The epidemiology of overweight and obesity: public health crisis or moral panic?

National and international health organizations have focused increasingly on a perceived obesity epidemic said to pose drastic threats to public health. Indeed, some medical experts have gone so far as to predict that growing body mass will halt and perhaps even reverse the millennia-long trend of rising human life expectancy.1 In response to such concerns public health agencies across the world have sprung into action, searching for policies or incentives to mitigate the alleged ‘disease’ of obesity.

Yet even as the volume of alarm grows louder, a growing number of researchers, drawn from a broad array of academic disciplines, are calling these claims into question. The authors of this article come from this latter group. In our view the available scientific data neither support alarmist claims about obesity nor justify diverting scarce resources away from far more pressing public health issues. This article evaluates four central claims made by those who are calling for intensifying the war on fat: that obesity is an epidemic; that overweight and obesity are major contributors to mortality; that higher than average adiposity is pathological and a primary direct cause of disease; and that significant long-term weight loss is both medically beneficial and a practical goal. Given the limited scientific evidence for any of these claims, we suggest that the current rhetoric about an obesity-driven health crisis is being driven more by cultural and political factors than by any threat increasing body weight may pose to public health.

Claim #1: 'Almost all countries (high-income and low-income alike) are experiencing an obesity epidemic ... WHO, 2003 (p. 61).2

The claim that we are seeing an ‘epidemic’ of overweight and obesity implies an exponential pattern of growth typical of epidemics. The available data do not support this claim. Instead, what we have seen, in the US, is a relatively modest rightward skewing of average weight on the distribution curve, with people of lower weights gaining little or no weight, and the majority of people weighing 3–5 kg more than they did a generation ago.3 The average American's weight gain can be explained by 10 extra calories a day, or the equivalent of a Big Mac once every 2 months. Exercise equivalents would be a few minutes of walking every day. This is hardly the orgy of fast food binging and inactivity widely thought to be to blame for the supposed fat explosion...


http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/35/1/55

And even if there was, there's absolutely nothing they can do about it, because they're so completely and utterly powerless.

(shrug) Rock on.

I'm perfectly happy eating 3000 or so calories per day, and playing basketball, snowboarding, etc. They can be happy however they want to be.

From what I have seen most really huge people are either uber rich white male executives or poor women. There are exceptions, naturally, but if the powers that be don't feel poor women are worthy of the extra medical care dollars then maybe they should think about springing for better education and job opportunities so they can afford decent food. As for the fat asses on the other end of the scale, I won't lose much sleep if they croak out at 50. It won't even take 24 hrs for some other fat rich white guy to step in and take up the responsibility for treating the world's environment, resources and workers like shit.

"So what if the so-called ‘obesity epidemic’ is largely an illusion? What if higher than average weight turns out to have neither much medical nor moral significance? The answer to these questions, all of which we believe are strongly suggested by the epidemiological literature, go far beyond the issues of body mass and health. The current scientific evidence should prompt health professionals and policy makers to consider whether it makes sense to treat body weight as a barometer of public health. It should also make us pause to consider how propagating the idea of an ‘obesity epidemic’ furthers the political and economic interests of certain groups, while doing immense damage to those whom it blames and stigmatizes."


Always follow the money. Don't be a tool.

If they actually cared about you, they would talk to you like an adult.

saw anyone who was morbidly obese. You didn't often see people who were simply obese. Now, just go to a grocery or discount store or to the movies or anywhere at all and you see overweight, fat, obese, and morbidly obese people. There are a lot more of them out there. We have all gotten so used to seeing so many people along the overweight spectrum that normal weight looks thin to us.

I am more and more coming to the conclusion that obesity may actually have some kind of a viral cause. Yes, I know we are all surrounded by food, and that there's a lot of really crappy food out that can help pack on the pounds and all of that. But I keep on remembering that for decades scientists rigorously denied that ulcers could be caused by a virus.

Will someone who knows enlighten us? I suspect its our environmental degradation and chemical poisoning on all levels.