Gaining On the US: Most Europeans To Be Overweight By 2030

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.""

Comments

As they say:

[Zanadou]

"If you can't eat 'em - join 'em"

Re:As they say:

[PolygamousRanchKid]

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."

Re:Sugar

[marcello_dl]

> How many overweight people do you know that cycle regularly?

I only know logrotate, you insensitive clod.

BMI is 2d but people are 3d

[pijokela]

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.

Re:BMI is 2d but people are 3d

[KozmoStevnNaut]

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 at the cost of my current good health.

Re:BMI is 2d but people are 3d

[Anonymous Coward]

BMI is a [poor] approximation of body fat percentage (that article lists a few ways to measure it; I know people with eletronic scales that use bioelectrical impedance analysis when you step on them barefoot). Wikipedia has a section on it in the BMI article including a scatterplot of BMI vs. body fat % I hadn't seen before. Basically, BMI is used because it is much easier to measure than body fat %, but it does not tell the whole story. Importantly, BMI is far more meaningful for a population than for an individual because the error cancels out to some extent.

Re:BMI is 2d but people are 3d

[wiredlogic]

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.

Re:BMI is 2d but people are 3d

[kheldan]

Allow me to give you another perspective on why the BMI tables, even recently updated, are stupid and need to be deprecated/abolished/destroyed/ignored: They're based on statistical averages, whereas human beings are most certainly not statistically average. Even skin-caliper testing, administered by an experienced person, is more accurate at determining body composition than BMI tables are. Hydrostatic weighing is very accurate, but only if your bone density is either 'statistically average', or you know what your bone density is so the calculations used can compensate. The real 'Gold Standard' is a DEXA scan, which is primarily used for bone densitometry, but is also highly accurate for determining body composition.

Re:BMI is 2d but people are 3d

[stenvar]

There is a "new BMI formula" here:

http://people.maths.ox.ac.uk/t...

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.

"Down with fat-shaming!"

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:"Down with fat-shaming!"

[dejanc]

When I was visiting my parents once, after getting out of shower all wet and with a towel on, I got an epic line from my father: "Go back to the bathroom, put on some clothes, and lose 10 kilos, before you enter the living room".

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.

Re:"Down with fat-shaming!"

[AthanasiusKircher]

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

Re:"Down with fat-shaming!"

[Anubis IV]

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 identify them with healthy, fit people or have them taking up a reasonable amount of time on a piece of exercise equipment that a "normal" person wants to use at the gym, and you'll see that a good number of folks will do everything in their power to make sure that the overweight person doesn't feel welcome.

It's a real tragedy, since it means that overweight people who simply want to exercise either have to put up with what effectively amounts to bullying from adults, or they need to make do with fewer or more expensive resources (e.g. purchasing exercise equipment for home).

So, while I'm all for fat-shaming, including policies that make it more costly to those people, I think we also need to be doing everything in our power to be encouraging overweight people who show up at the gym or who we see exercising around town. It's already MUCH harder for them to put themselves out there than it is for the perfectly fit person to be doing so, and we don't need people dumping on them while they're trying to dig themselves out of that hole.

Disclaimer: I'm obese.

For the lazy, a metric/imperial BMI calculator..

[sjwt]

http://www.heartfoundation.org...

Re:Sugar

[gnupun]

You think they didn't have sugar, fatty foods and exercising decades ago? However, only a small percentage of people in the 70s and 80s were overweight. In today's age, if you aren't fat, there's still a chance your face seems swollen. Barring some health conscious people, actors, models and athletes, almost everyone seem swollen/fat somewhere. Therefore, I think the modern processed foods sold in stores and restaurants is the culprit. These foods might contain chemicals (perhaps some preservative) that fatten people as a side effect.

Re:Sugar

[ledow]

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.

Re:Agricultural subsidies is a big part of it.

[Carewolf]

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.

health advice is 30-60 mins exercise per day

[SkunkPussy]

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.

Re:Sugar

[rogoshen1]

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.

Re:Sugar

[flyneye]

240 lb. is the NEW thin...

Re:Sugar

[Vermonter]

Consuming sugar doesn't bother me. What does bother me is consuming all the preservatives in out food, and all the unnatural sweeteners that are included. Although I am not a scientist, I wonder if high fructose corn syrup, calorie free sweeteners, and to a lesser extend, regular corn syrup, are far worse for us than the FDA understands yet. Also, try going 2 weeks without any sugar except for naturally occurring sugars in fruits and the like... you'll get your actual sense of sweetness back. I can no longer drink sugary soda (I usually drink seltzer, and occasionally I drink coke watered down with seltzer to 1/5 the concentration). I can't eat milk chocolate or most candy. They all taste disgustingly sweet to me.

Not the way we have carbs now

[dutchwhizzman]

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.

Re:Not the way we have carbs now

[matbury]

Sorry, diet is a complicated topic, so this is going to be long...

Yes, we have different carbs now. One of the most significant features of the modern diet is how we mill flour; with steel milling machines which produce finer, more doughy flour than traditional stone mills. This pushes the glycemic index (the speed at which carbs get digested into sugars and absorbed into our bloodstreams) of most bread and baked good above that of regular table sugar (sucrose).

No, fat increases obesity too. Fat contains more available calories per gramme than sugar.

Another problem is the reduced amounts of protein in modern foods. We have to eat a lot more food, i.e. we eat, get full, but get hungry again sooner, because our bodies aren't getting the protein we need. This could also explain the massive increase in meat consumption in order to compensate. However, large amounts of protein in one sitting can't compensate for an overall lack of protein. We need to eat protein with every meal/snack.

And no, you can't live without carbohydrates, you'd die of starvation. Our brains can only metabolise carbs, they cannot break down fats and proteins to use for energy like other parts of our bodies. If we don't get enough carbs in our diets, our brains start to "digest themselves" producing ketones which make your breath smell of pears. It also provokes feelings of depression and lethargy. And we've all hear of low blood sugar and how it impairs our ability to think and work.

If you don't want to get obese, don't go on calorie control diets; they just don't work and human will power isn't enough in "normal" people. If you have an eating disorder, on the other hand, yes, it'll work but you'll make yourself ill at the same time. Also, most raw vegetables have very little nutritional value; they need to be cooked (lightly) to release their nutrients and make them available to our digestive systems. The most effective approach is to cut out processed foods from your diet, although that's easier said than done; millions of years of evolution has predisposed us to select sugary, salty, fatty foods over healthier options, and most people go through a certain degree of "withdrawal" when they change their dietary habits, e.g. healthy food is less appetising, and cravings for "something else."

The quality of our carb intake makes a huge difference. Many whole grains (but not all, check them on glycemic index/load tables) are "slow release" and so keep your bood sugar at a fairly stable, moderate level for longer, so you feel the need to eat less frequently, e.g. basmati rice, oats (porridge is great for breakfast), and barley (great in soups). Steer well clear of most breakfast cereals of the whether they have sugar added or not; the grains are usually processed in ways that make them worse than sugar, e.g. puffed wheat or steamed and rolled corn.

A rule of thumb that seems to work well in most cases is, "Eat more plants, eat more non-meat protein, eat higher quality carbs."

If you like an emotional/visual approach, this website's fun: http://www.sugarstacks.com/
 
If you want to know more about carbs from a research evidence based perspective, "The New Glucose Revolution" is a good book. However, beware of caveats such a fructose being low on the glycemic index - It's just as bad, if not worse than sucrose, as has been revealed recently in the media. In large amounts, it also overstresses your liver.

Happy and healthy eating!

Re:Not the way we have carbs now

[Kjella]

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 you'll be sleeping through the effect. Go to bed on a light stomach, wake with a big hunger and eat a big breakfast instead. Another big trick is filler food, food that has extremely low calorie density like broccoli or cauliflower which gives your stomach something to work on while barely containing any energy. And don't eat calories you don't need to, even if they're tasty. It's so easy to go nuts there...

Re:Not the way we have carbs now

[lgw]

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

[stenvar]

And no, you can't live without carbohydrates, you'd die of starvation. ... If we don't get enough carbs in our diets, our brains start to "digest themselves" producing ketones which make your breath smell of pears.

Complete nonsense. Ketone bodies are produced from fat in the liver:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K...

You really don't need carbs in your diet.

Re:Not the way we have carbs now

[Rich0]

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:BMI is a lie!

[Kjella]

Bah, 99.9% of the people who complain that their BMI is high because of muscles don't have that much muscles. This 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.

Pretty logical

[nurb432]

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.

Re:BMI is a lie!

[teg]

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.

an effective solution

[Max_W]

Closing cities to all automobile traffic. This is it.

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.

Re:an effective solution

[Nemosoft Unv.]

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, since a) the riders don't exercise and b) most scooters are 2-stroke engines, usually badly maintained so they pollute enormously.

Last week there was an item on the news that the sales of these scooters are rising steadily, especially under young people. So, people are getting used to a sedentary lifestyle earlier, and thus get fatter earlier and quicker.

Re:an effective solution

[Lawrence_Bird]

Thank you commrade Max for your suggestions on how to control other people's lives.

Re:Send us a postcard from Stockholm.

[AthanasiusKircher]

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 even more accurate.

(By the way, statutes are a poor example. Large human figures by great artists often have exaggerated (larger than life) features on the top, since they are often viewed from below. A good sculptor understands the importance of distance in making things appear "too small," and will often overcompensate in various ways for large statutes, making them disproportionate with actual humans.)

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.

The sarcasm is so heavy here that it's difficult to know what you're saying.

Nonetheless, (3) the formula was an empirically derived approximation, but for populations, not individuals, and (4) the person who designed it may have been "math-smart," but it was made up in an era long before pocket calculators, and an exponent of 2.3 or something would have made things more complicated to calculate than simply squaring a number; the approximation of 2 worked well with other assumptions of the number. Furthermore, when it was made up, it was understood to apply to population statistics, so the people who were "math-dumb" were those in the medical profession who started applying it to individuals in the last 40 years, not the demographers who designed it 200 years ago.

The big problem with coming up with a measure for the population at large (no pun intended) is that men and women have very different body shapes, and women tend to have higher bodyfat percentages when they are healthy. But women are also shorter. Therefore, if you want ONE NUMBER to describe both sexes, you necessarily must design a measure that will allow short people to be fatter (but still "normal"), while tall people must have lower bodyfat than average to be "normal." Thus, BMI works great as an approximation for estimating the size of the population in general, but it is terrible for individuals. For short men and tall women it was designed to be terrible. For really short people, you basically have to be obese to be "normal" and for really tall people, you basically have to be emaciated.

Numerous subsequent medical studies have shown that any number of simple alternative measurements have higher correlations with actual adiposity and actual disease or mortality. For example, simply measuring a man's waist without taking anything else into account (no height, weight, body shape or anything) is a better predictor than BMI. It's still not great, but it's better than BMI.

You can live in denial and go on insulting people for being ignorant, but you're just hiding your own. BMI is a TERRIBLE measure of adiposity and propensity for disease -- it's explcitily designed to be for maybe 1/3 of the population or more.

Re:Sugar

[Vitriol Angst]

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:Send us a postcard from Stockholm.

[epine]

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.

For really short people, you basically have to be obese to be "normal" and for really tall people, you basically have to be emaciated.

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. 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:Sugar

[kheldan]

I'm not European, I'm American (but we're goddamn fat here so it's still relevant to this discussion). I'm almost 50 years old, consume anywhere from 2500 to 4000 calories a day (depending on the day), and I have 13% bodyfat. How? Speaking of cycling: I've been training and racing road races for the last 5 years, and burning off 1000kcal riding my bike is trivial to me. On the weekly 'long endurance ride' I may burn as much as 3000kcal. The upshot of this: Most people sit on their butts all day for their jobs, and go home at night complaining about 'being tired' and sit some more, in front of the TV, eating excessive amounts of dinner. What's worse is, according to my own non-scientific observations, most people eat too much fat and too much carbohydrate, and not enough protein. This observation is somewhat backed up by another news story (http://science.slashdot.org/story/14/04/29/0338249/you-are-what-youre-tricked-into-eating) that says the American food industry produces processed foods that mimick having protein in them, but are just full of fat and carbs instead, making the problem worse. My personal opinion is that substances like HFCS make the problem worse, because it's so concentrated, and that artificial sweeteners, ironically enough, also contribute to the problem because they encourage people to keep craving sweet things instead of changing their lifestyle/eating habits away from sweetened things. Also, again, in my personal opinion, artificial sweeteners are additionally causing harm to people's health in the long term that isn't being detected yet because it takes years and years for it to happen. Final note on artificial sweeteners: Like me, some people who ingest sucralose become ravenously hungry from it, which can't be a good thing (when it happened to me, I literally couldn't eat enough to make that 'artificial' hunger leave me alone. I can't be the only one that happened to!).

Re:Sugar

[David_Hart]

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...

Re:Sugar

[kheldan]

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.

Re:BMI is a lie!

[AthanasiusKircher]

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 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 "pretty good indicator" to you?

Now, most of the error here is actually underreporting obesity. So, you might say, let's decrease the threshold. But again, from the study: "Decreasing the BMI cut-off for obesity to >= 25 kg/m2 for instance, will still result in misclassifying as obese 38% of men and 16% of women."

In other words, if we lower the BMI threshold enough to capture more than 90% of obese people, we end up misdiagnosing about 1/3 of them as obese. The article summarizes these problems:

The implications of mislabeling patients are not trivial. By using BMI as a marker of obesity, we misclassify >= 50% of patients with excess body fat as being normal or just overweight and we miss the opportunity to intervene and reduce health risk in such individuals. Conversely, BMI may lead to misclassification of persons with normal levels of fat as being overweight...

In other words, BMI is a TERRIBLE indicator of actual obesity. It ends up massively underreporting actual obesity, but it misclassifies a similarly large number as "overweight" even when those pounds represent extra muscle mass or other things unlikely to lead to health problems.

Seriously. People need to stop saying "Yeah, BMI's okay for most people." It is NOT okay. We need to stop using it, if we want to be accurate in classifying obesity.

Re:Sugar

[dryeo]

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 any other medical advance, are also causing many problems from unneeded and over usage. Not only do they wipe out our gut flora but the bacteria that they kill are evolving to make antibiotics useless.

Perception of Normal

[SlurpingGreen]

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

[Neil Boekend]

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.