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The myth of an ‘obesity tsunami’

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 20:29:00 GMT

Tuesday 19 January 2010
The myth of an ‘obesity tsunami’
Recent figures on both sides of the Atlantic suggest claims of an epidemic of weight-related illness are grossly exagerrated.
Basham and Luik

Everyone knows The Truth about obesity: we’re getting fatter each year. Our growing girth is termed everything from the ‘pandemic of the twenty-first century’ to an ‘obesity tsunami’. But the evidence is now flooding in from both America and England that obesity is the epidemic that never was.

Two studies produced by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and published last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association – one about obesity in children and adolescents, and the other about adult obesity – completely undermine the claims of an obesity epidemic.

Both studies are based on information from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 2007-08, which is a representative sample of the American population. The survey measured the heights and weights of 3,281 children and adolescents and 219 infants and toddlers, as well as 5,555 adult women and men. The study of children and adolescents looked at the body mass index (BMI) of children and adolescents over five time periods between 1999 and 2008, the decade during which child obesity was widely described as America’s preeminent public health problem.

The results are striking. During none of the five periods was there a statistically significant trend, except for boys at the highest BMI levels. In other words, if there was a spike in obesity, it was confined to a very small number of very obese boys.

What about the adult ‘couch potato’ generation? Here, again, the results put the lie to claims of an obesity tsunami. In the study of adults, the researchers also looked at obesity trends over the past decade. For women, there were no statistically significant changes in obesity prevalence over the entire decade, while for men there were no prevalence differences during the last five years of the decade. As the researchers note, obesity prevalence may have ‘entered another period of relative stability’.

A similar absence of an obesity epidemic is to be found in England. According to the Health Survey for England, which collected data from 7,500 children and almost 7,000 adults, there has been a decline in the prevalence of overweight and obesity for adult men, while for adult women prevalence has remained the same.

Comparing the results of the survey for 2007 with those of 2004, there have been either declines or no significant changes in male prevalence of overweight and obesity in all age groups from 16-54. As for children, the survey finds: ‘There was no significant change in mean BMI overweight/obesity prevalence between 2006 and 2007, and there are indications that the trend in obesity prevalence may have begun to flatten out over the last two to three years.’

For example, there was a decrease in obesity in girls aged two to 15 years old between 2005 and 2006, from 18 per cent in 2005 to 15 per cent in 2006. Among boys aged two to 10 years old, the prevalence of overweight declined from 16 per cent in 2005 to 12 per cent in 2006. According to the results, overweight and obesity have been declining amongst boys and girls aged two to 15 since 2004. In girls, obesity prevalence levels are largely unchanged from where they were in 2001.

The findings of the English survey not only contradict the claim that we are in the midst of an obesity epidemic, but they also debunk the public health establishment’s erroneous claim that increases in children’s weight are due to junkfood advertising and too many sugary soda drinks. According to the survey, the root cause of any weight gains that one does see appear to lie in physical activity levels. For example, ‘21 per cent of girls aged two to 15 in the low physical-activity group were classed as obese compared with 15 per cent of the high group’.

A similar pattern was found in the 2006 survey, which found that 33 per cent of girls aged two to 15 with low levels of physical activity were either overweight or obese compared with 27 per cent of those with high levels of physical activity. As with smoking, obesity prevalence was higher in both boys and girls in the lowest income group.

Clearly, governments’ current course of draconian regulatory treatment seeks to cure an illusory disease. The nanny state’s infatuation with an obesity epidemic that does not exist is a searing indictment of this particular public health crusade.

Patrick Basham directs the Democracy Institute and is a Cato Institute adjunct scholar. John Luik is a Democracy Institute senior fellow. They are co-authors, with Gio Gori, of Diet Nation: Exposing the Obesity Crusade, a Social Affairs Unit book. (Buy this book from Amazon(UK).)

In the News

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 02:50:00 GMT

Patrick Basham quoted on WHO tobacco control policy in the Associated Press

08-Dec-2009

WHO: Smoking kills 5 million every year
By MARIA CHENG (AP)

LONDON — Tobacco use kills at least 5 million people every year, a figure that could rise if countries don't take stronger measures to combat smoking, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.

In a new report on tobacco use and control, the U.N. agency said nearly 95 percent of the global population is unprotected by laws banning smoking. WHO said secondhand smoking kills about 600,000 people every year.

The report describes countries' various strategies to curb smoking, including protecting people from smoke, enforcing bans on tobacco advertising, and raising taxes on tobacco products. Those were included in a package of six strategies WHO unveiled last year, but less than 10 percent of the world's population is covered by any single measure.

"People need more than to be told that tobacco is bad for human health," said Douglas Bettcher, director of WHO's Tobacco-Free Initiative. "They need their governments to implement the WHO Framework Convention."

Most of WHO's anti-tobacco efforts are centered on the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, an international treaty ratified by nearly 170 countries in 2003. The convention theoretically obliges countries to take action to reduce tobacco use, though it is unclear if they can be punished for not taking adequate measures, since they can simply withdraw from the treaty.

Other experts questioned how effective WHO's strategies were.

"It's like the well-intentioned blind leading the blind," said Patrick Basham, director of the Democracy Institute, a London and Washington-based think tank. He said WHO's policies were based more on hope than evidence.

Basham said measures like increasing taxes on tobacco products and banning advertising don't address the root causes of why people smoke. Smoking levels naturally drop off — as they have in Western countries — when populations become richer and better-educated.

Tobacco use is the leading preventable cause of death and WHO estimates that, unless countries take drastic action, tobacco could kill about 8 million people every year by 2030, mostly in developing countries.

Basham said officials should focus on anti-poverty measures to stem the smoking problem, though that is beyond WHO's mandate as a health agency.

"The cynical view is that the anti-tobacco lobby has itself now become an industry and we will never be able to do enough to stop smoking," Basham said. "Tobacco use will change, but it has very little to do with the kinds of things WHO is promoting."

Democracy Institute

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 23:02:00 GMT

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Wed, 07 Apr 2010 17:48:00 GMT

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DEMOCRACY DEMANDS OUSTING THE INCUMBENT CLASS

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 14:01:00 GMT

Democracy Demands Ousting the Incumbent Class

These days, there are fewer and fewer competitive congressional elections. That is a very worrisome trend, because political competition matters a great deal.

More candidates for office and the increased turnover of representatives produce better choices for voters. Political competition also heightens voter interest, stimulates the adoption of distinctive policies by candidates and parties, and produces higher voter turnout. This is not the outcome our constitutional framers intended.

The House of Representatives was designed to be the legislative body most responsive to public opinion. But the decline in competitiveness makes the House less representative. This is not the outcome our constitutional framers intended.

The word election derives from the Latin electus, meaning, "to select," thereby implying choice, competition, and the possibility of both success and failure. But America's House of Representatives has Soviet-style reelection rates. An unindicted member of congress in good health stands a better than 99 percent chance of winning reelection.

Incumbents enjoy tremendous advantages over challengers, and the importance of holding public office has risen over time. Since the 1950s, the percentage of the vote that a candidate receives simply for incumbency has risen to 11 percent from just 2 percent.

There are now close to 400 safe congressional seats. Not only do incumbents win more often than they used to, but they win by increasingly wide margins. Today, 80 percent of House races produce landslide victories. One in five incumbents is returned to Washington following an uncontested race.

Incumbency is so entrenched that most voters lack any real say in who represents them. This sorry state of affairs is incompatible with a healthy political system.

Worse, congressmen have granted themselves several resources out of the public trough. These include the congressional franking privilege (search), large staffs, and unlimited travel between Washington and their districts. These subsidies alone are worth more than $1 million annually per House member.

Publicly financed careerism has significant negative consequences for the health of the political system. Yet, current redistricting (search) practices and campaign finance regulations (search) serve only to make a bad situation worse.

Redistricting has evolved into an electoral instrument to protect and strengthen the incumbency advantage. The parties cooperate with each other to minimize their respective election risks.

Because of gerrymandered districts (search), 90 percent of Americans live in congressional districts where the outcome is so certain that their votes are irrelevant. As long as gerrymandering is permitted, control over redistricting will have more influence on election outcomes than any other factor, including voter preference.

Politicians increasingly choose those voters they will represent, rather than the other way around. The redistricting process has degenerated into a conspiracy against competitive elections, undermining the fundamental notion of representation.

There's also a relationship between the major instruments of campaign finance regulation, such as contribution limits, public financing, and a soft money ban (search), and political competition. None of these regulatory instruments have been capable of enhancing political competition. On the contrary, campaign finance restrictions and taxpayer-subsidized elections have reduced political competition.

How can we increase political competition? First, let's make the most of federalism (search) to encourage experimentation at the state level. A state-by-state approach to resolving the redistricting issue can involve the initiative petition process.

For example, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has placed a redistricting initiative on this fall's California ballot. It seeks popular approval for handing control of redistricting over to an independent panel of retired judges. It's not a perfect solution, but removing politicians' control over redistricting can help to lessen the problem.

Second, assistance on the campaign finance front may come in the form of fewer constraints on the role of money in electoral politics. Higher spending on more campaign literature, political advertising, and grassroots activity to register, identify, and mobilize voters may produce both an electorate that's better informed about politics and a political process that's more competitive.

These types of changes merit serious consideration. Elected officials should be disconnected from campaign regulation and election rule making. The stubborn reality is that there won't be greater political competition until the incumbent fox ends his tenure as guardian of the democratic henhouse.

Patrick Basham is senior fellow in the Center for Representative Government at the Cato Institute and the co-author of the recent study “Uncompetitive Elections and the American Political System.”