I can find topics relating to lower lebido with overweight individuals but nothing discussing the global population implications. Any thoughts?
The so-called obesity ‘epidemic’, which I think is both a spurious and hyperbolic term, is only affecting the most developed and affluent countries. And even there it’s hardly an epidemic. Economics will always have the final say in population growth…
Mexico?
How many billions of people have to become overweight or obese before the term “epidemic” is appropriate?
The obesity rate by country does not track that well with how affluent a country is.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2228rank.html
Cancer disproportionately affects wealthy countries too, because people live longer and have more time to get it. That doesn’t mean cancer isn’t a health concern.
For “epidemic” to be relevant, we’d have to start calling obesity a disease. Obesity is more often than not self imposed by willing participants, entirely not a disease.
Are we calling smartphones an “epidemic” now too? Quinoa epidemic?? The Gluten Free Epidemic!
My hunch is no, libido may be lowered, but not that low where in fact one is not interested in having sex and also wanting children. Maybe some people will not mate with these obese people, but seriously our population is not in danger and won’t be affected by obesity.
I think that the rising number of overweight young people will affect the accuracy of life expectancy forecasts. The current systems seem to assume that life expectancy will continue to increase at the same rate that it has since WW2. This is surely an outdated measure now.
A (formerly massively obese) pal of mine once said that it was her experience that women *never *get so fat that no one wants to have sex with them, but one’s pool of potential partners changes a bit.
So the answer is, no. Fat people have libidos and fuck just fine.
nm, reading comprehension.
Keep in mind most fat people aren’t ‘that’ fat. Very few people make it to 400 pounds. Even though about 2/3 of Americans are overweight or obese, the vast majority of them (85% I think) have BMIs of 25-35, with only a small minority being 35+. A BMI of 35 puts you at about 60-80 pounds above your ‘ideal’ weight (which is an arbitrary measure but what the hell, lets go with it). That isn’t going to cause people’s health to fail in reproductive age, or make it impossible for them to have children. An extra 60 pounds won’t make it so you can’t reproduce or attract mates. If a woman has 2 kids that is enough to keep population stable.
Also what slows global population growth is wealth. Once a nation hits per capita GDP of about $5,000 they stop having more than 2-3 kids per woman. Most western countries are going to see population declines in this century if not for immigration. Japan’s population could be cut in half by 2100 and their obesity rate is low. So as a nation becomes fatter its population growth will slow, but the two are unrelated. Wealth leads to both low reproduction rates and obesity.
Population growth is going to occur in Africa, most of the population growth this century will happen there. Obesity is probably low there.
So I don’t see it having an effect.
Female fertility starts being negatively affected at a certain weight.
Obesity may also have epigenetic effects. It is possible that having an obese mother could predispose someone towards having certain health conditions that would in turn reduce fertility or the frequency of sexual behavior.
This is what I was thinking anything related to obesity that might correlate to fewer children, even if it was just atttiude.
This is just a side-point but but you are misunderstanding the term ‘disease’ just like most people do. Qualifying any condition as a disease has little to nothing to do with whether it is self-inflected or not.
Influenza is a disease that everyone can agree on but so is diabetes which has behavioral factors involved in its cause as do many types of cancer. U.S. residents have to go out of their way to catch Ebola. Does that make it not a disease for them?
Again, the reason for having having a particular condition has nothing to do with whether it is classified as a disease or not. Obesity meets all of the criteria to be a disease so many classify it as one and they are correct. You can blame any differences you may have with that concept on the imprecision of language as they apply to complex human medical conditions but they are right and your narrowly defined definition would not survive any sustained scrutiny. If you don’t believe me, try to pose a definition for ‘disease’ yourself and then let me cross-examine you. Nobody has ever won that debate but you are free to try.
Here is the official definition of disease:
dis·ease
noun
-
a disorder of structure or function in a human, animal, or plant, especially one that produces specific signs or symptoms or that affects a specific location and is not simply a direct result of physical injury.
-
a particular quality, habit, or disposition regarded as adversely affecting a person or group of people.
Both definitions fit obesity quite well but especially definition #2.
You don’t have to have a libido to have children. You have to have a desire to have children.
monstro was more on target with fertility, though. You do have to be fertile.
Valid criticisms. But seeing how much of pregnancy is planned and not due to high libido or spontaneous I don’t know what role it will play. An obese woman who wants to get pregnant will have a harder time according to that study. But if they are planning a family, doesn’t that mean it will take an obese woman 5-6 months to intentionally get pregnant instead of 4?
Seems to me a lot of people get pregnant and aren’t exactly taken by surprise, but they weren’t planning for it either. I think pretty much everyone knows someone like this. Even married people have children they didn’t intentionally create.
The OP didn’t ask if obesity would stop the growth rate. Just slow it down. I can’t see how it wouldn’t slow down if the number of spontaneous births decreased by some appreciable amount. According to this cite, 49% of pregnancies in the US are unintended pregnancies. I imagine the percentage is the same or higher across the world, especially since it is still hard it is to get contraception in lots of places. If we were to shave this rate down by just a couple of points, global population growth certainly would slow down.
I wonder if the downward trend in teenage pregnancies corresponds to the upward trend in youth obesity. Overall US fertility rates are also going down. Is it because we’re getting fatter? Or are we just too busy playing on our portable devices to care about procreative sex? Inquiring minds want to know.
Lol all this made me think of is my obese friend who recently started dating an equally obese man and her telling me how difficult it is for them to have sex and how they have to resort to only mostly only performing oral sex on each other.
Making sex uncomfortable, that could be one way it could turn out to slightly reduce population growth.
Weight does have an effect on fertility- and maintenance of pregnancy- and difficulties delivering (think fat dystocia). However, the same weight related insulin resistance in obese women that increases polycystic ovaries INCREASES testosterone levels, which are directly related to libido.
As has been said, there is no global obesity epidemic, just regional ones perhaps, so it can’t possibly have global implications. I’m currently in Romania, and I see no obesity epidemic here, and the CIA publication cited confirms this.