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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
54June 2015
I
RELAND is set to become Europe’s
most obese country by
according to figures presented last
month by the World Health Organi-
sation as part of their yet to be
published Modelling Obesity Project. The
proportion of obese Irish men is expected
to increase from % to %, with the
number of men classified as either over-
weight or obese rising from % to %.
Obesity in women will jump from per-
cent to % while % of women will be
classified as either overweight or obese by
.
Dr Joao Bredo of the WHO described the
figures as painting a “bleak picture” for
the continent. Professor Donal O’Shea,
co-chair of the Royal College of Physicians
of Ireland envisioned the scenario as “a
much bigger health crisis than what chol-
era was back in the s and HIV/AIDS
was back in the s and s”. Minister for
Health Leo Varadkar admitted that obes-
ity has become a “major personal and
public-health problem” and called for the
issue to be treated “as seriously as we
treated tobacco in the past.”
The consensus would appear certain. We
are getting fatter, our ever-expanding
waistlines are toxic to our health and,
according to most scientists, politicians,
medical practitioners, teachers and jour-
nalists, we are on the verge of a seismic,
generation-defining medical epidemic
caused primarily by our individual eating
and exercise habits. Is this consensus,
however, firmly supported by the available
scientific and medical evidence as its pro-
ponents claim it to be? Is being fat really
that detrimental to our health or are their
moral, social and economic influences
pushing us towards this consensus, ren-
dering our understanding of obesity
inaccurate at best, or worse still, enor-
mously harmful to many people’s lives?
To begin to answer this question it is
useful to consider the baseline unit of
measurement for obesity that the World
Health Organization and most medical
researchers use: the Body Mass Index or
“BMI”. Dating back to the early th cen-
tury, the BMI is a simple mathematical
formula that places people of different
heights and weights on a single integrated
scale. The index was never intended to be a
measure of individual health yet despite
this; it has formed the basis for almost
every public policy and study on issues of
weight and obesity written in the modern
era.
The BMI index defines obesity in a com-
pletely arbitrary and unscientific fashion.
In the late ’s one of the world’s lead-
ing obesity experts, Professor Philip
James, set up a body called the Interna-
tional Obesity Task Force (IOTF). The IOTF
drafted the WHO report in the late ’s
which would define rising obesity levels
for the first time as a health “epidemic”.
The evidence underpinning this report
was comprised largely of data provided by
US health insurance giant Met Life. Joel
Guerin, an American author who reviewed
Met Life’s data told the Guardian newspa-
per that ‘’it wasn’t based on any kind of
scientific evidence at all.” The funding for
the IOTF report came from large multi-na-
tional drug companies, hoping to broaden
the market for potentially lucrative weight
loss drugs. The report led to the “ideal”,
“healthy” weight for an individual to drop
by - pounds. Millions of people
across the globe were now considered,
overnight, newly overweight or obese,
despite having never gained a single
pound.
Not only has the BMI index been skewed
to entirely unrealistic weight standards,
the formula itself does not account for
things like muscle mass and bone density.
To put this into perspective, Chris
Hemsworth, the actor who plays Thor in
the popular ‘Avengers’ movie franchise
and who was also voted the world’s sexiest
man in , is, according to the BMI
index, overweight, bordering on obese.
Irish rugby star Cian Healy fares worse,
definitely obese according to his BMI.
An influential study published in Science
magazine, it was estimated a reduction in
calorie consumption, or an
increase in energy use, of just
calories per day would pre-
vent weight gain for most people,
hardly the basis for an “epi-
demic”. Similarly, after
reviewing data from around the
world, Dr Michael Gard con-
cludes in his recent book ‘End of
the Obesity Epidemic’ that in fact
obesity levels for both adults and
children have levelled off or
declined over the past -
years.
Even if we were to accept the
notion of an “epidemic” based on
fundamentally-flawed statistics,
surely the quotidian idea that
being fat is bad for one’s health is beyond
doubt? Not quite. A study published
by The Journal of the American Medical
Association, reviewed nearly three million
subjects from more than a dozen countries
in an attempt to determine the correlation
between body mass and mortality risk.
The study found that adults categorized as
overweight, and most of those declared
obese, actually had a lower risk of mortal-
ity than so-called thin or normal weight
individuals. Average-height women, feet
inches, who weigh between and
pounds have a higher mortality risk than
average-height women who weigh between
and pounds. For average-height
men, feet inches, those who weigh
between and pounds have a
higher mortality risk than those who
weigh between and pounds.
Throughout the terrors of our recent
obesity “epidemic”, life expectancy in
western countries has risen, not fallen,
CULTURE Obesity
Spurious ‘epidemic’ contrived by industry manipulation, junk science and twentieth-first-
century angst. By Greg McInerney
Obesity obeisance
There’s almost
no evidence
that turning a
fat individual
into a slim
individual
improves
overall health
“
June 2015 55
despite the many life-threatening health
conditions supposedly caused by obesity.
The correlations between higher weight
and greater health risk are thread-bare,
only significant at the extremes, severely
underweight or morbidly obese. Improve-
ments in health as a result of increased
aerobic exercise have been documented in
people who actually gained weight during
the process. Exercise and nutrition can
also effectively reduce blood pressure
entirely independent of weight loss.
Among overweight and obese men and
women, with and without type diabetes,
those who reported trying to lose weight
(but failed) experienced a reduction in
mortality rate that was the same as, or
greater than, those who reported that they
were successful at weight loss. In other
words weight loss itself did not appear to
be beneficial.
There’s almost no evidence that turning
a fat individual into a slim individual
improves their overall health. This is
mostly due to the fact that despite claims
of omnipresent miracle diets and exercise
programs, sustained, long-term weight
loss is something we currently, according
to the evidence, do not know how to
achieve. A former finance director of
Weight Watchers, itself a billion dollar cor-
poration, told investigative reporter
Jacque Peretti that the brand was success-
ful because “the % [who can’t keep the
weight off] keep coming back. That’s
where your business comes from.” The
global market for “Weight Management
Services” is expected to reach $.bn
this year and huge corporate conglomer-
ates control both the “healthy” and
“unhealthy” markets. Nestle sells tradi-
tionally fattening foods but also owns US
diet company Jenny Craig. Uniliver owns
numerous ice-cream brands but also
“healthy” meal replacement brand Slim-
fast. The current CEO of Weight Watchers
used to be President of Kraft Foods Snacks
and Confectionery division and before
that, CEO of Cadbury America.
Do we even understand why people gain
weight? The traditional view, known as the
energy balance model, would be that of
caloric surpluses or deficits, too many cal-
ories equals weight gain, too few calories
equals weight loss. This too is a staple of
public policy and information with regards
to weight control. However a growing body
of research is beginning to question the
calorie as an indicator of food’s weight-
producing qualities and the energy balance
model in general. Disruption in sleep pat-
terns is associated with increases in body
fat, chronic stress alters hor-
mone levels linked to
weight-gain, even nutritional
deprivation and stress experi-
enced by our parents and
grandparents could affect our
weight according to the rela-
tively new scientific field of
epigenetics. Perhaps of greatest
significance though could be our
exposure to everyday, but harm-
ful chemicals known as
endocrine disruptors which may
create biological pathways to
obesity independent of caloric
metabolism.
The greatest indictment of the
energy balancy, calorie-centric
model comes from the astonish-
ing revelations of Dr. Michael
Gard and Jan Wright’s
book on the subject, ‘The Obes-
ity Epidemic: Science and
Ideology’. After reviewing hun-
dreds of studies on eating and
physical activity around the
world, they found absolutely no
evidence that food intake in industrialized
countries has risen, or that activity levels
among people have decreased since the
’s.
In fact they even found that some of the
literature would indicate a reduction in
individual’s consumption of food. The idea
therefore that excess calories caused from
individual overeating or lack of exercise
are making us fat, an idea that underpins
almost all governmental policies towards
obesity, is simply not supported by the
available evidence.
Individuals who are irrationally con-
cerned or consumed with their weight
beyond its actuality and impact on their
health today are diagnosed with eating
and/or body disorders yet governments,
organisations and medical practitioners
who view fatness in identically phobic
terms are dictating our attitudes and
public policies.
The obesity epidemic is not in fact an
epidemic at all but rather a confluence of
junk science, political and economic
manipulation, and social anxiety. •
Average-height
women, 5 feet
4 inches, who
weigh between
108 and 145
pounds have
a higher
mortality risk
than average-
height women
who weigh
between
146 and 203
pounds
“
propaganda
