posted by meowser
Greetings. I do have a couple of “real posts” in the works, but in the meantime I want to make great gushies over the fact that Paul Campos is now blogging at Lawyers, Guns and Money, and he has a couple of posts up there where he takes on the Obesity Epi-Panic in his usual inimimimimitable fashion, and takes on the concerntroll blabatariat one on one too. Wewt!
From Monday’s post called Obesity Apocalypse:
The most laughable is the idea that by 2048 everybody in the US will be “overweight” or “obese.” This result was derived via statistical extrapolation, the crack cocaine of social science analysis (by similar methods one could prove that within a few generations Olympic sprinters will be running at speeds that will hurl them into low Earth orbit and everyone in America will have a plasma TV seventeen miles wide).
ROOOOOOOOL.
And at no extra charge, he breaks down NHANES III data on BMI and mortality to demonstrate yet again that people are freaking out over nothing; based on BMI at entry into the survey (not BMI at time of death) the lowest rates of excess mortality are in the “overweight” range of 25-29.9; the second lowest are in the “obesity I” range of 30-34.9 (oh yes they are!); the third lowest are in the so-called “normal” range of 18.5-24.9 that we’re all supposed to be killing ourselves trying to reach if we’re over it; and the “underweight” range, which includes most of the models and actresses who have that Glow of Good Health we’re instructed to envy the living shit outta, has THREE TIMES the excess mortality of people in the supposed Instant Fatty Death BMI range of 35+. Not, of course, that most of us can consciously do jackshit about any of it regardless of where our BMI lives, but there ya go.
Like they say, read the whole thing. And read this whole thing too; in “The Real Drug War,” Campos discusses the drug companies’ role in whipping up more Fat Panic in order to sell more pills, and how they’re starting in on the kids now that they’ve saturated the market for adults.
More Campos means more happy! Go get ‘em, Paul!
August 6, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Paul seriously rocks and that is a very interesting blog, I’m going to have to add it to one of my blog rolls for regular reading.
August 6, 2008 at 7:08 pm
You know, screw the media-hype about thin folks fulfilling their genetic duty and populating the world with more thin people. I think the gene pool would be benefited more by folks such as this fellow procreating BRAINS into the populace.
That might be the snark talking. Seriously though, this guy rox all kinds of sox.
August 6, 2008 at 7:22 pm
You said it — he is awesome.
I wonder if he’s working on a new book.
August 7, 2008 at 11:10 am
Not sure why he switched from predictions of obesty RATES to refer to a paper calculating risks of excessive DEATHS ASSOCIATED with various BMI categories. Actual NHANES data and an explanation of statistics alone show the predictions of 100% obesity rates to be nonsense. Still, in the Flegal paper he cited, their calculation based on the latest NHANES data did not show that the overweight category had lowest mortality, followed by obese – those are the figures that included smokers and didn’t adjust for smoking – a CONFOUNDING factor. The figures for nonsmokers (eliminating the effects of smoking) revealed the lowest mortalities in obese, class I.
Sadly, he wrongly attributes most weight gain to the fat people (not getting the mathematical phenomenon of scalability of bell curves and body size), reinforcing the popular myth among the readers that the obesity epidemic is because of the fat people.
August 7, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Sandy, do you know where I could find the data for that anywhere online? I looked everywhere and it looked to me like you had to purchase it. The abstract for the Flegal paper in the American Journal of Epidemiology about the impact of smoking does not state this, so it’s likely that Campos was not citing this particular paper; it’s probably this one from JAMA since it is available online. If in fact it’s even more topsy-turvy than he suggests — that “obesity I” has the lowest premature death rates adjusting for smoking — that would be fabulous information for us to have.
August 9, 2008 at 10:50 am
There is definitely a connection (IMO) between the Ritalin they dose the kids with for ADD, and the meth epidemic. I hadn’t thought about the diet-pill connection, but it makes sense that this is also a major contributor to the cause.
Thanks for the link!
September 4, 2008 at 11:20 am
damn, damn, damn – I was really looking forward to the 17-mile plasma TV. .. .
December 15, 2008 at 3:33 am
[...] Paul Campos points out that measured by mortality, it’s healthier to be “overweight” — or even mildly “obese” — than to be “normal” weight. Via Fat Fu. [...]