Obesity loses place as second biggest killer of Americans

[T_i_B]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/04/24/wfat24.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/04/24/ixportal.html

A political food fight has broken out in America after obesity was downgraded from the country's biggest killer after smoking to seventh place. Analysis by government scientists shows that far fewer people than thought die from being fat.

Their findings - that 112,000 people are killed by obesity each year, rather than the 400,000 calculated by the US Centre for Disease Control last year - comes as a blow to "nanny state" activists seeking tighter regulation of the food industry and lawyers acting for fat clients.

The figures also suggest that 87,000 lives were saved because people were moderately overweight: mainly older people who were less frail. Only extreme obesity carries a severe death risk.

Radley Balko, who specialises in "nanny culture" at the Washington-based Cato Institute, said that the revised estimate would boost those who thought health and diet were a matter of personal choice, not state regulation. "The 400,000 figure was deeply flawed, but it was used by all sorts of policy people - nutrition activists and politicians - to argue for government intervention," he said.

[Deja Q]

1. Spurious morality, yet again.

Funny how they won't stop offshoring and offpeopling by saying it's a "personal choice" issue.

But that's good for our economy, don'cha know. :-(

[Demit]

2. "Analysis by government scientists"? Take w/large grain of salt here

Last graf of the article (thanks, Daily Telegraph!):

"...Prof Walter Willett, chairman of the department of nutrition at Harvard's School of Public Health, criticised the survey's methodology. "I think the papers are really naive, deeply flawed and seriously misleading. Obesity is a huge problem, it's getting worse fast and there's no turnaround in sight." "

[NorthernSpy]

3. the Margarine Man strikes again...

"...Prof Walter Willett, chairman of the department of nutrition at Harvard's School of Public Health, criticised the survey's methodology. "I think the papers are really naive, deeply flawed and seriously misleading. Obesity is a huge problem, it's getting worse fast and there's no turnaround in sight."

Ah, Willet! He's the guy who promoted margarine as a substitute for good old-fashioned butter -- whose saturated fat was supposed to kill people dead as doornails. What a shock it must have been for poor Dr. Willet when it came out that the trans- fatty acids created in the hydrogenation process appeared to be far worse for the body than any of the traditional saturated dietary fats.

Doktor Willet is a regular bad-advice machine.

[teryang]

4. Actually it was the pharmaceutical industry that promoted

...the jingo that obesity was a "disease." Oh my, what short memories we have.

In any case, studies do show that obese people tend to have shorter life expectancies. This is why life insurance companies take your weight into consideration when making underwriting decisions. Weight is a risk factor for diabetes type II and cardiovascular conditions.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

5. Define "obese". Life insurance companies use very strict height....

...and weight standards for one purpose only, and that's making more money from the premiums being paid by people THEY declare are "overweight".

What studies are you referring to in your post, and who paid to have them done?

[teryang]

8. Well the pharmaceutical industry used BMI

I can't remember the numbers. I worked on this issue for three years and really concentrated on the epidemiological relationship between diet drugs, heart disease and pulmonary hypertension. I couldn't even cite those studies off hand because I've had scores of other cases to work on since then.

The underlying obesity issue was a secondary theme because the industry used obesity to justify the risks it was taking and at the same time hiding the side effects of their drug. My point was that obesity was sold as a disease process in itself by the industry which it was not. It is a risk factor. A risk factor refers to odds ratios only.

I won't defend the actuaries who support the underwriters for life insurance companies. Historically, my experience with insurance companies has always been adversarial. There could be and probably are disconnects between them and the underlying data, I don't know.

Didn't the framingham data support the notion that obese people had a higher incidence of diabetes (type II) and heart disease? The studies cited by Wyeth (which has changed its name from American Home Products, Inc., to protect the guilty)are all in its 450,000 page submission to the FDA in support of its dexfenfluramine application. Of course the framingham data have been used by different interest groups over the years for different purposes. As you point out, that doesn't mean they are used correctly.

Maybe I could build a case of solid proof (which could take substantial time and money) using pubmed. My boxes of peer reviewed studies and the FDA submission are no longer in my possession. The collection itself is worth well over 100,000 dollars.

Hey if a person is overweight and has a bias about it one way or the other, I could care less. I just wouldn't want to encourage the notion that it wouldn't have any affect on their health because it might.

[mbperrin]

6. Gee, only 300 people a day dropping dead?

No problemo!...and now, for a REAL problem! Couple thousand people died 4 years ago in NYC and Washington...whoaaaa.....kill, kill, kill, spend, spend, spend, steal, steal, steal.........

[librechik]

7. I'm getting suspicious about this furious backpedalling on obesity

could it have anything to do with the fast food and processed food industry? They talk a lot about how the 400,000 figure was used to argue for the government to step in with regulations. Who wants that? Parents whose children are beginning a life of disease and discomfort becasue of their diet? I don't think so.

Don't believe ANYTHING the Bushies say!

[KittyWampus]

9. Yes. The NYTimes Ran An Editorial Last Week About How It's Futile

to change your diet in middle age and start excerizing. All you can ever do is lower the 'probability' of disease due to poor eating and activity habits.

Interestingly after this editorial comes this 'study' that only looks
at a person's weight and when they die and draws profound conclusions from such limited data.

My impression- there's now a PR campaign trying to influence opinion and it may have something to do with culpability of corporations in pushing garbage onto our kids and the populace at large.

Maybe there are some lawsuits against coming down the pike?

[NorthernSpy]

11. um, the Bushies have been totally onboard...

... the whole War on Fat bandwagon.

The 400,000 figure was junk science. Period. Mourn it, and let it go.

What's more, am I really the only person who noticed that the Fat Panic really took off around the time that there finally was a political push to do something for the tens of millions of Americans who have no health insurance? The supposed obesity crisis was very, very convenient for people who love the status quo, because it:

• led people to conclude that any attempt to guarantee healthcare for all would be far too costly even to contemplate; every fat person was simply assumed to be a walking timebomb of obscenely expensive ailments. And with more and more people getting fatter and fatter, "with no end in sight"...
  
  
• undercut the support for universal healthcare by suggesting that the people likely to be uninsured were probably to blame if they got sick. Obesity -- and the lack of health insurance -- are seen to be afflictions of the "lower classes". Plans to extend medical care to those who couldn't afford it were readily portrayed as schemes to force smart, lean, affluent citizens to subsidize the "bad, irresponsible choices" of poorer, fatter people.

What's been rather telling about this whole affair is the outright dismay that has greeted the CDC's new data. I mean, one would think that it would be good news that fat people aren't dropping like flies. Some people actually seem to want to believe that more than half of their fellow citizens are diseased gluttons.

[KittyWampus]

14. "Fat Panic" You Know Eliminating Weight As Something That Needs

medical attention of intervention of SOME kind lets health insurance companies off the hook for rather a lot.

[librechik]

15. very good points, Spy

I'm just sensitive because of a recent health scare. My spider senses are tingling!

[kypper]

10. McDonald's response to Supersize me?

Since it's a government report...
McDonald's Corp., $197K, 86% republican
Partisan Corporate Contributions

[Arugula Latte]

12. I read somewhere that

the average obese person (and I don't remember how they defined obese) has an average of six chronic conditions (such as arthritis, sleep apnea, etc.)

I have only to look at my severely obese friend, who is seemingly always sick with something, to know that obesity is incredibly serious.

I believe the posters here who suspect corporate power at work on backpeddling are definitely on to something.

[KittyWampus]

13. Terminally Ill People Often Have Lost Weight Before Death. This Skews

averages when looking at only two statistics- weight and age of death.

[SoCalDem]

16. The govt was afraid that it would be classified as a "disability" and

real moiney mighgt have to be spent on it (and the people who are obese)..and that some serious consideration would be given to corporate complicity in the obesity "crisis"..can't have that..,

It's all a self-serving "warning"...an "I warned you", so that when people do try to get some relief, thay can be turned away because the government decided they are really OK.