Alarming headlines last week read, “ Obese Americans now outweigh the merely overweight.” The story cites a report from the National Center for Health Statistics.
As near as I can tell, the actual report being cited says that changes in obesity rates are “not statistically significant.” In other words, the survey results are not accurate enough to say that obesity rates have actually increased. That is a lot less alarming.
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Of course, as Fark.com repeatedly reminds us, stories like “not statistically significant” do not sell newspapers (and other media). Instead, newspapers are sold by stories like “OMG we are getting fatter every year!” Unfortunately, alarming-but-wrong stories like the one about obesity just lead to justification for a bigger nanny state.
There may actually be a growing problem with obese children, and that is most likely due to parents who won’t let their precious little snowflakes out of their sight. Better to let them play Nintendo than to allow the out of doors where they might be unsupervised. Most of what you hear about obesity, however, deserves to be classified as junk science.
There may actually be a growing problem with obese children, and that is most likely due to parents who won’t let their precious little snowflakes out of their sight.
JK: What else can responsible parents do when they find themselves trapped in a planner’s paradise, crime infested, over-priced (but only affordable housing in the area) apartment ghetto? Unlike the, out of planner favor, single family home, there is no back yard, and no time to spend in the park with the kid, so they have to stay in or go out and play with the drug gangs.
Thanks
JK
Most of what you hear about obesity, however, deserves to be classified as junk science
See: first comment in thread.
As near as I can tell, the actual report being cited says that changes in obesity rates are “not statistically significant.†In other words, the survey results are not accurate enough to say that obesity rates have actually increased
Your second sentence doesn’t necessarily follow your first. In other words, statistical significance is not only a function of accuracy.
Your other conclusions don’t necessarily hold, either. In particular, the claim that “Obese Americans now outweigh the merely overweight” and “changes in obesity rates are ‘not statistically significant'” are not mutually exclusive, as you would apparently have us believe.
Just because increases in obesity rates are not statistically significant doesn’t mean that the number of obese can’t be greater than the number of overweight.
The first report’s headline doesn’t claim that increases in obesity have been statistically significant: it claims “Obese Americans now outweigh the merely overweight.” Those are two different things, and the actual claim doesn’t require statistically significant increases in obesity rates.
JK: “What else can responsible parents do when they find themselves trapped in a planner’s paradise, crime infested, over-priced (but only affordable housing in the area) apartment ghetto? Unlike the, out of planner favor, single family home, there is no back yard, and no time to spend in the park with the kid, so they have to stay in or go out and play with the drug gangs.”
Pretty ironic Jim, considering that before the PLANNING of suburbia (by implementing use-based zoning), there seemed to be less of this fear of letting kids from your sight. Many of today’s grandparents recall walking to school or going down to the corner store or wherever on their own, even as elementary-age children. My own grandmother lived in Washington Heights, Manhattan, and even at the age of 8 was allowed to walk to school or nearby relative’s houses on her own.
Yes, this is anecdotal, but I bet there are a LOT of anecdotes to back it up.
It is expected that there is a flood of conservatarian commenters commenting on this study, the latest in a long line of reminders from the public health folks that our sedentary lifestyles, built environments, work, and industrial agriculture products’ marketing and packaging is making us fat.
Every time a reminder comes out, there is a long line of conservatarian columnists arguing that BMI is bunk, th’ gummint cain’t tell me whut ta eat, people are free to make themselves fat as long as others pay their insurance premiums and other argumentation along these lines. The weak, unfounded arguments are always the same, use the same dog-whistle talking points, use the same cherry-picking and data mining.
I suspect that this ideology finds overweight people an uncomfortable indicator that humans being totally in control and able to control their actions is a fiction.
This obvious fiction undermines their ideology. So BMI must be demonized by any way possible, including hasty generalization, cherry-picking, demonization, quote mining, arguments from ignorance, false equivalence and other standard rhetorical tactics.
Yes, it appears that The Invisible Hand spends a lot of time stuffing people’s mouths with cheap corn products and overprocessed “food” in expensive packaging.
The Invisible Hand (TM) not being able to control its High Fructose Corn Syrup-cramming is convenient for the diet industry, the medical industry, the insurance industry, the cancer industry, lawyers, and the food industry, but inconvenient for the ideology maintenance industry.
DS
I will say, however that I agree with this:
and that is most likely due to parents who won’t let their precious little snowflakes out of their sight. Better to let them play Nintendo than to allow the out of doors where they might be unsupervised.
Our precious little snowflake is one of the only ones walking to and from school. Our discussions about how pathetic it is that most of these mouth-breathing chimps drive their spawn three blocks to school always end up with the presumption that she will be far more fit, resilient, and able to compete with these weak peers.
On a personal level that’s great, but this gene pool will be a huge boat anchor on our society. [/rant]
DS
JK Said: “What else can responsible parents do when they find themselves trapped in a planner’s paradise, crime infested, over-priced (but only affordable housing in the area) apartment ghetto? Unlike the, out of planner favor, single family home, there is no back yard, and no time to spend in the park with the kid, so they have to stay in or go out and play with the drug gangs.”
This must be why Houston is one of Americas fattest cities and Portland one of the fittest. But you’re sort of right Karlock. Studies have shown that populations with low income that are undereducated have a strong correlation to obese populations. But it does make me wonder why so many of the elite athletes in America come from these “apartment ghettos.” Statistical outnumbers I suppose.
We must keep in mind that fear drives the false assertion that density = crime. And fear drives the knee-jerking about BMI and obesity. Statistics won’t overcome someone choosing to be afraid (or is the choice to be afraid all the time hard-wired? Some researchers think so).
DS
The single-family house with the backyard model was meant to replace the concept of a ‘park’. Most cities have a large portion of land allocated to parks and open spaces. Specifically in Portland, Forest Park is one of the nation’s largest urban parks.
Backyards are nice, but many are not large enough or flat enough (depending on the area) to even throw a ball or even be used for recreation. Personally, I would rather give up a bit of SF of a backyard (and have my front yard reduced in size as well) and have it utilized for larger contiguous open space – so you can actually do something in that space (But hey, that’s just me). It’s hard to play football in typical American backyards (of course you’ll try and dispute this notion and blame the UGB).
Who would have know that you would support those “crazy” New-Urbanists with their large open spaces and parks integrated into their master plans, afterall? You’re getting soft on us, JK.
Sorry if this is OT, but it relates well to obesity and why children are not as active as they could/should be. Hint: Modern-day suburbia does not promote recreational activities through well designed parks and open spaces – these are mere after thoughts in many places.
ROT: Is Obesity Increasing?
Alarming headlines last week read, “ Obese Americans now outweigh the merely overweight.†The story cites a report from the National Center for Health Statistics.
THWM: So much for much for energy problems.
Modern-day suburbia does not promote recreational activities through well designed parks and open spaces – these are mere after thoughts in many places.
Some of this is street network design – the connectivity is poor making going from A to B extra distance (see this article for more). That is: because much of suburbia was not designed for non-motorized transport, walking is hard. People get fat. Not hard to understand, although some ideologies refuse to see it…
————
At any rate, I am currently doing some trials in my garden for gardening solutions for extending the season – product testing. I think we’ll see a lot more suburban yawns…er…lawns become gardens and I’m going to be there consulting and providing products. At least that’s one good thing you can get out of these mostly underused spaces.
DS
ROT: There may actually be a growing problem with obese children, and that is most likely due to parents who won’t let their precious little snowflakes out of their sight.
THWM: That is a problem if children lead over protected lives, be they in urban, suburban or rural environments.
JK: What else can responsible parents do when they find themselves trapped in a planner’s paradise, crime infested, over-priced (but only affordable housing in the area) apartment ghetto?
THWM: There are suburbs that can be very ghetto like too.
JK:Unlike the, out of planner favor, single family home, there is no back yard, and no time to spend in the park with the kid, so they have to stay in or
THWM: Well if your children are just going to be in front of the TV playing with their Wii all day, they aren’t going to make it out side.
JK:go out and play with the drug gangs.
THWM: Get real Karlock, I live in the burbs too, crime happens every where. I’ve seen drug deals take place at suburban mall parking lots and my father also once had his car stolen at a suburban mall parking lot.
Then we can also throw in things like in home invaision.
On that note of urban gardening, Dan, are you into the heritage seeds movement at all? You’ve anecdotaly mentioned ecological work.
IMHO, there are two issues that result in fat kids. First, most people as terrible at risk assessment as they are at cost/benefit analysis. They tend to overstate the risk of dramatic and unlikely events at the expense of more common and boring (if equally devastating) events. A given person might fear a stranger abducting their child more than anything in the world, whereas in fact their child has far more risk and danger from heart attack or diabetes.
In an average year there are approximately 50-100 stereotypical kidnappings or abductions. No more than in the 60’s btw. This is about the same number as are killed by lightning, & plane crashes. An average of 25 kids drown in 5 gal. buckets every year for cri**t sake.
Over 40,000 people die in auto accidents but people don’t think twice about driving Junior to school to save him from abduction.
Anyway, number 2 is the non-stop media attention the 1 child abduction per week gets. I think FOX has a show that only covers them. If every-time you turn on the news you see a story about an abduction, even though it is a different one about once per week you assume that every third kid is being snatched and that you better follow that stupid talking head’s advise to never let them out of your sight.
It is sort of like seeing someone on the news with a giant check from the lottery. It might not occur to you the the chances of buying a winning ticket are statistically the same as your chance of finding the winning ticket on the sidewalk.
I don’t think anyone disagrees with the media overplaying the situation, or any news story for that matter, to which I will agree with ROT on this post. However, obesity, heart disease, and diabetes is definitely a major social and economic issue in the US.
t g:
I trade heirloom seeds on a limited basis with folks nearby – tomatoes and peppers. I only grow one plant of each heirloom type so I don’t get that many seeds (square foot gardener).
DS
johngalt: aaaa-men bruddah.
DS
Dan,
Know of any books on the history of the heritage plants/food movement? Or any leads on heritage plants as preservation – not for biodiversity necessarily, but as a cultural history.
t g,
Ethnobotany is a rich field of study and it is likely there is a paper for your area. I did an EB paper for southern MT and learned as much about the culture as the plants.
Seedsavers has an excellent forum that should be helpful, Seedstrust for the west.
An old GF had these two very enjoyable books [ 1. , B. ], enjoyable stories and instruction.
HTH. Let me know if these are the wrong directions you were going.
DS
Dan Says:
I trade heirloom seeds on a limited basis with folks nearby – tomatoes and peppers. I only grow one plant of each heirloom type so I don’t get that many seeds (square foot gardener).
THWM: It’s good to know that Dan you are talking about recreational farming and not like JK who just seems to talk about recreational pharming.
Dan,
Thanks for the direction.