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EDIT: It's working already: his brother Delmon has dropped 29 pounds this winter. The Best Shape etc etc.
no--that would be for Fighting Childhood Ugliness
it's at least as big an epidemic as sex addiction
For those who know something about this topic: Have the parameters of what this chart purports to show changed over the years? I.e., is this chart still measuring the same thing in 2002 as it was in 1971?
how bout people who say "[X] says hi..."
People who say "No love for [X]?" instead of actually thinking of something to say about [X] are banned from BTF from now on.
Polish Sausage Racer says hi.
it's the American go-go-go way of life that promotes obesity and unhealthiness..
everybody should close up shop and school at lunchtime for a home-cooked meal and a siesta.
or promote smoking.
The proper spelling is Moo Vaughn.
I thought those people were justly deprived legal rights and citizenship by the Patriot act.
No, you're thinking of "all Americans".
hell, even stalin gave you a trial before shipping you off to the gulag or shooting you.
You aren't criticizing our Command In Chief during wartime and offering aid and comfort to an enemy who wants to kill us because they hate our freedoms...Are you?
Really, which Stalin is that?
I agree, there is something fishy about the obesity epidemic. It just doesn't wash for me that it's all about "fast food, soft drinks, and TV+video games"
So... by this definition it's impossible for the % of obese children to increase. Typically "95th percentile" means of the CURRENT distribution.
So either the distribution is not (any longer?) normal, or they are using the "95th percentile" from 1980!
I am highly skeptical of BMI as a measure of anything for a given individual, because it assumes an average % body fat. I guess in a nationwide distribution of children it should be OK... unless of course the average % body fat has DECREASED since 1980.
The only other cause I can think of is possibly "food is so cheap/available that fewer kids go hungry"
Could such an obvious data mistake (either one) actually not been caught? It seems unlikely, HOWEVER, I am pretty sure that MDs "believe" that people are too fat and hence even if the evidence was questionable they would continue to socially engineer them towards "healthier lifestyles".
If you look up the Sodium = Blood Pressure (non) link you will see the same pattern.
Now I sound like a liberarian/conspiracy theorist/kook.
Regular exercise at the gym, 3 days a week
Getting on better with your associate employee contemporaries at ease
Eating well, no more microwave dinners and saturated fats
A patient, better driver, a safer car, baby smiling in back seat
Sleeping well, no bad dreams, no paranoia
Careful to all animals, never washing spiders down the plughole
Keep in contact with old friends, enjoy a drink now and then
Favors for favors, fond but not in love
Nothing so ridiculously teenage and desperate, nothing so childish
At a better pace, slower and more calculated, no chance of escape
An empowered and informed member of society...
Now I sound like a liberarian/conspiracy theorist/kook.
just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
Isn't it obvious that there are a lot more overweight people today than in 1971? Does anyone who was around in the 1970s doubt that society has a much larger percentage of overweight and obese people?
People who are suspicious of the sinister public health nanny state Gestapo are capable of doubting literally anything.
Purely anecdotal of course, but I've noticed no change in the past 20+ years or so (I'm 36), and I certainly don't see that some 15% of kids are obese. Of course, my observations are worth precisely nothing.
I don't think that describes Zenbitz.
My observations are worth no more than yours. I am only a few years older than you are and I thought the effect was so obvious no one could doubt it.
Of course I could be suffering from my own confirmation bias.
Both I and my kids went to school in northeast U.S. suburbs, with similar demographics and population.
OTOH, kids' clothes are also tighter than they were in the 70's and early 80's, so their tubbiness is a little more obvious.
Confirming that there are considerably more fat chicks waddling around NYC than there were even 10 years ago.
I can state with a fair degree of confidence that there was only one guy in my high school who met a realistic definition of obese -- though there were a fair number of "fat kids" (most of whom were simply in poor shape rather than being really fat -- and didn't come close to meeting what I think of as obese)
But I can't assume my experience was in any way typical. In fact, if the stats quoted above are a reflection of reality then my experience was not at all typical.
I'm confident that there are way more enormous adults now than in my youth and it seems likely that these people were over-weight as kids but that's just guessing.
Ditto, although I am a couple years older than Ray.
This is where my suspicion starts. "eats crappier" That has no biochemical meaning. I have spent most of my life surrounded by people who think all sorts of crazy things about food and what is good for you/bad for you...
The "crappyness" of food can not defeat basic thermodynamics by more than a few % points.
So, we are left with "people eat more and exercise less". Yeah, sure I guess.
I can tell you also that the medical drones at my HMO constantly tell me not to give my son (he's 5) whole milk or "pure" juice. Really. He's a skinny little bean pole who aerobically exercises more or less constantly. Even while playing video games. Even when WATCHING people play video games.
But all of the obvervations are of course, worthless ancedotes.
But still - if obese is >95 percentile, how could this number increase with time unless it's relative to some standard.
There are a couple of studies out there that show we take in far more calories than we used to, and we get rid of notably fewer due to lifestyle. There's a reason the market for those little personalized scooters is shooting through the roof.
Don't forget all the video games the kids play too!
Well, we've been banning transfats and such for the past few years, have forced restaurants to show calorie information, etc. Here in NYC Starbucks shows calories for every item on their menu -- from drinks to slices of pumpkin bread -- and various restaurants show calorie information, e.g., for a mushroom cheeseburger. Also, public education -- tv ads and such -- has certainly increased, not decreased.
Is this having no effect?
My understanding of the data is that the category of "overweight" is problematic - it's hard to show systematic problems with health or mortality that correlate to "overweight". However, at the next step up, "obese", clear health and mortaility problems arise.
This is really simple data to collect, which has been publicized pretty massively, and I'm surprised people are skeptical of it. It's also easy to google the data. The CDC has a good clearinghouse - here's state-by-state increases in obesity 1985-2008.
Dude, where the heck are you getting that? That is not at all how obesity is measured. If you have a BMI of over 30, you're obese. Boom. Simple as that. A quick googling of "CDC definition of obesity" would have gotten you there.
EDIT: And of course my snark is for naught, as I see obesity is defined differently for children. That'll teach me.
Yeah, I know. So did he. Some people do in fact read. And thus learn ... interesting things about Tim Horton's muffins as a f'rinstance.
Most don't. Or have no idea what the information actually means.
One, "It's good to be full" commercial probably carries as much weight (no joke intended but I'm sticking with this) as all of the caloric info out there.
I thought BMI was next to useless because it doesn't account for muscle. A muscular person can have a high BMI but be completely fit.
Awesome. As an enforcing officer of the sinister public health nanny state Gestapo, I think I've found my new handle.
Not at all. While it's not perfect, BMI correlates pretty highly to body fatness. It's better used for screening and for studies on a population level, though, rather than an as an exact measure of how fat you are. There are better tests for that. BMI is a blunter tool. But cheap to collect!
Class is a factor also. People at the bottom of the income distribution tend to be less educated and eat more unhealthy calories.
It's still a little too early to say for sure, but from what I've seen it doesn't look like posting nutritional information in fast food places has much of an effect on people's food choices, although it does look like some restaurants have changed their menus a bit in response. There are a ton of reasons why that might be. Like DL says, there are probably some class issues going on there, among others.
I heard on the radio yesterday that the calorie total of the average Starbucks order has decreased by 6% since they started posting calorie counts on the menu.
So instead of a 2000 calorie muffin and coffee drink they're down to a 1880 calorie muffin and coffee drink? I suppose it's a start.
I'm not seeing that one needs "education" to understand the concept that eating a lot of crap makes you fat.
And actually the lesson is simpler than that: eating a lot of anything makes you fat.
As for low income, your better argument would be to focus on cost rather than education. But even there, I don't see that crappy foods cost less than healthy foods. At all.
McDonalds? I come from a big family -- ten brothers and sisters. My parents took us there a lot when I was growing up, to save cost. None of us are obese. And back then McDonalds didn't have the healthy options that it has now.
Well, obviously it depends on what kinds of healthy foods we're talking about. If you want to make a salad, you have to buy tomatoes, lettuce, maybe some cucumbers, and some other garbage or you're going to have a pretty awful salad (I'd say add some steak to it, but that's just me). The cost of all those vegetables added up can get up there in price, they take some time and care to assemble into something that resembles something you'd actually want to eat, AND they go bad pretty quickly. If you can only get to the store once a week or so, it can be less risky to get processed food with preservatives that isn't fresh or that good for you that doesn't go bad and doesn't take a lot of time to prepare, which is great if you're working a physically demanding job and you're already exhausted. But bad for your diet.
I'm not sure I understand, do you not think that people are more obese now? If you do, why do you think people are more obese? I'm not sure I've ever heard someone say that they didn't think people were getting fatter.
I'm a public health gestapo member, so I'm curious what people think.
Really? Have you been paying attention to the fast food dollar menu wars?
I sure as hell don't doubt it. They've even had to make the ballpark seats extra wide just to accommodate the phenomenon. And if you want the greatest small sample size confirmation of all time, just check out....(chickens out before incurring mass hatred amongst the brethren).
But seriously, what are you going to do about it? You can improve the school lunches and require restaurants to label their meals, but even given these unlikely events, the most popular diet for Americans is always going to be the one that they're going to start tomorrow. People drive everywhere, don't exercise, and eat fast food and prepared meals more than ever. What in the hell would we think was going to be the result of all that? 2 + 2 doesn't = 3.
Take two groups of people:
1. Parents that let their kids drink 2 liters of Coke per day
2. Parents that do not
Group 1 is going to be stupider.
Trans fats aren't bad for you because they make you fat. It's because they make your heart explode. Being fat can also make your heart explode, but the relationship kind of ends there.
Yeah, but it goes beyond that. If the foods we're eating are richer in carbohydrates that (1) get dumped directly into fat and (2) don't really make us feel full, it becomes a little more than "eat less". It's "eat the right things".
See also the vast difference in a high-carbohydrate diet vs. the same amount of calories consumed entirely as fats and proteins (low-carb diet). It's not all thermodynamics, or at least, not until the digestion and metabolization process takes place.
All that said, there's a lot of lardasses (myself included) out there, and it's kind of disturbing
You don't need much education to figure out smoking isn't healthy but smoking rates correlate very well to education level also. Surprisingly, smoking correlates inversely with income also despite people at the lower end of the income distribution having less disposable income to spend on cigarettes. I have a feeling it is lower education levels causing both unhealthy habits and lower income. Maybe it is just stupidity as a root cause for all three. Of course, then you have to ask - is America getting stupider?
Many inner-city neighborhoods have only fast food restaurants, and they don't even have regular supermarkets where you can buy produce even if you knew to.
And sure, maybe one doesn't need education to understand how not to get fat, but one would think the same thing about not needing education to rack up thousands of dollars of credit card debt or having unwanted babies. In other words, things that seem obvious to some people aren't always so obvious.
Modernity allows the stupid to thrive.
when I was a young'un (in the fiddies)--we "exercised" constantly--but we didn't CALL it that. We called it "playing outside". EVERYONE did it. Baseball, basketball, football depending on the season--non stop--every day. I played far more sports in pickup games than I ever did on "organized" sports teams (though we did that too). In the yard, down at the school, anywhere
It was harder for my son, because of lack of space and lack of close-in neighborhoods (in the 80s). But still he "played outside". Nowadays its even worser for the kids. Have to be driven everywhere and all sports seem to be "organized".
"Worser"... I demand to know whether you are obese.
when I was a young'un (in the fiddies)--we "exercised" constantly--but we didn't CALL it that. We called it "playing outside". EVERYONE did it. Baseball, basketball, football depending on the season--non stop--every day. I played far more sports in pickup games than I ever did on "organized" sports teams (though we did that too). In the yard, down at the school, anywhere
That corresponds 100% with my experience, from the time I was in first grade all the way through high school graduation. And you're right, it wasn't "exercise," it was just fun.
only my cerebrum
EDIT: Oh! And speaking of that elementary school (which I attended and walked to and fro every day), the playground was still accessible during the weekends and over the summer. Us kids took advantage often. Now there's unclimbable fences surrounding the premises and the gates are always locked.
EDIT 2: I owe a coke.
well-- nowhere safe, anyway
Also, as I said, the category of "overweight" is problematic because of the continuing lack of data that being "overweight" correlates or causes bad health outcomes and mortality. The data's a lot clearer on "obese."
Why is body fat % not the metric? Shouldn't we really be concerned about fat rather than poundage?
yeah, bring back The Black Death.
more education=smarter is a fallacy promoted by the public education nanny state Gestapo.
people are incredibly biased by their privileged environment..Buddha didn't become Buddha til after he wandered out of the palace gates.
http://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/assessing/bmi/childrens_bmi/about_childrens_bmi.html
Which states very clearly that obese (children) are >95 percentile relative to CDC's BMI-for-age charts. (which look to be based on data from 2000, although updated?)
BMI >30 is for adults. Note that this corresponds to a 6'0 adult male weighing 221 lbs. Which is _big_, but not necessarily obese or even very overweight. Well, I guess it's technically obese by definition, but I guess I would like a little finer grained breakdown of the health risks.
OP was about childhood obesity - and even looking past a BMI definition, there is clearly a correlation with BMI and Diabetes, especially in blacks and hispanic populations.
I am still trying to understand how the number of obese children can increase from 5% to 15% given the above information, however. I am probably just missing something obvious.
But comparing BMI over long time frames without even *attempting* to correct for avg. body fat % or bone density seems a little off to me. Maybe I have to actually read the papers though.
OBP is bullshite. Andre Dawson never had a good OBP, and he was a great hitter!
Basic biology suggests that it's pretty unlikely that the entire country's bone density has changed that much over the past 5-10 years. It would be awesome to get hydrostatic body fat % for large numbers of people, but it costs a damn fortune, and BMI correlates well enough to body fat so as to be useful at the population level. If you want to give me a bazillion dollars, I'd be happy to do a bunch of studies that use body fat %, but the result is probably not going to be that different then if you just used BMI.
That said, there are some easy metrics that might be a little better than BMI out there, like waist to height ratio. But as mentioned before, there is some history of BMI data. In the future we should be able to use better metrics, but since BMI goes so far back, we can do time-comparisons.
Body fat % a lot harder to measure quickly. Basically, the same reason people use OPS instead of RC or WAR.
Much like OPS, BMI is a rough metric that's fairly accurate across large swaths of population.
I'm going to guess that >1 is not good.
Cite. I thought think that most of the weight loss on low-carb diets is due to the fact that it's damn hard to get that level of caloric intake without carbs.
I guess you can shift your body into ketosis and what not.
Did people 10 years ago eat the same amount of calories but much less carbohydrate? Really? Didn't they also smoke more?
Yeah, probably. But let's keep it to kids here. I will conceed that american adults are fat asses who eat too much and exercise too little. (I refuse, however, to extend this to the TYPES of food they eat)
So, BMI has increased in kids averaged over the same ages 30 years. That is data.
This is a much trickier problem - because the BMI percentiles are moving targets. Aren't kids developing "faster" these days? Are kids otherwise healthier (non-BMI health?) Aren't Japanese kids much bigger than they were 40 years ago? Has their BMI ratio shifted?
(for adults): Why 30 BMI? Is it that much different than 29? 33?
It's just soundbite science. Disease is correlated with being fat (high body fat%) which is correlated with BMI. That's not a diagnosis, it's an actuary table.
Really? Because it's a round number.
I guess you can shift your body into ketosis and what not.
This is after all, the entire point of low-carb dieting for weight loss.
Soundbite science? I'm not really sure what you're getting at here.
Question ... I'm pretty rigorous about avoiding hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated oils, but I've seen a number of products that claim to be "trans-fat free!" and have hydro or part-hydro oils fairly high on the ingredient list. Is this the result of some labeling loophole or are such oils somehow not considered trans-fats?
Who's saying it's a diagnosis? You know that disease is correlated with being fat, which is correlated with BMI. So, a significant increase in BMI on a population level means an increase in disease in that same population. Which is a problem.
I teach middle school and chaperoned a dance about a week ago. This was our "Winter Formal", which means no jeans allowed. Now, it may have been seeing my students dressed up or just seeing them under different circumstances than usual, but I was shocked at the sheer numbers of my kids that were overweight. It was especially true of the girls.
I normally reject most "things were so much different when I was younger" statements, because I think they're usually selective memory. Two things I am pretty sure are different: there are more fat kids and we have more snow days.
...and it used to be more fun to be a Royals fan.
Three things.
This chart on its face shows that the percentage of overweight children/adolescents ages 6-19 dramatically increased between 1976-1980 and 1999-2002, from 4-7% to 16%.
For those who know something about this topic: Have the parameters of what this chart purports to show changed over the years? I.e., is this chart still measuring the same thing in 2002 as it was in 1971?
- my kids doctor showed me the difference in the growth charts between 1971 and 2000 - amazing. BMI is measured the same, but what is 95%ile is a LOT higher these days. and BMI does not work for people with large frame/bones who are not fat. what is also interesting is that docs get hysterical if you are thin
i would guess that 1/3 - 1/4 kids in my kids classes are fat/obese
there is nowhere for kids to go outside and play unless you take them to a park or some sort of adult supervised activity. my mama is andy's age and she has told me how much fun she had when she was a kid - playing outside with the other kids, making up games and stuff.
as for kids being fat, well, most kids drink at LEAST 2 liters of soda/gatorade/sugar something and eat TONS of junk. what do you expect
This is sad but true. I'll also add my anecdotal piece as evidence. I was an elementary school teacher in a NYC public school and lunch time was depressing. Well, I'm thinking specifically of this one school I student taught at. Now the school lunches are disgusting. You'd think they would have improved that crap by now, but if you go into a school cafeteria in a New York school today, you're greeted with the same awful smell of your childhood. They have not changed the menu since the 1950's. Or at the very least, they haven't improved the taste. You get the same crappy soggy pizza on soggy pseudo french bread and the same soggy veggies and it's just awful. So kids hate that stuff and so the ones who have to eat school lunch because their families have no money, end up nibbling off the crust and some of the crappy cheese, throwing out the milk and the veggies and basically begging for soda and doritos and candy from their more well-off friends. Because the kids who are lucky enough to bring lunch from home have bags filled with fructose crap. You have classes who are surviving on soda and chips and candy for whole school days.
In other schools, where there are more concerted efforts at parent outreach and nutritional education, you see a difference. Students eat better (even if they still sometimes eat junk). So, yes, education helps. But it would also help if the school lunch program provided decent options.
I agree about debating the word "epidemic" or whatever, but common sense alone would say that obesity is a problem(debating the obvious is like claiming that intelligent design has scientific evidence backing it or rbis are the best measure of a clutch hitter) Kids do not exercise nearly as much today as parent fear letting them out of their sight. (my ten year old nephew has never spent an hour without an adult watching him, and I think the rest of the country is in a similar boat, they don't play recreational sports or games because that would mean they would be out of the eyes of the adults for a couple of hours...... fear is making us fat-- not to mention video games, parents driving the kids to the bus stop, along with everywhere else....and of course fat ass parents that think parking in the closest spot at the mall is a positive influence on their children.obesity is a problem, to pretend it doesn't exist is just silly....not even an average republican is that blind to the obvious)
Are you really looking for no transfats and the listing of calories to make a noticeable physical change in a population over a few years?
at least they FINALLY took the candy/soda/chips machines out of the elementary skoolz - at least the ones my own kidz go to. but yeah, there are a LOT of kidz who have breakfast = cereal + milk + juice and that is their ONLY "good" meal all day - the rest is soda + candy + chips + other junk.
one of my cousins she works at WIC and they do nutritional evals when kids don't gain weight/are really fat and their mothers for some reason, are worried. and she told me that a GOOD half of them don;t even get the minimum of vitamins and almost none of them get even 1/3 of the calcium they should have. almost no kids drink milk. and no wonder there is this epidemic of vit D deficiency. kids don't go outside and they don't drink milk
cardsfanboy
you aren't allowed to like just let your kid go outside without you staring at them. or some other adult staring at them. i guess there are just a lot more child molesters/rapists/kidnappers than there used to be. i guess this started right around the time i was born but i was not ever left alone. i was always with my brother or cousins or auntie if i wasn't in skool. i am absolutely positive i never went outside all by myself
i was born in 1980. i think parents got hysterical after that kid in nyc got killed - the milk carton business started. kids suddenly got kidnapped all the time and raped and sold into sex slavery.
i also got this feeling you are probably male. and that unlike you AND my older brothers, i was the victim of sex discrimination AKA daddy's pweshuus baby grrrrl spoilt rotten
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