I would be interested in any stats on various countries compared to the US:
It would be interesting to see how we track compared to the stats in the OP. Are these things helping or hurting our obesity problem?
A few US brands and styles are making inroads over here (Oreo, FWIW, plus oversized drinks and packets of sweets at cinemas, not to mention the whole gallimaufry of over-sugared breakfast cereals).
But (while not wanting to derail this thread to a certain local problem here) there is concern here over the prospect of chlorinated chicken being forced upon us.
On portion control: what’s the usual rule-of-thumb assumption of a “proper” portion of anything in the US? I work to the assumption of something like 100g/4oz of each of meat, potatoes (or other starch) and vegetables for the main, and likewise for the dessert. And even on that, I’m probably around 15-20lb over ideal weight. Certainly my last blood sugar count was flashing warning lights for pre-diabetes risk.
Like canned, straight tomato sauce, not spaghetti sauce?
If so, that’s kind of ironic, in that the big American brands (Hunt’s, Contadina, RedGold) don’t have any added sugar or sweeteners of any kind. Usually just salt and a small amount of spices like garlic is all that’s added.
For example:
I could imagine fat shaming having more of an effect in different cultures. Doesn’t Japan have a more “community” based society with a strong shaming culture?
I see this have an effect especially on kid obesity. For most of kids lives, what they eat is determined by their parents. It is easier to make sure Son doesn’t get fat if Mom knows she will get publicly shamed for it. Lets face it, it’s easier to make sure someone else doesn’t get fat than yourself! And childhood obesity frequently leads to adult obesity.
I have no data, only thoughts.
Like, not even tomato sauce. Some brands of “you need to add everything but the tomato” add water and sugar.
I remember reading years ago about how Western culture is more “internal”, in that when we do something wrong, we feel guilty about it internally, while Eastern cultures are more “face” centric, in that people are most concerned about loss of face/reputation, and don’t so much have the same sort of internalized guilt that we have.
So it’s entirely possible that in Japan, being fat is seen as a loss of face for yourself and your family, and as such, is more shameful than it is in the West.
“Fat shaming” might reduce the rate of morbid obesity, but I don’t see how it can affect the average or median weight. You don’t shame people who are only as fat as you are.
Like hell you don’t… well, maybe you don’t, but give me a couple of days to get home and I’ll be able to round you down several hundred Spanish mothers who are perfectly happy to fat-shame anybody they won’t thin-shame…
I disagree with this.
Not every Japanese kid competes in sumo wrestling.
Football has the highest number of participants in American high schools (although the number is declining) and there are plenty of obese high school players
There are also many obese professional players.
The trend in the game has definitely been towards weight gain.
My point is that overweight Americans aren’t even seen as overweight by their peers. After you spend some time in the US, your perception of “normal weight” gets hopelessly skewed, and overweight people start to look normal.
My BMI is currently just over 25, which means I’m overweight. Whenever I go back to Japan, I’m acutely aware of that, not because people point it out, but because everyone around me is slimmer. But in Alabama I actually feel like I am in good shape.
What changed? Pressure from the billion $ diet industry got them to change the cut off of “obese”. They just changed the scale.
So, the BMI scale is even more worthless than it was before.
Thus, if you are using that scale, you can’t say “But we’re fatter.”
*But that’s trivial compared with the sorts of financial conflicts of interest defended by some in the field. It’s rare to find an obesity researcher who hasn’t taken money from industry, whether it’s pharmaceutical companies, medical-device manufacturers, bariatric-surgery practices, or weight-loss programs. The practice isn’t limited to lesser-known luminaries, either. In 1997, a panel of nine medical experts tapped by the National Institutes of Health voted to lower the BMI cutoff for overweight from 27 (28 for men) to 25. Overnight, millions of people became overweight, at least according to the NIH. The panel argued that the change brought BMI cutoffs in line with World Health Organization Criteria, and that a “round” number like 25 would be easy for people to remember.
What they didn’t say, because they didn’t have to, is that lowering BMI cutoffs, and putting more people into the overweight and obese categories, also made more people eligible for treatment.*
This is absolutely true (at least in the NFL, and probably in the the colleges), though, in this case, “weight gain” does not necessarily always mean (or exclusively mean) “they’re fatter now.” That said, YES, there are some guys in football who really do have big bellies – I posted pictures of some of them upthread. They tend to be defensive tackles, where having sheer mass (so it’s harder for an offensive lineman to move you out of the way) is desireable.
Thirty years ago, you commonly saw guys who were ~270 pounds, starting at offensive tackle in the NFL. The two tackles on the NFL’s All-Decade team for the 1980s were Anthony Munoz (278 pounds) and Jimbo Covert (271 pounds).
Today, it’s pretty rare to see an offensive tackle below 300 pounds, and most of them seem to be in the 310-320 range. Yes, maybe some of that additional weight on offensive lineman is fat, but a lot of it is muscle – there have been huge advances in sports nutrition, sports medicine, and workout techniques, over the past thirty years, and players are simply more muscular and stronger (and, thus, heavier) now.
The other reason the scale might have been changed is because decades of research suggested that a BMI of 25 is where the trend for poor health outcomes started. One can also follow the money the other direction. In the US medical care is usually paid for by health insurance, which is setup to treat diseases. Therefore things which require medical treatment, such as drug addiction, mental health issues, and obesity, are all called diseases. Experts in the field may debate the “disease model” of those things, but that does not change the fact that if doctors want to help people be healthier, then somebody (the insurance, the government, the patient, etc.) needs to pay for the treatment.
BMI is often called worthless, which is far from the truth. It is incredibly easy to collect, and is highly correlated with health outcomes. Even self reported height and weight are pretty good indicators. If you’re going to bother measuring people, a ratio of height to waist circumference may be better than BMI, but you’ll end up collecting and reporting BMI anyway.
The increasing obesity rates in the US and other parts of the world are very complex, and certainly not attributable to a single cause. Every factor mentioned in this thread so far probably plays a part. There does not appear to be a single cause that accounts for a large part of the increasing obesity rate.
My pet theory, one which I have no evidence for, is that micro-traces of hormones in food are partially driving the obesity rate. Hormones are given to live stock so they grow bigger, might it not have a similar effect on people?
As for portion sizes in the US; I almost always take home half of my meal at restaurants, and I still have a BMI of 28+. Eating half of what I’m given is probably still too much.
It’s a common meme, especially on this message board.
I’ve lived in Asia for a total of 30 years. I don’t think there is one simple answer, and it’s a combination of a number of things.
I think the portion size has a lot to do with it. Also, Japanese and Taiwanese tend to care about appearing overweight.
There are many options for lunches with more vegetables and fewer calories. Also Japanese and Taiwanese home cooked food is pretty healthy.
No real research that wasnt bought and paid for. From my cite:
*
But that’s trivial compared with the sorts of financial conflicts of interest defended by some in the field. It’s rare to find an obesity researcher who hasn’t taken money from industry, whether it’s pharmaceutical companies, medical-device manufacturers, bariatric-surgery practices, or weight-loss programs. *
Atho you are right about follow the money: *There are, of course, other possible explanations for the AMA’s decision. As James Hill, the director of the Anschutz Health and Wellness Center at the University of Colorado, told ABC, “Now we start getting some standardization for reimbursement and treatments.”
In other words, follow the money. Doctors want to be paid for delivering weight-loss treatments to patients. Coding office visits for Medicare, for instance, is a complex process that involves counting the number of bodily systems reviewed and the number of diseases counseled for. If Medicare goes along with the AMA and designates obesity as a disease, doctors who even mention weight to their patients could charge more for the same visit than doctors who don’t.*
**No, it’s not. In fact, just the opposite. **
*And then there is the “obesity paradox.” Some studies have found that despite the fact that the risk of certain diseases increases with rising BMI, people actually tend to live longer, on average, if their BMI is a bit on the higher side.
Should we stop giving so much “weight” to BMI?
That’s exactly what’s being asked in the discussion generated by a new study. For this study, researchers looked at how good the BMI was as a single measure of cardiovascular health and found that it wasn’t very good at all:
Nearly half of those considered overweight by BMI had a healthy “cardiometabolic profile,” including a normal blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar.
About a third of people with normal BMI measures had an unhealthy cardiometabolic profile.
The authors bemoaned the “inaccuracy” of the BMI. They claim it translates into mislabeling millions of people as unhealthy and also overlooking millions of others who are actually unhealthy, but are considered “healthy” by BMI alone.
Actually, this should come as no surprise.
*
*Doctors and U.S. companies alike have long relied on the body mass index (BMI) as a proxy for an individual’s health. However, new research published in the International Journal of Obesity suggests using BMI to gauge health miscategorizes more than 54 million Americans as “unhealthy.”
Using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, lead researcher A. Janet Tomiyama and her colleagues studied the link between BMI and several other health markers, including blood pressure, glucose, and cholesterol and triglyceride levels. They found that nearly half of individuals who are considered overweight by way of BMI were actually metabolically healthy, as were 19 million people with a BMI associated with obesity. For reference, the CDC cites a normal BMI falls between 18.5 and 24.9.
“Many people see obesity as a death sentence,” Tomiyama said in a statement. “But the data show there are tens of millions of people who are overweight and obese and are perfectly healthy.”
To boot, researchers found more than 30 percent of individuals in the normal or healthy BMI range were metabolically unhealthy. Overall, they believe using BMI as a proxy for health has led to nearly 75 million U.S. adults being misclassified as metabolically unhealthy or healthy. *
The other way of saying that is “over half of people with a BMI over 25 had an unhealthy cardiometabolic profile, and two thirds of people with a BMI under 25 had a normal cardiometabolic profile.” That makes it seem like BMI is much more important. The big problem is trying to use BMI as a diagnostic criteria for an individual. What should be happening is your doctor says, “your BMI classifies you as overweight, that is a risk factor for some health problems, we should run some tests to see if you should be taking statins [or whatever].”
BMI is extremely useful as a population statistic, and that’s where scientists use it. Don’t blame researchers when the popular press distorts what they’re actually saying. Scientists are going to talk in probabilities, odds ratios, and correlations, which is then reported as “scientists say bees cause dandruff.”
The money can also go the other way, with researchers taking money to downplay causes of obesity. Remember when James Hill took money from Coke to say that physical activity was more important than reducing calories?
One of the other issues I see are people eating just to eat. This probably isn’t culturally relevant nowadays but I recall watching a few episodes of this show called Golden Gals or something when I was a kid and I remember the actresses always eating cake or ice cream whenever they were in the kitchen talking about stuff, even if it was in the middle of the night.
I want to bring up sugary drinks but I think most people know those are empty calories.
It’s not where doctors use it, too often. They tell people who are thin all over (your basic beanpole people) that they need to gain weight and people who are wide all over or have either triangle shape that they need to lose weight, both regardless of having perfect results in every other measure. Not every doctor, sure, but too many. And the problem with that attitude is that instead of causing an interest in being what the doctor considers but cannot prove is a healthier weight, it just ends up causing irritation.