Killing Your Sacred Cows since 1992

I haven't seen the first three parts, but I watched the trailer for the series and all of part 4. I tortured myself by sitting through the whole thing just so I could report back to you guys! And also leave HAES-friendly literature behind for participants and organizers.

Here's a slightly modified version of what I just posted to Facebook:

Went to a showing of Part 4 of the "Weight of the Nation" (Obesity Epidemic Panic Oh My) documentary, followed by discussion, last night. It wasn't as bad as I expected, but I did write down at least 6 pieces of misleading to downright factually incorrect information, plus more subtle un-truths through graphics. And our tax money paid for this crap. I did like the discussion of food politics (farm subsidies, food marketing & advertisment, etc.) and the focus on shaping cities to be more friendly toward exercise.

Factually incorrect: The next generation of children will have shorter lives than us because of obesity. UNTRUE. We've been living longer and longer as we get fatter, and the next generation of children is projected to have a longer lifespan.

Factually incorrect: The people shown in the opening credits are typical of the average overweight or obese American. FALSE. The people pictured and quoted at the opening of each episode are well in excess of 35 BMI, some well over 50 BMI. Those people comprise 8 percent or less of all overweight or obese Americans. Most "overweight" Americans would have been in the normal range before the government changed the definition of "overweight" in 1998 from a cut-off of 27 to a cut-off of 25.

Factually incorrect: The number of calories consumed per person has skyrocked by hundreds from the 1960s to the present. FALSE. The numbers often cited by the anti-obesity crusaders refers NOT to calories consumed but calories PRODUCED and they rarely make it clear that many of the food calories produced are a) fed to livestock or b) diverted to industrial use (i.e. soybeans) and not consumed.

Factually incorrect: Most overweight and fat people are that way because they're out of control with food. FALSE. Many studies have shown that we have a set range of weight, and it's hard to eat ourselves much fatter or starve oursevles much thinner because our body clings to that set point/set range. Google "Ancel Keys" and do some reading.

Factually incorrect: Commentator points to all the fast food joints on a block and says "You could eat your way to obesity just on this block." FALSE. You cannot eat your way to obesity. Even the NIH's own info suggests that our genes account for anywere from 60 to 80 percent of the variation in body sizes and shapes.

Also, folks from the Association for Size Diversity and Health contacted the documentary makers, asking to include some information about "Health at Every Size" and were rebuffed. That's too bad, because an HAES approach has been showed to be effective in dealing with metabolic disorders regardless of how much weight is loss (even if it's none).

Food politics really can get me riled up. I totally am down with eating local, supporting people using organic practices, etc. but I hate seeing people use these movements- which should be positive- to beat themselves up for not doing enough. Especially women, who already have a lot of pressure on them to "eat right" in a society where there are so many different definitions of that phrase.

First, my creds:

My parents grew gardens that I helped out in as a kid, and my dad taught me a bit about wildcrafting, though I didn't know it was a word for it then and just thought of it as "eating wild things that scare other people who only eat food from a supermarket." I'm a mostly vegetarian- I eat a bit of fish a few times a month, but otherwise eat lacto-ovo vegetarian. We buy free-range eggs and organic produce as much as possible. I purchase from local farmers markets and local produce stands as much as I can. I pick produce at local U-Pick farms. I got a CSA farm share last year and am doing it again this summer. I've grown pots of herbs or a small (organic) garden nearly every year I've owned my own house (since 2000).

So, believe me, I'm not some reactionary that doesn't believe in eating local, organic gardening, etc.

However, I also don't deify the celebrities of the local foods/food politics movements. I like Michael Pollan, but I think he's overhyped. I never got why people were so hysterical about gentically-modified foods. After all, we've been modifying plants and animals for centuries (one of my commenters notes it's milennia, really)  with selective breeding/planting. But, Pollan explains in "The Botany of Desire" that the new GM foods aren't anything that could happen by natural or human selection- these GM plants often include genes from bacteria or animals, crosses that wouldn't happen in a traditional farmyard or garden. So, I can see why we should be cautious.

Still, he's kind of a hypocrite to fear offering a potato salad made of GM potatoes at a potluck when he's totally OK with smoking pot- we know for a fact that human intervention has changed the marijuana plant DRASTICALLY from its ancient form.

And Barbara Kingsolver?

I listened to "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" as a book on CD over the last week. As per usual with much of this sort of writing about food and food politics, I LOVE the specifics but get cranky with the more philosophical/political passages. I like her food experiment of eating mosty local (with a few exceptions) for a year, and I'm making plans to eat more locally, especially in the summer when that's easier and less expensive.

However, I had -- let's say 'issues'-- with several parts of that book. 

1. I didn't buy her rationalization for why we should speak of 'harvesting' animals rather than use "slaughter" or "kill." Please understand that I'm totally OK with her eating chickens she raised herself, but 'harvesting' is still a euphemism.

2. She repeats, not just once but TWICE, the now-debunked assertion that the "childhood-obesity-crisis-OMG" means that this generation of children will have shorter lives than their parents. This is, to put it plainly, bullshit nonsense.

3. Her husband, who co-authored, also references the "obesity crisis" once too often for my taste.

4. Her daughter contributes sidebars about nutrition and made an error in referring to LDL as the "good cholesterol." It's not. The "good" cholesterol is "HDL" and that is an embarrassing mistake.

ETA: 5. Kingsolver uses embarrassingly sloppy shortcuts for some ideas. For instance, she refers to an organic farmer as "not wanting to put chemicals" on his land. Uh, Barbara, as someone with a degree in evolutionary biology, you should know that all life, including organic cow manure, is made up of "chemicals." That was an ignorant thing to write, and should have been phrased something more like "synthetic herbicides and pesticides."

Don't get me wrong- I'm glad I read the book, and I really do believe in eating local and many of the other greater goods that progressives preach about. But I'm not always crazy about some of the bullshit that seems to come along with food politics discussions.

Sandy again has a great post about how programs to fight the so-called "obesity epidemic" through getting kids to eat more fruits and veggies tend to be dismal failures. On the whole, children already know that they should be eating 5 fruits and veggies a day, and the most rigorous studies show that these interventions -at best- get kids eating a whole whopping half a fruit or veggie more per day after months of propaganda. As the article notes, the kids hear this propaganda over and over and eventually just tune it out.

As I was reading, I couldn't help wonder if  hammering home health lessons was the wrong approach. What if they actually taught ways to make cooking and baking with fruits and veggies more fun and flavorful and emphasized how good these foods can taste?

Oh no, we couldn't have kids thinking you ever eat food because it tastes good. You should ONLY eat food that makes you healthy, no matter what it tastes like.

More good sense from Paul Campos (author of "The Obesity Myth"), though it's not like the most fat-phobic out there are going to read it and take it to heart.

Don't feed the humans!

Excerpt:


The reaction of America's leading "obesity" experts to the latest study on the issue demonstrates yet again that our current definition of the word "overweight" makes no sense. Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health's fumed that the new findings were "rubbish." His colleague JoAnn Manson found the study, authored by Katherine Flegal and others, and published in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association, "very puzzling." After all, for "overweight" people to be healthier than "healthy weight" people just doesn't seem logically or linguistically possible.

How did we get into this mess? First, the relevant definitions: According to public health authorities in America and around the world, people are "overweight" if they have a body mass index between 25 and 30 (for a 5'4" woman this is between 145 and 173 pounds; a 5'10" man fits the category if he weighs between 174 and 208 pounds).

A decade ago, when I began to study the relationship between weight and health, I was struck by the almost total lack of medical justification for labeling people in this weight range "overweight." Since then, the situation has become considerably more absurd...

...

Still, when the entire public health establishment has put its stamp of approval on a definition, those who have staked their professional reputations on the accuracy of that definition aren't going to be deterred by something like, well, evidence. Predictably, Willett, who has been perhaps the most prominent proponent of the idea that people ought to try to maintain very low weights, was outraged by the latest refutation of his theories: "It's just ludicrous to say there is no increased risk of mortality from being overweight," he told The Washington Post.

What's actually ludicrous is that Occam's razor has yet to be employed to explain the "very puzzling" result that, once again, "overweight" people have been found to enjoy better health than "healthy weight" people. The definition of "overweight" promulgated by Willett, Manson, and their colleagues makes no sense. Many "puzzling" results cease to puzzle when one stops abusing the English language.

http://medjournalwatch.blogspot.com/2007/08/interview-with-linda-bacon-on-weight.html

excerpt:
CB: You disagree with the majority of weight experts. They tell us that overweight is one of the leading causes of premature death, for instance from heart attacks, but also from diabetes and other diseases. Why do you disagree?

LB: I disagree because I have looked at the evidence. Reputable studies, published in well-respected, peer-reviewed journals, actually show that people in the "overweight" category live longer than those in the "normal" weight category.

CB: And what makes you sure that you are right and they are wrong?

LB: My experience from having worked closely with many obesity researchers who are more conventionally-minded than me is that they are so strongly mired in their assumptions, that they don't look at the evidence. Those that willingly engage, change their beliefs. The evidence is quite convincing.


x-posted all over the damn place

In my last post, I swapped one innaccurate metaphor (carrying "extra" body weight being like hauling around a backpack with X pounds in it) for another (athletes wearing arm and ankle bands). Of course, as it was pointed out, athletes don't carry around their ankle bands and wrist bands or weighted vests 24/7.

However, very fat people don't get very fat instantly, either. They've often been heavy for a long time and have put on their mass quite slowly, giving their muscles, joints, tendons, and bones plenty of time to get strong enough to move that mass around. Some thin celebrities have been getting into the whole "fat suit" craze in Hollywood lately, and some have remarked on how limited they feel their movement is in the fat suit. Well, if someone gave me a fat suit that doubled MY body weight instantaneously, I'd also take some time to adjust to my new dimensions. But someone who has been that size for a long time could probably move with considerable grace and efficiency.

I think that someone who is naturally meant to be around 130 lbs. pounds but, because of a serious medical condition, balloons up to 200 pounds in one year could very possible feel uncomfortable and even immobilized in a way that I definitely do NOT feel at 208 pounds, a weight I have hovered around for five years or so. I think some people who are meant to be thin but temporarily gain a lot of weight quickly are definitely going to feel it in a different way than say Jennifer Portnick, a 240-pound Jazzercize instructor who stood up to Jazzercize and won, and who was, last I checked, teaching aerobics classes six days a week. Or Kelly Bliss , an aerobics instructor whose BMI is squarely within the "obese" range and who teaches aerobics classes five days a week and estimates that she walks an additional 10 hours a week because she doesn't own a car.

Do I think that some people who are heavy feel better when they're smaller? Absolutely! I'm not discounting anyone else's personal experience of feeling better or worse at different weights. But I don't think it's a universal at all that larger people feel burdened or immobilized by their size.

http://www.nature.com/ijo/journal/v21/n9/pdf/0800473a.pdf

Being heavier and having extra fat (NOT just extra muscle) seems to be protective against osteoporosis. The extra padding from extra fat also lessens the likelihood of hip fractures in the elderly, and hip fractures are known to be highly associated with poor health and mortality outcomes for seniors.

Thanks to stacycat69 for the links.

Link between "overweight" and "obesity" and early mortality not so straight-forward.

http://www.theheart.org/article/732559.do
http://www.annals.org/cgi/content/abstract/119/7_Part_2/737

The classic example of this is "When ice cream sales are high, so are murder rates. So ice cream consumption must cause murders." Of course, there's no causation there; ice cream sales and murder rates just both happen to go up when the weather is hot. Other examples can be found here:

http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html#correlation

There are a lot of arguments about the dangers of obesity that rely on this fallacy. People assume that because there's some (but not as much as we're lead to believe by the popular media) correlation between increasing weight and increasing incidents of certain diseases and premature death that obesity causes these diseases and premature death. But when you factor out certain lifestyle elements, such as activity, consumption of fruit and vegetables, and smoking, the picture becomes more complicated. It's more likely that lack of activity and poor eating habits both contribute to obesity and to ill health, not that obesity causes ill health in and of itself, since people who are obese but who exercise regularly have virtually the same life expectancy as thinner, active people.

This fallacy has also mislead some people to be anti-vaccination because of the supposed correlation between exposure to mercury in vaccines and the rising rates of autism. As more children have been vaccinated, the argument goes, more cases of autism have occurred. Therefore, the mercury in vaccines must be causing autism. There are no well done studies that show any link between the mercury in vaccines and autism. What is more likely going on is that over the years, screening is catching more cases of autism in children AND the criteria for diagnosing mild forms of autism have broadened, resulting in larger numbers of children being diagnosed as autistic, not necessarily that there are many, many more causes of autism occurring than in previous years.

On the other hand, you can't entirely ignore strong correlations in medical studies; this is exactly how we found out that tobacco smoking causes cancer. The strong correlative evidence between cigarette smoking an rates of cancer is something like *900 times stronger thank the link between obesity and most diseases it supposedly contributes to. And, we also understand something more about the mechanism of how tobacco smoking causes cancer, which lends additional evidence besides the correlative evidence to the smoking/cancer link.

* I remember the numbers being something close to that according to Glenn Gaesser in "Big Fat Lies" but I don't have the actual number in front of me. Post to be updated with exact number when I can track it down.

Even those who are squarely within the BMI range for "obesity" can become fitter, less stressed, and improve their blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and other health meaures without major weight loss (average weight loss was less than 6 pounds):

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16038345/from/RS.2/