Have a Cookie
Study finds government overstated danger of obesity
By a factor of fourteen. That’s a lot of wrong. (This assumes they haven’t goofed it yet again.)
Moral: Just because the government tells you something doesn’t mean it’s true. Not that they care:
CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding said because of the uncertainty in calculating the health effects of being overweight, the CDC is not going to use the brand-new figure of 25,814 in its public awareness campaigns and is not going to scale back its fight against obesity.
“There’s absolutely no question that obesity is a major public health concern of this country,” she said. Gerberding said the CDC will work to improve methods for calculating the consequences of obesity.
Which is a bit hard to square with an earlier passage in the same report:
The new analysis found that obesity — being extremely overweight — is indisputably lethal. But like several recent smaller studies, it found that people who are modestly overweight actually have a lower risk of death than those of normal weight.
One would think the CDC would trouble to modify its campaign to distinguish obesity from mere heaviness – even worry that a secondary effect of its anti-obesity campaign might be to discourage Americans from becoming pleasantly (and healthily) plump.
Me, I’m still exercising, and still hope to get below 170 again before summer is out.
Comment by Avram —
April 19, 2005 @ 10:53 pm
I see that the study was “an analysis of mortality rates and body-mass index”, which (I think) means that “modestly overweight” doesn’t distinguish between people packing a few extra pounds of fat and those with that same few extra pounds of muscle.
Comment by steve duncan —
April 19, 2005 @ 11:50 pm
We’ve all been regaled with stories of people that smoked 3 packs a day and drank whiskey like it was water and lived to be 102 years old. Now this admission of error comes out and the obese will latch onto it like manna from heaven. Down to the buffet we go, calories be damned, Uncle Sam says I’m a healthy lil’ piggy and I’ll outlive those snotty vegan joggers yet.
Comment by Jim Henley —
April 20, 2005 @ 5:59 am
Avram: I take your point, but I think there are few enough Americans for whom muscle mass is what puts them over the normal line that that can’t be the entire effect. Hm, maybe having a few extra pounds means those people are more likely to survive periods of food shortage! No? Hm. Back to the drawing board.
.
steve, yes. Makes you wish the CDC and “public health” advocacy organizations hadn’t ridden the early, exaggerated data so hard. Their credibility might have been useful when it cam etime to make the fallback point that obesity itself is still a dangerous health condition.
Comment by Bill Sherman —
April 20, 2005 @ 7:27 am
The sentence that jumps out at me in this story is the indirect quote that goes: “Also, Americans classified as overweight are eating better, exercising more and managing their blood pressure better than they used to” Which somewhat refutes Steve D.’s easy stereotype and brings up the question raised by writers like Paul Campos as to whether the greater medical issue is obesity per se – or personal patterns of eating and exercise. (In other words: keep up that exercise regimen, Jim!)
Comment by Jeremy Osner —
April 20, 2005 @ 9:26 am
My own take on this (and I will freely admit it is a pretty juvenile and unserious on) has always been, who cares about an increased risk of mortality? Except insofar as that data point is a proxy for bad health among the living, it is totally meaningless to me. I don’t want to be obese because it is uncomfortable — and that is why I rely on my own judgement to determine whether I am overweight or not, instead of on whether I measure up to objective standards of body mass. (Currently, and for the past two years, yes a bit overweight. But in the past few months I have been losing some weight and may soon see the lower side of 180.) [end rant]
Pingback by Ramble On. » Dirty Germs. —
April 20, 2005 @ 4:00 pm
[...] pid News — Court @ 5:49 pm
Most have already jumped on The Centers for Disease Control’s big mistake and ne [...]
Comment by jlw —
April 20, 2005 @ 4:03 pm
Cheap point #1: Government study that contradicts earlier government study is a sign of government fallibility? If the government study contradicted a private sector study, I don’t think anyone would be falling over themselves to congratulate the government.
.
Cheap point #2: Two studies disagree–which one do you believe? I suppose the one that confirms one’s own lifestyle. Personally, one study, no matter how rigorous, is not enough to make me feel smug about my BMI of 27.
.
Cheap point #3: Even if this new study turns out to be wrong, it will be the one that those who struggle with their weight remember. “What’s a few extra pounds? It’s healthy.” And people will keep believing this even after they’ve blown through the other end of overweight. And even if this study is right, it’s being oddly reported. Shouldn’t the take-home idea be that the definition of “healthy/normal” is actually broader–no, larger–no, wider–um, whatever, than has been previously thought?
Comment by John Emerson —
April 20, 2005 @ 10:09 pm
oy, if I believed the story I’d feel great! I’m at the overweight-obese border, which is apparently almost where I want to be!
The idea that people normal-weight people die sooner needs some tweaking, I think. It’s not immediately persuasive.
I just have to remember to drink a few beers a day now, and I’m home free.
Oh, and eat lots of cabbages too.
Comment by m. stanley —
April 21, 2005 @ 10:41 am
It’s very hard to get at the health effects of being mildly overweight in a population study, because so many deadly diseases have weight loss as their first symptom (e.g. cancer, but also lots more). I would want to look very carefully at the study before I drew any conclusions.
Comment by matthew hogan —
April 22, 2005 @ 1:17 am
“Study finds government overstated danger of obesity”
Pfaww!! Government obesity is a problem that can never be overstated.