy me right now, but if I do creep up or down I shall simply adjust my dietary intake, or physical work rate, accordingly.

Pity so many people are desperately seeking anything else to blame instead of their own motivation.

a reply to: TiredofControlFreaks

My problem is with shoddy studies...like the one you have presented.

It makes me question the validity of the entire study.

Food costs...if you don't like it, grow your own food! The vast, vast majority have no idea how much subsidization occurs in the agriculture industry. Now that times are getting tighter, those subsides will be harder and harder to maintain...you think food is expensive now...just wait.

As for overweight vs obese...I don't really care. I prescribe to a hip to waist ratio far more than BMI, so I don't even weigh myself on a regular basis.

a reply to: peck420

Yes pec420 - you and I share the exact same concerns about shoddy studies. Its all epidimiology and epidimology is the science of finding associations (correlation) and not causation.

The study I quoted was shoddy. The study quoted in the OP is shoddy. Its science for hire for political purposes and its all propaganda to get us to support new taxes.

Its fine for you and I not to have to worry about the price of good but there are billions of others who do care.

I am also worried about the process of denormalizing and demonizing anyone who doesn't have the right BMI (as if BMI has any meaning.

This is public health trying to mold our society and cultural norms. Its mission creep. I don't think I need to pay taxes to support larger government intrusion in private lives.

The point I was making is that these people are talking through their hats and using statistics to alarm us.

Tired of Control Freaks