Great article about the "obesity epidemic"

[firecat]

And not only because it uses my favorite example of confusing correlation with causation:

Killing Turkeys Causes Winter by Sandy Szwarc

(Those of you participating in the current LJ fat flame war, feel free to use this as ammo.)

Comments

Re: premise

[sistercoyote.livejournal.com]

I think you'd need to prove that North Americans actually weigh more now.

For one thing, they've lowered the numbers for "obesity" several times in the interim; that 50% of Americans who are now considered obese would most likely not have been so considered in the 1970s.

I don't have the citation with me at work, sorry. I'm actually not sure it's at home - it might be in my folks' home in a box. I'll check.

premise

[tedesson.livejournal.com]

According to this:

http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/72/5/1074/T3

a greater percentage of North American adults are fat. Notice this study uses a consistent bme>30 measure, not a 'flexible definition' of obesity. So, in 1960 43% of US adults aged 20-74 had bme>30, in 1984-1994, it's 54%.

This table does not indicate if bme's < 30 increased proportionately.

The trend from 1960-1980 was slight, with the bme>30 percentages going from 43% to 46%. The 1984-1994 number was twice the rate with an increase of 8% over the 10 years, compared to 3 percent over the previous 20 years.