If you plan on being around in 2030, be warned: As an American, you will have a one in two chance of being obese.
This prediction comes from a report in one of the world’s most prestigious medical journals, the Lancet. The journal devoted a special issue to obesity in advance of this week’s World Health Organization meeting in New York on noncommunicable diseases, many of which can be attributable to the global surge in weight.
Of course, this is old news: A 2008 study by Johns Hopkins researchers in the journal Obesity warned that by 2030, 51.1 percent of American adults would be obese, and that if the trends behind the numbers continued, every adult American would be overweight or obese by 2048.
The word that springs to mind to describe this kind of bogus prediction cannot be printed in a family-friendly publication, for if there is one obvious fact about the obesity crisis it is that it is not an aggregate problem. Everyone is not gaining weight equally, and it is ridiculous to think that, somehow, in the next 40 years, everyone will increase their consumption of high-calorie foods to the point of subverting their genetic inheritance, while giving up all exercise at the same time.
“If current trends continue,” in other words, is the weaseliest of phrases. Wasn’t the Dow Jones Industrial average supposed to hit 30,000 by 2008 on the basis of current trends continuing? Wouldn’t we be on the path to immortality if life expectancy trends during the 20th century were extrapolated to go on increasing ad infinitum? You can make any sort of specious prediction based on the rate of any numerical increase or decrease in anything. Life, on the other hand, is a series of monkey wrenches.
Indeed, burrow into the Lancet’s 40,000 words on obesity and you quickly find that the rate of obesity prevalence in the U.S. has slowed in the past decade, and that in some countries, obesity in children and teens is flattening or decreasing. Plus, the current systems for monitoring population weight and nutrition are “inadequate in almost all countries.”
No doubt the phrase “if current trends continue” will still get quite a workout at the WHO meetings, but any scientist who uses it deserves a custard pie in the face for being unscientific. In fact, they deserve worse; when scientists stop being scientific and resort to exaggeration in order to solve a perceived crisis, the likelihood increases that the problem will be harder to solve.
Look at how global warming went from a reasonable and problematic observation (CO2 levels are one of the key factors driving global temperature), to the end of life as we know it (if current trends continue), to demands for massive, immediate and costly intervention. The conventional wisdom is that this cost catalyzed political opposition — and no doubt it did. But the wider problem starts with the leap to catastrophe.
For every person turned on by a message of doom, another five will be turned off by its stridency. And if that stridency can be shown to rest on exaggeration, or worse, error, that’s it — public opinion will curdle and calcify, political opposition will smirk and savage. Al Gore may have done more than anyone else to raise awareness about global warming, but he’s also done more than anyone else to generate opposition and indifference to it.
This is the path public health officials risk heading down with obesity — if, that is, current communication practices continue. Because, naturally enough, if you predict that half of America will be obese within 20 years, or that everyone will be overweight or obese in 40 years, the only possible solution is to advocate for massive government intervention to regulate what people can eat.
Define a problem that’s epic in scope, and the path to salvation must fit the scale.
So it’s no surprise to find that the call for government regulation of our food environment is a recurring subtext in the Lancet’s coverage, even as the publication advances scientific data that calls into question the impact of such intervention. A paper on energy balance dynamics, for instance, suggests that the impact of soda and fat tax proposals on people’s weight will be even less than the very little already anticipated from hefty increases.
But if the problem is conveyed through exaggeration, then what is the likelihood that the parties in government will agree to intervene? And if they don’t agree, why would the public believe that intervention is necessary?
Clearly, the aim of claims that half of America will be obese within two decades is to motivate a collective change in behavior. But suggesting that thin and normal-weight people will become extinct (and then immediately backtracking) doesn’t inspire much confidence that the messengers know what they are talking about. And without this kind of trust, what, really, can public health hope to do for people in an environment rich in comfort food?
This prediction comes from a report in one of the world’s most prestigious medical journals, the Lancet. The journal devoted a special issue to obesity in advance of this week’s World Health Organization meeting in New York on noncommunicable diseases, many of which can be attributable to the global surge in weight.
Of course, this is old news: A 2008 study by Johns Hopkins researchers in the journal Obesity warned that by 2030, 51.1 percent of American adults would be obese, and that if the trends behind the numbers continued, every adult American would be overweight or obese by 2048.
The word that springs to mind to describe this kind of bogus prediction cannot be printed in a family-friendly publication, for if there is one obvious fact about the obesity crisis it is that it is not an aggregate problem. Everyone is not gaining weight equally, and it is ridiculous to think that, somehow, in the next 40 years, everyone will increase their consumption of high-calorie foods to the point of subverting their genetic inheritance, while giving up all exercise at the same time.
“If current trends continue,” in other words, is the weaseliest of phrases. Wasn’t the Dow Jones Industrial average supposed to hit 30,000 by 2008 on the basis of current trends continuing? Wouldn’t we be on the path to immortality if life expectancy trends during the 20th century were extrapolated to go on increasing ad infinitum? You can make any sort of specious prediction based on the rate of any numerical increase or decrease in anything. Life, on the other hand, is a series of monkey wrenches.
Indeed, burrow into the Lancet’s 40,000 words on obesity and you quickly find that the rate of obesity prevalence in the U.S. has slowed in the past decade, and that in some countries, obesity in children and teens is flattening or decreasing. Plus, the current systems for monitoring population weight and nutrition are “inadequate in almost all countries.”
No doubt the phrase “if current trends continue” will still get quite a workout at the WHO meetings, but any scientist who uses it deserves a custard pie in the face for being unscientific. In fact, they deserve worse; when scientists stop being scientific and resort to exaggeration in order to solve a perceived crisis, the likelihood increases that the problem will be harder to solve.
Look at how global warming went from a reasonable and problematic observation (CO2 levels are one of the key factors driving global temperature), to the end of life as we know it (if current trends continue), to demands for massive, immediate and costly intervention. The conventional wisdom is that this cost catalyzed political opposition — and no doubt it did. But the wider problem starts with the leap to catastrophe.
For every person turned on by a message of doom, another five will be turned off by its stridency. And if that stridency can be shown to rest on exaggeration, or worse, error, that’s it — public opinion will curdle and calcify, political opposition will smirk and savage. Al Gore may have done more than anyone else to raise awareness about global warming, but he’s also done more than anyone else to generate opposition and indifference to it.
This is the path public health officials risk heading down with obesity — if, that is, current communication practices continue. Because, naturally enough, if you predict that half of America will be obese within 20 years, or that everyone will be overweight or obese in 40 years, the only possible solution is to advocate for massive government intervention to regulate what people can eat.
Define a problem that’s epic in scope, and the path to salvation must fit the scale.
So it’s no surprise to find that the call for government regulation of our food environment is a recurring subtext in the Lancet’s coverage, even as the publication advances scientific data that calls into question the impact of such intervention. A paper on energy balance dynamics, for instance, suggests that the impact of soda and fat tax proposals on people’s weight will be even less than the very little already anticipated from hefty increases.
But if the problem is conveyed through exaggeration, then what is the likelihood that the parties in government will agree to intervene? And if they don’t agree, why would the public believe that intervention is necessary?
Clearly, the aim of claims that half of America will be obese within two decades is to motivate a collective change in behavior. But suggesting that thin and normal-weight people will become extinct (and then immediately backtracking) doesn’t inspire much confidence that the messengers know what they are talking about. And without this kind of trust, what, really, can public health hope to do for people in an environment rich in comfort food?
