Obesity and fads

Today's radio-noon phone-in on CBC was about obesity. They discussed BMIs and how many people consider their target weight for height to be irrationally low and also how using weight to discover BMI is problematic in fit people. The part that got me listening however was the university health sciences professor guest talking about how overblown we've made the issue of weight.

I've been putting a bug in peoples' ears for some time now that weight isn't the issue people have made it out to be. There's a lot of money in fad diets, in diet books, in weight loss classes, in seminars and in all sorts of health clubs and such. Having paranoid people willing to spend money to save their lives is good for business, but its not necessarily valid at all. Study after study is showing that obesity (yeah, obesity) is not a major cause of health problems nor a major function of longevity.

"Hold the phone, yes it is!" I can almost hear you thinking, but no, its not. As the guest was pointing out, studies done in Europe have shown that people with above average and even extremely high weights have better average health than those within the target BMI zone and are much healthier than those in the lower ranges of weight for their height.

Even as a predictor of longevity, ethnicity, housing, income and job provide about 56% estimation of longevity of a population (according to Statistics Canada), and weight provides about 1% more data. Just one percent. Obesity is not the problem its being made out to be.

The guest also kindly crunched out some numbers, like that an order of magnitude more people die each year from air pollution than from complications of being overweight. Even those conditions thought to most be related to weight such as heart disease or diabetes are just barely statistical indicators compared to livelihood and stress.

So what's wrong with wanting to be slimmer? Well people actually die from being under-weight. People actually have very high health risks associated with low BMI. Also, although being in shape may increase your chances of living a happy, healthy life, that does not necessarily mean being lighter on the scales. More importantly, obsessing over your weight will lead to stress, which really is a major cause of diseases leading to death.

See also: software to make faces more beautiful.