Ok. Here’s a link to the GQ thread I started regarding my earlier post if anyone is interested.
I don’t know what you mean by this. This data is NEW. It was just released today in The Journal of the American Medical Association.
Perhaps you mean, “well, this was common knowledge”. It wasn’t that either. It was believed that people a little overweight had serious increases in their risk of death. The article has an excited tone because of the quality of the data and the quality of the statistics behind it.
Here’s the analogous quote from the NYT. . .it’s a little clearer.
I believe we’re talking about “modelled” vs. “actual” causes of death here.
I THINK what’s going on is they originally said something like, “through our models of the risk of obesity, we predict 112,000 deaths per year.”
What they failed to take into account are the safety factors associated with being a little overweight.
They either didn’t take them into account, or they applied the “obesity” model to “overweight” people. Notice in your CNN quote, they’re making a distinction.
Mathematically (if this helps), there was possibly a “survival model” with a term like. . .
Survival Probability = K^(-a(w-w0))
where K is a constant (or depends on things except weight), a>0, w is weight, and w0 is some "baseline" weight.
when in fact it should have been
S.P. = K^(-a1w*I(w > w0) + a2w*I(w <= w0))
where I is an indicator function, and the a's are appropriate multipliers.
Curiously, it doesn’t so much help has make me want to eat a large pizza, slathered in garlic butter and chased down with some of the darkest beer I can find.
There was a somewhat informative piece on the OPs topic today on Brian Lehrer’s (WNYC-NPR) Show featuring Gina Kolata of The NY Times and Dr Howard LeWine. The 32 minute Real Audio Link here (Unless you prefer Podcasting which is also available)
Unfortunately, neither guest deeply discussed the fact the entire subject of nutrition should usually be labeled: A best guess - One that’s usually inaccurate, quite often overturned or contadicted and rarely (if ever) can be applied even a plurality of invidual persons.
Eye Rolling subjects
8 Glasses Water vs Water is a blood thinning poison
Overweight vs Thin
Obese vs Malnourished
Carbs vs Fat
Cholesterol myths
Sodium and BP
It enough to make you insane. One thing I do know. Of any 80+ year old elderly person I’ve ever seen - none could be described what I’d describe as ‘heavy set’
Nutrition isn’t quite the crapshoot that some people seem to think it is, but it’s a statistical science, not an algebraic one (like Newtonian mechanics).
There are a couple issues that make it seem a little worse:
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There’s a lot of individual variation. Like, a lot. We all have the same basic biochemical processes going on, but with little molecular differences here and there, and those add up.
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What we do know to be generally true is pretty complex. It’s not a simple matter of “Eat this and don’t eat that”.
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There are a bunch of crackpots out there, and there are a lot of professionals who don’t bother keeping up with the latest research.
This definitely has potential, but it needs a better name. Considering the “out of Africa” hypothesis, maybe we could call it Cradle Cuisine or Cooking from the Cradle or something. Certainly better than the “Roots, Bugs, and Blood Diet.”
Plenty of those over 80 I have known have been heavyset, most even. Two of my great grandmothers were heavy set. They lived to 89.
It’s already out there - I think one of it’s guises is the Caveman diet or the Hunter-Gatherer diet. http://www.panix.com/~paleodiet/
I stand by my assertion that most medical types knew that being moderately overweight (according to the standard height/weight chart) does not shorten life span. Actually, because the majority of adult Americans are oveweight by that standard, another way of saying this would be that thin people live longer than average. I don’t think that’s ever been determined. One reason being that weight loss in the elderly is not a good thing usually, so that makes things very difficult to sort out.
Good to see you’re back, just a shame that you’ve gone mad and forgotten how to code. Hope we can adjust the weight catagories so little over weight becomes just right, and what used to be called just right can now be called skinny.
Mr. Buckner:
Getting your nutritional information from the NYT or from any media blurb seeking to buttonhole it into “news” will inherently lead to ignorance and confusion. Place the blame where it belongs… on yourself.
If you are going to be relying on News summaries in periodicals as the primary guidance to your health you are going to be ill-informed, confused and angry.
Rather, the better part of prudence suggests that you should trust in me as I am the soul of discretion and honor and have nothing but your best interests at heart.
You are less likely to die if you are modestly overweight for the same reason that you are less likely to die if you spend the day alone in bed versus going out for a jog.
If you go out for a jog, you might get hit by a car, have a heart attack or get eaten by a bear. Staying in bed these things are unlikely and hence your chances of survival are greater.
Leading a more active lifestyle increases your chances of misfortune. There is an old saying: If you want to live through the day, spend it in bed by yourself. If you want to live for the next 50 years go get some exercise.
What if I spend the day in bed with someone else?
I have three great-aunts who are 100-plus years old, and in their youth (I’ve seen the photos, etc) they were what used to be referred to as “strapping lasses” (i.e. buxom, well-built, etc.). Now, however, they’re quite slender - I think most people in extreme old age don’t have much bodyfat or much appetite.
If you look around a retirement home, there are still quite a few folks with a little meat on their bones. Their faces and arms have often thinned out.
And there’s always Mickey Rooney.
STDs. Cardiac arrest. Potentially fatal humiliation due to poor performance. No, no, the risk is too great. Better you spend the day alone with a good, spiritually uplifting book.
Yep. Nobody ever got hurt having a nice brisk sit. With a cat, a book and a cozy fire (if it’s cold out).
The problem is a bizzare and arbitrary way of defining “normal”.
The middle third aint normal, its “overweight”. It’s the lower third that is normal.
Those with the lowest mortality rates aint normal, they’re “overweight.” Its the thinner and second place group withrelatively more deaths that’s “normal”.
These numbers were pulled out of the air for ease of use and have no correlation with the normal distribution or clustering of health outcomes. Quite likely best health is actually clustered around a BMI of 24 to 27 and most of us could stand to lose a few, but just a few. And a few of us are really ovewrweight (BMI’s of 30 to 35) or morbidly obese (BMI’s over 35) and at real health risk from our fatness and unfitness.
But we are counterproductive when we call normal people fat.
BTW, a great BMI calculator and site to read up on its limitations is here.
Great pitting, Buck. I recall hearing on NPR some years ago that mothers milk had been found to cause cancer or some such. Of course, NPR also announced the other day that the new pope was Benedict the 26th. Still, I don’t think it’s just doctors, nutritionists, and media — it’s government, too. No, I don’t mean in the sense that government is some tyrannical force out to kill us all (though it is), but I mean in the sense that its FDA bureaucracy is as political as it is well-meaning. And when politics influences science, the results are not always pretty.
And when the persuit of profit influences science, the results are not always pretty.
Or profitable.
In this case at least profit has nothing to do with it, although politics may have.
The older US standards included normal as 19.1-25.8 for women and
20.7-26.4 for men. 18.5 to 25 was chosen by the WHO for both to both make it easier for us stupid clinicians to remember and to be more in keeping with historic norms in much of developing world where malnutrition was more the norm and mean BMI was lower. The CDC went along with the WHO.