Any studies about overweight people's nutrition knowledge?

Factual Questions
1

This isn’t an attack on overweight people. I’m aware this is the GQ section, and I’m looking for a factual answer.

I think it would be interesting if there were a study that would test someone’s knowledge about nutrition, and exercise, and correlate it with their weight. This would tell us a lot about whether overweight people are aware of what makes them overweight or not.

I tried googling but I couldn’t find anything.

Obviously a professional survey-taker would do a much better job than me, but this is what I’m thinking:

Step 1: Measure people’s BMI as they enter a facility to take a written test.

Step 2: Have a written test with questions like:
—How many calories are in a Hershey bar?
—How many Hershey bars do you need to eat to gain one pound of body weight?
—How many calories are burned by walking for one hour?
—How long do you need to walk to lose one pound of body weight?
—How long do you need to walk to “pay” for eating a Hershey bar?

Step 3: Put the data together, and see if overweight people score better, equally, or worse on the written test.

I want to stress two key points in my post:

A., My sample questions are only examples; I’ve already stated that I’m not a professional survey-writer.

B., I’m searching for a factual answer to the above question, and I hope we can all put aside our opinions of overweight people at least for the duration of this post.

2

The best data I could dig up is this paper from May 1998.

Table 3 shows that there is an increase in correct answers given on the nutrition quiz as the HEI (Healthy Eating Index) of the person answering the questions goes up. In other words the better the quality of diet of the individual the better they score on the quiz.

3

I can see that you’ve certainly put aside your opinions of overweight people. Hershey bars? And you were unable to think of any questions for your sample survey that didn’t assume that fat people got that way because they eat candy bars and don’t excise? Don’t sell yourself short though. You may have the tools to become a professional survey writer after all. You’ve already demonstrated the ability to draft a survey which guarantees that your pre-conceived conclusions will be validated.

4

I hate to tell you this, but I’m fat because I’m crazy, not because I’m stupid.
I know perfectly well what I should eat, I just don’t.

The notion that fat people are stupid is a stereotype.

5

A huge part of the issue is people eat more than they realize. About a decade ago Johns Hopkins did a study of nutritionists and dieticians and had them estimate the amount of calories they consumed. All of them failed miserably. The best at calculating were over by 25% some were off by as much as 60%.

So if people who are educated to know about food are going to overestimate their caloric intake, heaven help the rest of us.

And the web hasn’t helped. I’ve seen actual websites where the people claim their yo-yo dieting has messed up their metabolism so much that they claim to only eat 1,000 calories a day and they are STILL gaining weight. Unless they’re in a coma this is simply not true.

People are overweight because they eat too much. Why? Because food is cheap and it’s SO GOOD. And the most fattening food is EXTRA good.

You don’t get fat overnight, though it certainly seems like you were thin and ate a box of Twinkies and put on 25 pounds. Except for Homer Simpson, no one wants to be fat. But it happens.

Simple tests often fail t ounderstand how body functions works. For instance the average person burns 11 pounds per body weight per day. So if you weigh 175 pounds that is

175 X 11 = 1,925
1,925 / 24 = 80 calories per hour.

If you walk for an hour and burn off 100 calories from that walk, well you woud’ve burned off 80 sitting on your butt so that is only an addition 20 calories you burned.

People don’t see that exercise isn’t the way to lose weight. OK if you’re lucky you’ll lose 10 pounds, but that’s not likely.

And let’'s face it, it’s just not food. People have bad habits, and they are aware of it. We are all aware we spend too much money, drink too much, smoke too much, and the list goes on. Why should food be any different? This is how people are.

6

I think this would be an interesting survey, but I agree that your questions are already biased. You’d need to ask questions that you’d ask of both slim and overweight people to get a good gauge of nutrition and health knowledge across the board:

  1. What is a serving of fruit?
  2. What is a serving of protein?
  3. Is a tenderloin steak an example of a lean protein?
  4. Which is the most healthy breakfast: A smoothie made of 2 cups of fruit, yogurt and protein powder, or a half cup of blueberries and a half cup of cottage cheese?
  5. What is the American (Canadian/UK, etc.) recommended amount of daily exercise for cardiovascular health?
  6. What is the American (Canadian/UK, etc.) recommended amount of daily exercise for weight loss?

Stuff like that, though I am sure there are better questions then these.

7

There are many correlations. Obesity in the U.S. is correlated with social class. The old saying “you can’t be too rich or too thin” is still largely a truism. That doesn’t mean that the rich know more about food and eating, necessarily. It is true that cheap food tends to be full of sugars, fats, and salts and that healthier food are proportionally more expensive for a similar bulk. What is hidden from that is that the well-to-do may be better able to hide bulimia, anorexia, diet pills, spas, and expensive diet programs than poorer classes. It’s a trade-off between eating disorders in that case.

Education is also correlated. Estimates place the number of functional illiterates in the U.S. as high as 40% of the population, though that percentage is surely highly dependent on the definition used. However, studies have been done of medications, instructions, packaging, nutritional contents and the like showing that a percentage about that high has difficulty understanding the information that is attempting to be presented. Lack of education is highly correlated with lower incomes.

Food sellers have huge incentives to sell cheap bulk foods to willing customers, so both regulation and education will be necessary to change the pattern. Taxes against sugars, salts, and fats really will help. Requiring calorie and nutrition information really will help. (Somebody is sure to bring that the first study after NYC passed a calorie labeling law showed no difference in habits, without noting that that study was fatally flawed and that later studies have shown better results.)

I have to wonder about the education of an OP who couldn’t find this information on the internet. Put obesity education and correlation into Google. Heck, there’s even a Centers for Obesity Research and Education (C.O.R.E.). Ten million newspaper and magazine articles as well as books have covered every aspect of the issue. The problem is known. It’s the solution that is difficult in the real world.

8

Obesity has Many, Many causes.

There was a Pit thread recently that implied that obesity was only a matter of lack of will-power.

You think it is just a lack of education about food/calories/exercise calories expended.

Mental health, as** picunurse** said, can be an issue.

Society can be an issue. How do you “celebrate” without using food?

Advertising/marketing

Lifestyle changes. Sedentary jobs. (using your brain and not your body) Living in areas where walking/biking/other calorie expending modes of transportation are not feasible. Lack of exercise.

And scientific reasons for obesity are now being discovered:

Genetics: Some people are better at storing fat than others. This was a good survival mechanism when there were times of famine, or low food availability outside of the growing season. Not much famine in most of the world at this time.

Hormones: There are hormones in the body that are released with hunger and fullness. Some obese people have too much of the hormone related to hunger and not enough of the hormone that is released with fullness. (like that adage that it takes 20 minutes for your brain to register that you have eaten) Marijuana gives people “the munchies”. Scientists made a drug to block the effect of that chemical in marijuana. It did cut peoples appetite, but, as I recall, it also made them so depressed that they were suicidal.

Infection: Two sets of laboratory mice. A control group, and a group infected with a certain virus. Given the same amount of food, the infected group gained weight.

Medications: Prednisone, for example, makes some people gain weight.

Thyroid function: Not enough thyroid hormone= weight gain. Too much thyroid hormone= weight loss. But taking extra thyroid hormone when you make enough on your own will only decrease your natural production.

etc., etc.

How many of these issues can a person have at the same time??? More possible factors make it harder to lose weight.

9

I think these are good questions, questions that you need to be able to answer if you want to lose weight. My ignorance of the answers to these kinds of questions enabled me to continue eating without thinking, in denial. It’s the answers to almost these exact questions that really got me motivated to live healthier.

Six months ago, I would have only been able to tell you how many calories are in a regular Snickers bar. I know now that it would take 13 Snickers bars to gain one pound, I burn 170 calories walking at a rate of 3mph for one hour, I need to walk for 20.5 hours to lose one pound, and I need to walk for over 1.5 hours to burn off that Snickers bar.

It is because I became aware of these numbers and effects that I have started eating better. I now know what the practical cost of a Snickers bar is, so I’m less likely to mindlessly eat one. My Snickers bar or the Hershey’s bar in the OP could be anything, really: a plate of pasta, fried chicken, chocolate cake, fruit and cheese.

I would add these questions:

  • Approximately how many calories does a person of your age/size/gender/activity level consume per day?
  • What ingredients and cooking styles should one look out for if trying to lower one’s calorie intake?
  • What is a reasonable, healthy rate of weight loss?

My only though on such a study is you might find an exaggerated divide between overweight people who don’t know these things and healthy-weight people who do due to the possibility that once you become aware of these things, you’re more likely to do something about your weight. In other words, as nutritional education increases, weight decreases; that overweight, ignorant person turns himself into a healthy-weight, educated person.

10

The two basic correlations that Exapno has explained in detail: less income correlates to bad eating habits and higher weight, malnutrition from cheap, bad food
less education correlates to bad health, nutrition etc. - if people don’t know hot to cook a healthy meal and think the leaf of lettuce on their hamburger is enough veggie, then they have less chance than a middle-class educated person who can buy an organic salad and knows how big their portion of the 5 times a day veggie should be.

These hold both true for other countries besides the US, like Germany and European countries.

And projects where overweight children are placed in groups with dieticans or sent to clinics, where they learn to enjoy food besides hamburger and pizza, learn to cook healthy, to exercise regularly, and to count calories, show long success. (These programs are also available for adults, but for them, it’s often harder to change ingrained habits).

Still, these programs are currently all voluntary. Obviously, if every overweight person would be forced into sth. like this, the sucess rate would go down, because motivation plays a key part in changing bad habits. And a small percentage - maybe 10%, maybe 1% - can’t be treated therapeutically, for any given problem.

There are also programs to teach children in kindergarden to enjoy natural (organic) food instead of getting hooked on pre-made, artifical tastes, too much sugar etc, all that junk that the industry targets at children, so they don’t develop the bad habits in the first place. My city offers free membership in sports clubs for children of poor families, because sport is important both for health and for integration, friendship, learning fair play etc. etc. Due to sponsorship from individuals and some organic companies, all kindergardens in my city now serve organic food to the children, which is more healthier than the old, easy and quick premade menus. Slow food teaches cooking and tasting courses to kindergarden and primary school children. Each September, volunteers pack lunch boxes for children starting school with apples and real organic bread instead of sugar-laden desserts and similar, which often ends up in normal lunch boxes. So people are trying to teach against the current of the industry, and educate.

Food industry and advertisment, and the social role of food for bonding and comfort still have a huge influence against these problems.

11

Ignorant and stupid are not the same thing. I’m far from stupid, but I was fat largely because I was ignorant: I knew how many calories were in a candy bar, but I didn’t know I could lose weight when I wasn’t starving. I was raised to believe that a diet was 1200 calories a day and anyone who said otherwise was a self-indulgent wimp. I was also raised to believe that a calorie was a calorie and anyone who said otherwise was a self-indulgent wimp in the grasp of a fad diet.

Once I learned that these things weren’t true, I lost 40% of my body weight in 12 months. There was more to it, but the rest was stuff I could do. The 1200 calories of carbs a day was what I couldn’t manage.

12

To b perfectly honest, I am fat, and I have absolutely no idea how many calories a hershey bar has because I don’t eat them … ask me about apples, bananas, carrots, chicken skin on or off … you know, real food.

13

I am “overweight,” and I’m neither ignorant nor stupid nor lazy.

And in my experience, the people who know least about nutrition are skinny people who can eat just about anything without gaining weight. Then they get older and start to go to pot, and they have no idea what to do about it.