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I feel like you're taking a grain of truth way too far. The diet-health connection is subtle and poorly understood, but being morbidly obese or eating a really unvaried, processed diet are definitely known to cause harm.
BMI is shitty because it's too coarse a measure at the individual level. Unfortunately a volumetric scan to measure internal visceral fat just isn't as convenient.
Having a very high weight is known to cause harm, but so is having a low weight, and so is skydiving. Dieting is more harmful to 90% of us than our waistline is, and yet we approve of dieting and refer to fat people as an epidemic.
Yes, because there's a sudden abundance of overweight people, not underweight people. Epidemic refers to any sudden population increase of a health problem. I don't think public health people mean it to be stigmitising.
Dieting is dumb though, you're right about that. At least locally the authorities try to be clear that you've got to make a lasting lifestyle change.
There’s no real evidence that there are significant average weight differences between today and 70 years ago. Differences in the proportion of the population of “overweight” people is primarily due to changing the definition of what constitutes overweight.
And being fat isn’t a “disease”, any more than having big feet is.
I'm guessing you'll ignore any evidence I provide based on BMI, which is the only useful form of weight information available at the historical population level (given that it's based on weight and height, which has also changed)?
Yes, because BMI is complete junk science. The BMI categories have been changed several times since it was created. It was also devised to work exclusively for white european men. It’s totally worthless for almost every purpose for which it is used.
Well then, congratulations, you've arrived at a stance you can never be argued out of regardless of it's truth.
Sure I can - find actual average weight, in lbs. of americans in the 1970s and compare them to today. It’s actually pretty easy to change my mind.
The problem is that you can’t find that evidence, because it doesn’t exist, because the studies we have show that average weight hasn’t changed very much.
You’re the person here who is zealously refusing to change their position based on facts, not me - my views are shaped on years of research and review of the scientific literature. Your views are based on your lifetime of being exposed to a media narrative based on pseudoscience. designed to push an ideological goal.
Taller people are heavier. If you're not adjusting for that your data will be funny. Guess what, if you adjust for that using the square of height you've invented raw BMI. The categories are probably arbitrary, but you don't need them, and a different exponent will generally show the same trajectory if by different magnitudes.
Although come to think of it, the population got taller, so the trend would be even stronger if we weren't factoring that out.
I'm willing to change my mind too, and I do indeed have a lifetime of exposure to media and experts behind this, although I don't believe in conspiracy theories which seems to be what you're suggesting by a certain ideology being pushed.
Here's the first paper that comes up, using BMI, about the exact breakdown of how it increased: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(16)30054-X/fulltext
That’s a fun paper, because they basically find no actual negative health effect, then just ignore that fact and continue as if they did.
All the study shows is that as people get richer they can overcome being underweight, which is an incredibly good thing - it reduces health risks significantly. Then it goes back to the usual moral panic shit about how that’s actually a bad thing.
Essentially everything you ever heard about weight and fat is ideological, not scientific, in basis. Research consistently finds results that aren’t statistically significant, then just blathers about how that statistically significant result would exist if they could account for x y z. There’s no scientific basis to the claim.
The basics of it are that extremes on either end, of being underweight or very overweight, are health risks. The health risk of being “overweight” are massively overstated, because people like to judge and bully fat people.
I mean, there's also
in the same exact excerpt.
Yes, being poor and starving still sucks. Nobody cares because it happens outside of the magic Western bubble, but that's another issue for another thread.
I think I've proven my point here, so I'll just duck out.
Yeah, because the individual-level studies aren’t worth shit, that’s the point. They’re like the scientific level of analogies. You get these studies that are on like, 15 people or whatever that make some statistically significant finding, then it later turns out that they either very selectively chose their test subjects, the methodology was a complete joke, they p-hacked the findings into worthlessness or all of the above. If the individual level studies scaled up, if they were actually finding something real, they would be reflected in population-level studies. The fact that they aren’t pretty clearly demonstrates that there isn’t a strong correlation.
Low weight is a significant health issue in wealthy countries too. It’s a massive contributor to mortality rates, as much as high adiposity is. But it’s not discussed because it’s less popular to bully people for being skinny as it is to bully people for being fat.
But sure, I’m the one who refuses to change his mind when challenged.