Obesity Epidemic and the Food Police

One week ago I wrote about correlation and how it can go wrong by assuming a relationship between two outcomes that may not be valid.  An example given was the common occurrence of both gum disease and heart problems in the same person, which turn out to be not necessarily related as cause and effect.

There is a similar danger with extrapolation, taking a set of data for some time period and projecting it into the future to predict changes.  Extrapolation can be very tricky and is often misleading when all factors are not accounted for or are poorly understood.  One example was given in my comments on climate change (April 27, 2012) where one of the main proponents now says that perhaps he overstated his case.  (Interestingly,  he says he would not have changed his original prediction because that’s the kind of hyperbole that sells books.)  As another quick example consider recent warnings about five-dollar gasoline for this summer that have now been revised downward.  Extrapolation can be dangerous.

Early last week all the news agencies and networks blasted us with dire predictions by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that the obesity epidemic continues and that 42% of Americans will be obese by 2030.  There are several reasons not to panic.  First, this is just another extrapolation, and we know how unreliable they can be.  Second, it’s something that can be controlled through behavior, but not everyone agrees about that.

There are many examples available of how people can change their behavior and successfully lose weight (including a reality TV show).  Here is an interview with a British actress from last summer.  Pauline Quirke was grossly overweight.  The article refers to her weight in stone (abbreviated st, which equals 14 pounds) so I’ll do the conversion.  In early 2011 she weighed 272 pounds but lost around 100 pounds at the time of the article and is aiming to lose another 20 – and keep it off.  Her motivation came from having a hip replacement before she was 50 years old and not wanting another.  Regardless of motivation, it’s possible to lose weight and keep it off.  If enough Americans are determined to do it, we can make liars of the CDC and be better off for it.

More disturbing though is this article that followed near the middle of last week asserting that it’s not our fault, that we can’t do anything about it.  We are victims of the society and the way our culture has developed.  People have been told about diet and exercise for years; so various parties have given up on voluntary behavior change, instead considering a bunch of heavy-handed political solutions involving, among other things, taxes, tax incentives and more regulations and requirements for schools.  Can you see how these ideas become a direct attack on our freedom?  I guarantee that this will happen (and has happened in the past) each time we don’t take responsibility.  If we don’t fix it ourselves, others will step in with their mandates, programs and artificial incentives, excusing this outside interference as being in the interest of public health.  The choice is clear on this and so many other issues - start doing for ourselves or have "help" inflicted on us.