It’s really not that complicated. But it is so institutionalized that people think that is the normal way to eat.
I think the science contradicts your theory that fat satiates us. Its the proliferation of low cost (government subsidized) fatty foods that’s at the root of the obesity epidemic in America.
I think one factor has to do with the increasing difficulty that both children and adults experience have with establishing thier identities, resulting in low seld esteem. Obesity is an easy to visually see symptom, how many other things are going wrong with us emotionaly that we can’t so easily see?
It makes me sad every time I see a patient come in to the hospital where I volunteer and they are so big that we have to get patient transport to come with a bariatric chair since we don’t dare risk injuring ourselves trying to push them. These folks must weigh 400 lbs or more and some can’t walk anymore.
I wonder how they ever could have gotten that big, since it certainly doesn’t happen overnight.
Eh, not really. There are most definitely many “People of Walmart” types here.
I’m sure that’s the reason for some people, but if you read the linked article, even though Manhattan has the lowest obesity rates in New York State, the rates are 42%. 42%! That’s still a lot of fat people, it’s just not a majority. And not surprisingly, within Manhattan the lowest rates correspond to the wealthiest neighborhoods and the highest rates to the poorest. Your income level is likely the biggest factor to whether or not you are obese.
Lol, nice one. Did you come up with that yourself?
Finally someone said it!
We’re fat because we don’t live in 1850. We got fat by modern circumstances and therein lie our weight loss options. I need to learn to like barfing. I could probably get used to it with a dedicated week or two.
Obesity rates” are bogus. Who and who is not “obese” is based upon a “BMI table” done by (wiki ):"Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet (22 February 1796 – 17 February 1874) was a Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician and sociologist. He founded and directed the Brussels Observatory and was influential in introducing statistical methods to the social sciences. "
Note lack of “dietician” “Medical Doctor” or anything to do with medical science. Your BMI is being graded as “obese” compared to the average undernourished euro commoner from 18fucking35. When over 6 feet tall was freakish due to poor nutrition and lack of knowledge about vitamins, minerals etc. So freakish it was left off the chart!
Why do they still use this chart, when it has no scientific validity at all? Because dieting is a multi-billion $ a year business just in the USA. Watch Bullshit.
Don’t get me wrong fellow Dopers. Being very overweight can be very very bad for your health indeed. But it’s your blood sugar, BP, cholesterol and similar numbers that tell that tale. Not that BMI chart.
Ignore the chart. Listen to the other numbers. Listen to your body- can you walk up two flights of stairs without huffing and puffing? (I am good for two, at 3 I am a trifle winded, at 5+ I am sucking air like a madman ) Can you do a brisk 30 minute walk without tiring out or stopping for rests?
Some more stuff from wiki"The *medical establishment has acknowledged major shortcomings of BMI.[19] Because the BMI formula depends only upon weight and height, its assumptions about the distribution between lean mass and adipose tissue are inexact. BMI generally overestimates adiposity on those with more lean body mass (e.g., athletes) and under-estimates excess adiposity on those with less lean body mass. …
Mathematician Keith Devlin and a restaurant industry association The Center for Consumer Freedom argue that the error in the BMI is significant and so pervasive that it is not generally useful in evaluation of health.[20][21] University of Chicago political science professor Eric Oliver says BMI is a convenient but inaccurate measure of weight, forced onto the populace, and should be revised.[22]
A study published by JAMA in 2005 showed that “overweight” people had a similar relative risk of mortality to “normal” weight people as defined by BMI, while “underweight” and “obese” people had a higher death rate.[23]
In an analysis of 40 studies involving 250,000 people, patients with coronary artery disease with “normal” BMIs were at higher risk of death from cardiovascular disease than people whose BMIs put them in the “overweight” range (BMI 25–29.9).[24] In the “overweight”, or intermediate, range of BMI (25–29.9), the study found that BMI failed to discriminate between bodyfat percentage and lean mass. The study concluded that “the accuracy of BMI in diagnosing obesity is limited, particularly for individuals in the intermediate BMI ranges, in men and in the elderly. …These results may help to explain the unexpected better survival in overweight/mild obese patients.”[18]
A 2010 study that followed 11,000 subjects for up to eight years concluded that BMI is not a good measure for the risk of heart attack, stroke or death. …
BMI is particularly inaccurate for people who are fit or athletic, as the higher muscle mass tends to put them in the “overweight” category by BMI, even though their body fat percentages frequently fall in the 10-15% category, which is below that of a more sedentary person of average build who has a “healthy” BMI number." *
Yes, if you’re overweight, it’s probably because you eat too much.
But, It took 88 posts for someone to point out that another reason that we see so many fat people today is that we have been taught to hate fat and we’re way more aware of it. While I don’t doubt that the average relationship between peoples’ heights and weights has changed over the last many decades, our obsession with weight may be contributing to the problem, simply because we’re more aware of peoples’ weights now, and we’re more likely to assign someone into the category of obese. e.g. The “obesity” epidemic. In the 50’s, for instance, the term obese mainly referred to someone like Two Ton Baker, or Haystacks Calhoun. These were guys who were probably of normal height, roughly, but who weighed well into the 300’s. Today, you frequently hear people who are heavy being referred to as obese. So one answer to the question is our inability to see someone without also building in a judgment about their weight. Hence, we say that people are overweight now more than ever.
And don’t get me started on advertising, or on McDonald’s “fault” for selling Big Macs. Until they chase you down and force it down your throat, you’re overeating because *you’re *picking up the food and putting into your mouth.
You get to a point though where it’s in for a penny, in for a pound, no pun intended. You’re fat already, people ignore or ridicule you, why not eat that huge pizza then cry yourself to sleep? Rinse, repeat.
No, it’s not. The exact BMI threshold for obesity varies depending on who is making the definition, but they sure as hell aren’t using a value from 1835. This is just the most glaringly incorrect part of your ridiculous post. There’s nothing magic about the BMI. It’s simply a number based on your height and weight. Everyone understands that a muscular person is not obese and that a pudgy weakling is not healthy. BMI is used because it is easy to gather and correlates well enough with actual body fat to be useful.
Another possible causal factor is that we live in a consumer-oriented society. Since birth we are socially conditioned to buy something when we leave the house. Add fast food to the equation and we can buy something for what seems like a small amount of money.
It makes us feel good for a little while.
Some people eat to deal with uncomfortable feelings just the same way that others drink or use drugs. Over time this becomes habitual. Do it long enough and you train your body to feel numb if you aren’t eating anything. That requires another fix to cheer you up.
Sure, Bread is one of the oldest prepared foods. Evidence from 30,000 years ago in Europe revealed starch residue on rocks used for pounding plants, but Dunkin’ Donuts?
BMI is only useless if you have high muscle mass, which the vast majority do not, and those who do don’t whine about BMI being useless.
I don’t know why the great lakes region is an anomaly, but obesity rates in the south *are *higher than the northeast and northwest. This map for 2012 is just one of dozens that show that. However, if you look at a poverty map instead, there’s correlation there too - in that map you’ll see the great lakes are higher than the northeast and northwest too.
Well, I can represent one data point to obliterate the usefulness BMI.
At 5’6" and 170 pounds (26.63 BMI = “Overweight”) I could walk lightly on the floor of a 8 foot swimming pool with a very small breath of air. I did not appear fat and I was in amazing shape.
At 5’5" and 200 pounds (33.28 BMI = “Obese”) I can still stand at the bottom of the pool, although I can make it back to the surface with much less effort. Overall, I’m a bit deconditioned compared to the good old days, but I think the result of me doing pullups, pushups & running is about the same as I’d have fared back then wearing that extra 30 pounds on my back.
I’m a bit rounder about the belly and shoulders these days. but I don’t think you’d look at me and say “that guy is easily 1/3 fat by volume.” You would certainly not have thought me 1/4 fat by volume 15 years ago when I was fit.
Now, yeah, my blood work says I’m not healthy these days but that doesn’t make BMI right or even useful as an indicator of health. I can look back to 4 generations (9 individuals) of male blood relatives who’ve been in all kinds of shape and lived all kinds of lifestyles and all of them had their arteries plaque up and clot by the time they turned 50. I’m just on my way to that and I believe I would be even if I dumped 60 pounds this year.
*Anthropometry[edit]In 1835 he presented his theory of the average man in Sur l’homme et le développement de ses facultés, essai d’une physique sociale, which measurements of human trait are grouped according to the normal curve. This normal variation helped to provide proof that a population produces enough variation for artificial or natural selection to operate.[3]
In terms of influence over later public health agendas, was Quetelet’s establishment of a simple measure for classifying people’s weight relative to an ideal weight for their height. His proposal, the body mass index (or Quetelet index), has endured with minor variations to the present day.[4] *
In other words, I am obese because I weight a lot more than the average Belgian peasant of 1835. … you know, those guys scrabbling in the streets for rotten turnips?
Whether or not it “*correlates well enough with actual body fat *” is meaningless. As shown, it does not correlate well enough with actual health. … "error in the BMI is significant and so pervasive that it is not generally useful in evaluation of health"
You are obese because you have a high percentage of body fat. You are classified as part of the obese population because, according to the NIH, your BMI is above 30. It has nothing to do with 19th century peasants. Seriously, do you think the entire public health field is populated by the dumbest people on hte planet?
Well it’s a good thing that no one uses it to evaluate health.
This.
The only people who bitch about BMI are either the ones who it obviously does not apply to or the ones that wish it did not apply to them.
The BMI is useless meme again?
BMI is a tool and only a tool. As per the CDC:
It is a correlate of body fat percentage and very good one when BMI is over 30, let alone over 35. 25 to 30 (the “overweight” category)? Not so much so. You can be “overweight” but not “overfat” and you can be “normal weight” by BMI and have excess fat. BMI over 30? You are highly likely to be a true positive obese and at high risk for adverse outcomes. Over 35, no question about it. The greatest increases have been in the numbers of the obese, the morbidly obese, and the super obese.
The cut-offs defining the categories were NOT defined by Quetelet - they were defined using data applying the index to modern populations and arbitrarily decided upon terms based very roughly on the statistical distribution of the time. Over 85%ile of the then normal distribution (greater than 27.8 for men and 27.3 for women) was initially labelled as being “at risk” for obesity. That then became 25 as overweight and 30 as obese for ease of use and only that.
When applied to populations BMI correlates well with the adverse outcomes of obesity, with lowest mortality rates generally found in the 23 to 26ish range, exact numbers depending on the study and the populations included. When applied to individuals a bit less so, again, especially in the moderate ranges.
Fitness is more predictive of positive outcomes than fatness, let alone than BMI.
Rates of overweight are pretty meaningless; rates of obesity and of morbid obesity are meaningful without question.
