A Weblog of Centrist Voices in American Politics
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A Weblog of Centrist Voices in American Politics | |
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December 31, 2006Some Intolerance of Obesity IntoleranceA disturbing number of people seem obsessed with obesity, saying things are just getting worse and worse, and that our kids are all getting fatter and fatter. In the US, this idea seems particularly prevalent in baby boomers living around LA, though it continues to be adopted by too many people globally and in every generation. It's an excuse for telling other people how to run their lives, after all, and that sort of thing is never unpopular. More disturbing is that ani-obesity is also the AMA party line. Remember, for every person who is obese and has serious medical problems as a result, there are plenty who don't. This notion that obesity is getting worse this seems strange to me. I'm in my late 30s, and seen a generation or three. Each one seemed less obese and more fit to me. The most obese of all, of course, was the one that's voiced the most intolance and grumbles the most about obese kids. When I was a kid, my friends and I didn't work out or get all much exercise compared to today. Very few tummies were taut. There were exercise programs, but they were ill-considered; the running program was so severe few could handle it. Plus, I and many other kids had limited activities because of asthma problems we now have good, cheap drugs for. The first stage was broad exercise programs that really work. That's huge. I see plenty of non-thin kids, but few with flabby tummies. And I think it's staying fit that's the big difference-maker for health, more than not weighing much or being fashionably thin. Today, I'm seeing a higher and higher percentage of kids clearly into serious exercise, and seriously muscled in a way that was very rare when I was a kid. There is a some widely-circulated evidence that obesity is getting worse. The statement is that obesity levels are higher today than in the '70s. But the test they use to decide who's obese has changed rather decidedly since then. Therefore, this fails as evidence. It disturbs me that big groups like the WHO, who have tons of evidentially trained people, have failed to notice that detail. Oh, and let's face it, the evidence that HFCS is contributing noticeably to obesity isn't even close to there yet. You need to show actual results, not just potential mechanisms. Me? Yeah, I hate HFCS, too, but let's be honest on what this is about. Most HFCS hatred is actually because we wish for better, oh yeah, better cookies and soda. That'll help reduce obesity so much. Hmm. And the correct target of that hatred should be Congress and ADM, for subsidizing corn and lobbying for the subsidies, respectively. Note that Congress, unlike greed, can be lobbied (tell 'em you want your sugar cookies made of sugar!). Appropriate societal action on obesity is to warn people of the medical dangers, especially people with conditions truly statistically linked to obesity (not just by fashion). Action and statements beyond that amount to intolerance just as bad as any other kind that falls short of shooting people. And I have a message for all those anti-obese out there. I accuse you of having fun telling all us fatties how bad we are. You know that's not allowed! Disclaimer: I'm very nearly obese under official standards, since I have a stocky frame, and spend alot of time biking. Posted by Jon Kay at December 31, 2006 04:47 PMComments
While I don't disagree with you outright, I think it's important to consider what is happening with the current crop of kids - the playstation generation, perhaps. I'm talking about the kids who spend way too much time in front of the television playing games and snacking on basically unhealthy foods like chips and candy. They are the ones the AMA is most worried about. Posted by: Heather at December 31, 2006 06:46 PMI'm with Heather. It seems on one side we have the super-skinny or just the well-muscled health fanatics. On the other hand, especially looking at the 12-13 year olds, I see a bunch of really, really heavy kids. My own brother went from skinny to hefty shortly after the folks got him a Game Boy. The pediatrician has basically said he wants him to come back in a year weighing the same as he does now. And there are a lot of heavy adults, too. Go into any Walmart to see. What I think we all miss out on, especially the kids, is being active without "exercising". If kids aren't actually involved in organized sports, what exercise do they get these days? In my very old-fashioned neighborhood, I still see a lot of kids just riding their bikes around, but in a lot of other parts of town, that just doesn't happen. Of course, that's all anecdotal evidence on my part. I certainly agree that statistics on matters like this are often overblown, and should be analyzed very skeptically. Posted by: PatHMV at December 31, 2006 07:50 PMWell, part of it is that parents are more protective these days (and let's face it, they have more things to be afraid of). Back when I was a kid, there were summer days when we were let out the door in the morning and didn't come back until the streetlights came on. I rode my bike to school and back most of the time, and usually walked the rest (mostly because I was terrified of the bus, but that's another story. ;-) Nowadays, most parents would rather have their kids inside with their Gameboys and their computers than let them wander around the neighborhood, and that affects some kids more than others. My niece is a video game freak and she's thin as a rail. (Of course, that may be due to family genes more than anything else. ;-) Posted by: Blue Jean at December 31, 2006 09:04 PMFor those few of us with memories that stretch that far, in the early 1960s there was a great stir because of how poor the fitness of children was. Complaints from the military about how they were having to work harder to get recruits fit enough to make it thru basic training. Etc. So just possibly what we are seeing is something related to the fact that pretty much every generation feels like the morals of "youth today" are lacking. Sexually suggestive dancing, drug use, you name it -- it's all bad . . . compared to what you think you remember. BUT most people remember their own youth thru rose-tinted glasses -- so what they see is cause for alarm compared to what they think they remember. Compared to reality, perhaps not nearly so much so. Posted by: wj at December 31, 2006 10:01 PMHeh...back in my day, we only had three channels, four if you count PBS, which we didn't...and we didn't have no remote control dohickies...nope, we had to walk to change the channel! Through the snow! Uphill both ways! With the dust blowing in our eyes! Yeah, back in the 60's they were worried that kids weren't getting enough nutrition, so they instituted lunch programs, special breakfast programs, etc. Now that high frucose corn syrup's been added to anything and everything, kids are getting plenty of calories, but still not enough nutrition, YMMV. Posted by: Blue Jean at December 31, 2006 11:15 PMOh, no, Jean... now you've done it... Tully's going to be along soon to tell us how rough HE had it back in the REALLY old days... ;-) Posted by: PatHMV at January 1, 2007 03:25 AMUh oh! You're right, Pat, but if we're really good, maybe Tully will tell us how his generation kept in shape by playing "Dodge The Dinosaur". ;-) Posted by: Blue Jean at January 1, 2007 09:21 AMHEY! I'm not THAT old! (It was cave bears and sabretooths.) More seriously, what Jean said. When I was a kid our parents used to practically kick us out of the house to go do things outside. From the stats it's NOT that much more dangerous for kids today, at least not in the 'burbs and rurals, what's changed is the parental perception of how dangerous it really is. Fear factor. Yard work wasn't done by a service--the neighborhood kids WERE the lawn service! Hell, 16-year-olds could (and did) work on construction sites and in garages. Try getting that past your insurer these days. The number of two-working-parent households is greater as well, meaning less chance of a parent at home full-time to be annoyed enough to tell the kids to go outside and play. There were only a few channels of TV to veg in front of and daytime TV was soaps, no cable cartoon channels. No video games! (When I was a boy our Nintendo/was carved from an old apple tree/and we used garden hose to connect it/to our steam-powered color TV...) From the nutrition side it's also completely true that what were treats in my childhood (sodas and candy) are now daily staples for many, and the fat content of the American diet has increased, with junk food playing a much bigger role. In WW2 fats and sugars were rationed in both the US and UK, and they raised one of the healthiest generations of kids ever seen. Posted by: Tully at January 1, 2007 11:34 AMJon; A disturbing number of people seem obsessed with obesity, saying things are just getting worse and worse, and that our kids are all getting fatter and fatter. In the US, this idea seems particularly prevalent in baby boomers living around LA, though it continues to be adopted by too many people globally and in every generation. It's an excuse for telling other people how to run their lives, after all, and that sort of thing is never unpopular.I'm going to have to disagree with you on this one. While health statements about obesity ALWAYS get mixed up with societal attitudes about "beauty" and "acceptable behavior" (not to mention "style" and "intelliegience"), obesity does have signficant longterm health consequences and it is getting more prevalent in the US. This page from the CDC is a nice takeoff point for epidemiologic inf0rmation regarding obesity. As a full time Medical Director at a large health insurance company I can emphatically tell you we will be spending A LOT more money on the long term effects of obesity. Yes, the BMI was not used twenty years ago to gage obesity. However, it was done to standardize the term "obese". I would suggest that what the major public health officials have used as a BMI "cutoff" for obesity is no more stringent than previous measures. And the meassage for everyone, if your BMI is 27 or greater (and there are multiple websites out there to figure yours out) you have greater health risks because of it. . . . and it is getting more prevalent in the US. This page from the CDC is a nice takeoff point for epidemiologic information regarding obesity. . . . I would suggest that what the major public health officials have used as a BMI "cutoff" for obesity is no more stringent than previous measures. OK, well, that CDC page SAYS that obesity is getting worse, but its supporting numbers, from 5 and 10 years ago - 2001 and 1996, have exactly the same problem as the other supporting numbers I criticized. Haven't the standards for determining obesity changed in both '98 and '04? Doesn't these numbers incomparable as well? Shouldn't they know better than to put these numbers together in a table without a big, obvious asterisk? And, yes, this is a question of "strictly increasing stringency", as the BMI thresholds appear to have simply gone down. Meanwhile, each set of comparable stats (that is, within each year shown), in the age breakdowns, consistently show the picture I've seen with my eyes - lower and lower obesity levels with more recent generations, spiking with baby boomers. When Leno does his bits about fat kids, wher're the bit about HIS buddies' lardasses! It may be that real BMIs and/or real belly softnesses are advancing, but we can't tell that from any numbers I see referenced by that CDC page. And their statement of 30% obesity for the US doesn't match the breakdowns page. Adult Obesity figures of 23.2% are given in the actual data page. Oops! I must say, CDC seems less than trustworthy on this issue. It'd help if the errors weren't so uniformly toward the anti-obesity side. And I do seem to recall being told by a pediatrician or doctor, long ago, that one big reason the BMI-based standards were adopted was make them in effect stricter. Isn't obesity just about the only demographic trend that isn't going to exacerbate the looming social security funding gap? Is it really the end of the world if some folks, myself included, voluntarily make some poor health choices? Do we really want to spend precious tax dollars nagging people to stop eating Cheetos and swilling mountain dew? Or do we want to try to tax them into compliance? By all means, let parent worry, and let them parent. And when those kids become adults, let them make choices. What is the government's track record in playing parent, whether to children or to adults? Posted by: bk at January 2, 2007 10:01 AMLOL, Tully. No wonder you've stayed in such great shape. Those sabre-tooth tigers are mean! ;-) Yeah, I remember when there was nothing on in the daytime but soap operas and game shows. There's a measure of maturity for you; when you're a kid, the soaps are just boring videotapes of over dressed people talking in dimly lit rooms. When you hit puberty, it's amazing how interesting they become. But seriously, folks, it's not so much a matter of rationing fats and sugars (which would never be accepted, though it's a good idea) as much as encouraging excercise and good food choices. It used to be that if you didn't want to eat what the cafeteria sold, your parent (or you) made your lunch. I spent fifth and sixth grade on peanut butter sandwiches (which isn't as orthorexic as it sounds.) Nowadays, parents shove a five dollar bill in the kid's hand and say "Buy your lunch." It isn't surprising that the kid has chips and soda for lunch (thanks to the school vending machines which supply nothing else) and then goes straight back to class. More and more schools are cutting down on recess too, which takes away needed time to blow off steam and build up your muscles. Better stop now before I start remeniscing about how much my older brother loved Zork... Posted by: Blue Jean at January 4, 2007 01:55 PM |
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