Poor Diet Is a Factor In One In Five Deaths, Global Disease Study Reveals (theguardian.com)

schwit1 shares a report from The Guardian: Millions of people are eating the wrong sorts of food for good health. Eating a diet that is low in whole grains, fruit, nuts and seeds and fish oils and high in salt raises the risk of an early death, according to the huge and ongoing study Global Burden of Disease. The study, based at the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, compiles data from every country in the world and makes informed estimates where there are gaps. Five papers on life expectancy and the causes and risk factors of death and ill health have been published by the Lancet medical journal. Diet is the second highest risk factor for early death after smoking. Other high risks are high blood glucose which can lead to diabetes, high blood pressure, high body mass index (BMI) which is a measure of obesity, and high total cholesterol. All of these can be related to eating the wrong foods, although there are also other causes.

Comments

Woo!

[fluffernutter]

So I can eat food that tastes good all my life and I only have a one in five chance of it being a factor? Here's the rolling the dice!

Nature is confused

[burtosis]

3.1 billion years of evolution went by with the vast majority of our ancestors endlessly starving. Most of our ancestors time was spent trying to gather what meager food they could, often dying of hunger when slightly injured, sick, old or just unlucky. Now all of a sudden nearly all humans have endless amounts of cheap, effortless, concentrated food available 24-7-365.25. Now the problem is food is just too damn easy to eat - I'll take that over dying of starvation any day.

High BMI is a Red Herring

[pubwvj]

"high body mass index (BMI)"

High BMI is a red herring. BMI is based on a sedentary lifestyle like office workers have. Those of us who are in physically demanding jobs very often have high BMIs without being obese because we have more muscle, denser bones and lower body fat levels. My son and I farm and do butchery. we have very high BMIs but it is muscle that is necessary for our work. Same goes for athletes who tend to score high on the BMI but again it is muscle, not fat. The BMI system needs to be redone to account for the fact that not everyone is a sedentary office worker. Our life insurance company takes this into account - they do a measure of hips, belly and chest which corrects for the errors on BMI.

Re:High BMI is a Red Herring

[blindseer]

High BMI is a red herring

No, it's an indicator. It's a means to determining if there is a need for further investigation of health problems. People with a high or low BMI will likely need an additional check for body fat. There are a number of means to double check this, buoyancy, skin pinch, waist to hip ratio, likely more.

I don't believe that BMI needs to be redone, just that it needs to be taken with the knowledge that it is an incomplete indicator of health. As you stated for your life insurance the BMI was taken along with waist, hip, and chest measurements. That's likely to cover all but the rarest of cases as an indicator of health.

I believe the BMI has been a victim of it's own success. It works well so often to indicate that a person is over or under healthy weight that people have put more faith in it than it deserves. I guess that it's pretty rare for people to have a "bad" BMI and good health, neglecting other indicators of good health. Just like it is possible but rare for people to have a "good" BMI and poor health, neglecting other indicators of poor health.

From what I understand the combination of BMI with waist to hip ratios covers probably an additional 9% on top of the 90% that BMI alone does not cover. The last 1% will just have to get a note from a physician on their health and life insurance policies.