Re: Obesity Danger May Have Been Overstated

This is another great example of accepted advice being out for decades
then another study is done that shoots holes in it. The crazy part to
this, of course, is that in this case, it would seem lots of good data
should be readily available, as weight is very easy to measure. So, it
would seem this would be very easy to settle.

It's also interesting in that it would seem to contradict the idea
started a few years back that semi- starvation diets were good for you
and significantly increased longevity. That was based on an animal
studies where animals fed like 30% less than normal calories lived like
20% longer than normal. I remember seeing on NBC news an interview
with a nut in San Francisco that was eating a diet with like 30% less
calories to live longer. He looked awful, his doctor had already
warned him that at like 40, he was suffering from reduced bone strength
and I think he also said his libido had gone kaput and he was no longer
interested in sex. Wonder what he thinks now? LOL

Roger Zoul said:

Harold Groot wrote:

:: The other thing this does is point out the difficulties in assessing
:: the risks from obesity. The CDC originally estimated 400k annual
:: deaths, and when there was great outcry about that number they
:: dropped it to 365k. Now here it is only a few months later and they
:: drop it to 26k. Quite a change in a short time.

This is a valid reason for not rushing off to define a new "normal".

Also, don't underestimate the tendency to grqab fame, briefly, with some
shoking new "juicy bit of technology or statistics".

There is a market for "shocking new discoveries", and it isn't limited
to just grocery store tabloids.

Publish or perish.

<[email hidden]> wrote in message
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Quoted message said:

It's also interesting in that it would seem to contradict the idea
started a few years back that semi- starvation diets were good for you
and significantly increased longevity. That was based on an animal
studies where animals fed like 30% less than normal calories lived like
20% longer than normal. I remember seeing on NBC news an interview
with a nut in San Francisco that was eating a diet with like 30% less
calories to live longer. He looked awful, his doctor had already
warned him that at like 40, he was suffering from reduced bone strength
and I think he also said his libido had gone kaput and he was no longer
interested in sex. Wonder what he thinks now? LOL

I think there may have been a group of them; they thought they could live
well beyond 100 but as you say they looked awful and their quality of life
was in the tank. Oh well, whatever turns you on, and at least their lives
will *seem* long

Quoted message said:

Anthony said:

<[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

It's also interesting in that it would seem to contradict the idea
started a few years back that semi- starvation diets were good for you
and significantly increased longevity. That was based on an animal
studies where animals fed like 30% less than normal calories lived like
20% longer than normal. I remember seeing on NBC news an interview
with a nut in San Francisco that was eating a diet with like 30% less
calories to live longer. He looked awful, his doctor had already
warned him that at like 40, he was suffering from reduced bone strength
and I think he also said his libido had gone kaput and he was no longer
interested in sex. Wonder what he thinks now? LOL

I think there may have been a group of them; they thought they could live
well beyond 100 but as you say they looked awful and their quality of life
was in the tank. Oh well, whatever turns you on, and at least their lives
will *seem* long

Quoted message said:

they are the CR folks. couple of years ago i also saw a science TV
programme about these folks. one of the guy went on a CR diet for a
year, he got a check-up with a doctor and the doctor said that he's
doing fine, but his bone is getting thinner and he should do some weight
bearing exercise, something like that.

Roger Zoul said:

Harold Groot wrote:

:: The other thing this does is point out the difficulties in assessing
:: the risks from obesity. The CDC originally estimated 400k annual
:: deaths, and when there was great outcry about that number they
:: dropped it to 365k. Now here it is only a few months later and they
:: drop it to 26k. Quite a change in a short time.

Quoted message said:

This is a valid reason for not rushing off to define a new "normal".

From what I understand a lot of this is "old data". For that matter,
I recall seeing articles 20 years ago that claimed the Metropolitan
Life "normal" figures (about 50 years old at that time IIRC) were no
longer representational based on then-current actuarial tables. This
just seems a confirmation on that point.

There appears to be some difficulty in assigning ROOT CAUSES to
various deaths as shown by the swing in the above figures for "death
caused by obesity". However, there is very little difficulty about
getting "expected life" data. Insurance companies do this on a
routine basis, it's part of how they determine the premiums on a
policy. People get age and weight recorded at physical exams and this
is compared to how old they are when they die. If you have a sample of
hundreds of thousands of people, the random events average out and you
get very reliable figures for average expected life.

The problem is, it can be very difficult to change something once it
has been established - and the "normal weight" tables got very well
established. But many things have changed about our society in the
past 70 or so years. Typical amounts of physical activity, how many
indulge in risky behavior (smoking, etc.), nutritional values of
typical diets, availability of emergency medical treatment (for heart
attacks, strokes and other things), the list is long. Some push
things one way, some push things the other way, some have no overall
impact on expected lifespan. But the "normal weight" tables remained
unchanged for a long, long time.

It all seems rather similar to the way the established medical
community reacted with horror to the idea of a low carb diet. They
didn't want to look at studies, they just repeated the dogma they had
been taught - that all that fat would lead to heart attacks, etc.
Even when there were many studies showing that their old way of
thinking was wrong, they continued to attack low carb diets with
falsehoods like that up until a few years ago. These days their
acceptance of low carb diets is still most grudging, and still loaded
with cautionary words that they "don't know if it's safe in the long
run", but they at least seem to have admitted that they don't have any
data to indicate it ISN'T safe.

Change comes slowly.