back to article Forget the climate: Fatties are a much bigger problem - study

The BMI-fuelled "obesity epidemic" bandwagon continues to rumble along, with the latest ridiculous report claiming that swingbellies are now twice as serious a menace to human prosperity as climate change. No, really. The giant brains of the McKinsey Global Institute have assembled this authoritative graph, which ranks the …

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  1. Ketlan
    Devil

    I'm three terrorists at least!

    'If you're a fatty AND a smoker, you're almost as bad as TWO terrorists'

    I'm a fatty and I both smoke and drink. What a bastard!

    1. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
      Happy

      Re: I'm three terrorists at least!

      At least you aren't illiterate as well

    2. ElReg!comments!Pierre
      Coat

      WRONG! (Was: I'm three terrorists at least!)

      You're reading El Reg and operating a computer (possibly with some encryption at some point) so you're also a terrorist. Which means you're actually 4 terrorists at least, not 3. Oh wait a minute...

      1. Paul Hovnanian Silver badge
        Linux

        Re: WRONG! (Was: I'm three terrorists at least!)

        "You're reading El Reg and operating a computer"

        Running Linux as well. That's another point or two right there.

      2. tom dial Silver badge
        Pint

        Re: WRONG! (Was: I'm three terrorists at least!)

        Now if The Register would just enable https we ALL could be terrorist-equivalent at least once.

    3. Adolph Clickbait

      Re: I'm three terrorists at least!

      Well you know what they say. "Inside every lard arse, there are two, maybe three, thin people trying to get out"

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I'm three terrorists at least!

        Yeah the annoyingly skinny bastards I ate for supper last night.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I'm three terrorists at least!

      Maybe we can launch dead Americans into orbit so that their bloated corpses block out some sunlight and mitigate global warming?

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I'm three terrorists at least!

      It could be worse, you could be an illiterate fat, smoking, drinking terrorist!

      (Don't forget to strangle a kitten on the way out)

      1. Marshalltown

        Re: I'm three terrorists at least!

        "It could be worse, you could be an illiterate fat, smoking, drinking terrorist!"

        Sounds like someone from Idaho, well, except the Mormons. They mostly don't drink officially.

    6. h3

      Re: I'm three terrorists at least!

      Thing is the tax on the tobacco probably pays for the cost of both.

  2. wiggers

    A better measure...

    Height to girth is a far better number, girth should be less than half your height to be considered 'healthy'. There is a 'new' BMI calculation that uses a more reasonable power of 2.5:

    http://people.maths.ox.ac.uk/trefethen/bmi.html

    1. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge

      Re: A better measure...

      Height to girth, or chest to belly girth ratios are dimensionless and MUCH better for that reason.

      The BMI based on a power of 2.5 might be better, but why not the power of three that simple geometry suggests? There may be empirical or statistical reasons for the power of 2.5, but it does look a bit like some people do not want to admit how totally stupid the power of 2.0 was and switch to 3.0 directly. After all, if I simply scale a short, skinny athlete by 10% in all directions, his weight should go up by a factor of 1.331, keeping his body fat percentages, height to girth ratios, etc identical. Thus, I feel 2.5 is a compromise, rather than entirely reasonable. Even if some fit was made to empirical data, I am deeply suspicious that the result would be 2.5 exactly, right between the traditional value and the one suggested by geometry.

      1. wiggers

        Re: A better measure...

        If you follow the link they say, "You might think that the exponent should simply be 3, but that doesn't match the data at all. It has been known for a long time that people don't scale in a perfectly linear fashion as they grow. I propose that a better approximation to the actual sizes and shapes of healthy bodies might be given by an exponent of 2.5." So, it is a 'best guess' but, since BMI is only intended to be a rough indicator that suggests other health indicators should be looked at more closely, it's good enough.

    2. Adolph Clickbait

      Re: A better measure...

      Shirley, the size of your strides is best?

    3. cambsukguy

      Re: A better measure...

      hilarious calculator, I would have to be 27Kg lighter to be at the bottom of my acceptable range, albeit only 10Kg lighter to be at the top.

      Since my waist size is almost exactly half my height and the best condition I have ever been in - able to run for several hours - was about 5Kg and 15 years ago, I suspect the new calculator isn't much cop either. 10Kg would leave me lean indeed, 27 Kg, dangerously wasted.

      1. Danwold

        Re: A better measure...

        Same here. I am 65" tall with a 29" waist, I run and swim 25-30k a week and yet this tells me I'm overweight and would be at a healthy weight if I was 23kg lighter. Rubbish I tells ye!

    4. Tim Worstal

      Re: A better measure...

      I once had a long email correspondence with a professor (at, I think, Oxford) trying to work out why 2 and not 3 was the answer. Volume should indicate 3, as the article insists. But the answer came back that it was a bit more complex as not everything does quite scale that way. Trunk, perhaps, yes. Arms, legs, head, not so much. And a surprising amount of the weight of a human isn't in the trunk. That was the gist of it at least. He was willing, in he end, to move to something like that 2.5 but insisted that 3 would be wrong.

      Can't remember all the details but that was the gist of it.

  3. Anonymous Blowhard

    They aren't a problem; they're a solution!

    Two words: Carbon Capture

    1. ElReg!comments!Pierre

      Re: They aren't a problem; they're a solution!

      HA but most of their mass is water, so they're back to being a problem*.

      * as everyone knows we'll run out of fresh water within 10 years, starting in the early nineties...

      1. 's water music

        Re: They aren't a problem; they're a solution!

        HA but most of their mass is water, so they're back to being a problem*.

        If they are mostly water then that just makes them more of a solution (or maybe a weaker solution. Now I am confused again)

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: They aren't a problem; they're a solution!

      One word: Biofuel

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: They aren't a problem; they're a solution!

        "One word: Biofuel"

        Already happening round these parts. The local crematorium supplies "waste heat" to the swimming pool. This warm swimming session brought to you by.......". Admittedly most of the heat is probably from natural gas, though.

        Some fag packet calculations suggest (if I've got my maths right, which is open to question) a human body would embody around 600 MJ of energy. In the UK there's around 1m deaths a year, and factoring this all down that's around 150 GWh if you dessicated them. At say 50% efficiency that's be equivalent to a 15 MW power station, which isn't very much in the context of peak electricity demand of 60 GW.

        1. Matt 21

          Re: They aren't a problem; they're a solution!

          So we need to eat more????

          Ahh, I've got it, we need to die having eaten more curry in order that the methane count is high and we need to collect the boiled off water to solve the water problem too.

          Perhaps we could keep our lardy bodies hooked up to some kind of dream machine so we could be grown more efficiently.......

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Flame

      Re: They aren't a problem; they're a solution!

      One word "tree" (or "vegetation" take your pick).

      Carbon capture is already there, and nature does it all so much better than we do.

      Icon, as it's all about turning hydrocarbons to their elements and back again.

      1. ElReg!comments!Pierre

        Re: They aren't a problem; they're a solution!

        One word "tree" (or "vegetation" take your pick).

        As much as we'd love it to be true, in the real world land vegetation is pretty much carbon-neutral (appart from marshes). The most effective carbon trap is ocean-based, as the dead organisms fall to anoxic depths where they sit for a very long time (until we dig them up and burn them as coal and oil, that is).

      2. Martin Budden Silver badge
        Boffin

        Re: They aren't a problem; they're a solution! @TechnicalBen

        Icon, as it's all about turning hydrocarbons to their elements and back again.

        I hate to get all technical on you TechnicalBen but you seem to have confused hydrocarbons with carbohydrates.

        Carbohydrate = carbon-containing molecule made by vegetation very recently which can be used as a renewable energy source i.e. biofuel.

        Hydrocarbon = carbon-containing molecule made by vegetation millions of years ago, buried, compressed, and turned into a non-renewable energy source i.e. fossil fuel.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: They aren't a problem; they're a solution!

      Several Words: High protein, high calorie, self-carrying survival food.

    5. I sound like Peter Griffin!!
      Pint

      Re: They aren't a problem; they're a solution!

      A beer for you my Anonymous friend - Carbon Capture indeed!!!

  4. Truffle

    Muscle, not fat

    Apart from one sentence at the end, the entire article misses the vital information that muscle weighs far more than fat. There are many, many people (especially as, in the last 5 years or so, people really are getting on the health 'bandwagon') like myself, who fall into the 'overweight' category despite having sub 15% bodyfat.

    Whether the brackets for the height of people being measured is accurate, its a person's composition which vitally isn't measured in any way using BMI.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Muscle, not fat

      Muscle is also denser than fat. The BMI is a rule-of-thumb measure for Joe Public, it is not a true fatness measure and should not be treated as such.

      1. keith_w

        Re: Muscle, not fat

        That is why muscle, for a given volume, weighs more than fat. Pound for pound, muscle and fat weigh the same. And both, pound for pound, weigh the same as gold, lead or feathers.

        1. Irony Deficient

          Re: Muscle, not fat

          keith_w, gold is weighed in pounds troy, so a pound of gold weighs less than a pound of muscle, fat, lead, or feathers.

      2. Scroticus Canis
        Big Brother

        Re: Muscle, not fat - "BMI is a rule-of-thumb measure for Joe Public"

        BMI is a rule-of-thumb measure for Joe Public retards - FTFY.

        Look up endomorph, mesomorph and ectomorph to get a true grip of how stupid BMI really is (not everyone is built the same) and then realise that your GP/Practice Nurse have never learnt about it (or maybe did, like I did at medical school) but are just pushing the latest NHS crap fad as real medicine.

        Just like the low dietary salt saga; 1mmHg being the difference in blood pressure between a low salt diet and a normal salty diet, not really significant at all. OK some people are sensitive to salt but some are also allergic to peanuts or mushrooms, etc... so we better not allow peanut butter or mushrooms, etc... for anyone.

        Oh and by the way - smoking, drinking fatties tend to have a relatively short terminal illness phase and don't linger on thus costing less in late life health care than those who do. Or so the actuaries say.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Muscle, not fat

      " the entire article misses the vital information that muscle weighs far more than fat"

      The definitions of fatness are the least of the problems here. The original "study" concentrates on GDP, so that 4m deaths from inadequate water and sanitation in the undeveloped world count for almost nothing, whereas 5m deaths largely among the older residents of the developed world top the bill, followed closely by the "overweight".

      Yet even if you wish to look through an economic lens, the work is shoddy. With the developed world suffering from over-stretched welfare systems and inadequately funded pension systems, smoking and heart disease are fantastic economic news - people work till they're fifty-sixty and drop dead with little or no pension being paid. I'd accept that many smokers and fatties linger on in expensive ill health, but that's also true amongst the non-obese, non-smoking population.

      1. bitten
        Pint

        Re: Muscle, not fat

        Post 1989 overweight is not pre 1989 overweight. In older days there was fat and healthy, not anymore. Healthy and anorexic on the other hand (was 20 is now 18,5) is the new standard.

    3. P. Lee

      Re: Muscle, not fat

      Technically true, but the #1 premature killer in West is heart disease. That's mostly not from being ultra muscley.

      Climate change may kill people in the future. Heart disease is killing a lot of people right now and will continue doing so in the future, so despite the rubbish method of reaching the conclusion, the conclusion is probably correct.

      1. Spleen

        Re: Muscle, not fat

        "Technically true, but the #1 premature killer in West is heart disease."

        That's primarily because fewer people are dying from infant mortality, war, malnutrition and contaminated water, so they grow old enough to die of heart disease.

        People who quote this stat in this particular way seem to be unaware of the fact that /something/ will always be the "#1 premature killer". If we eliminated heart disease it would be cancer (I'm guessing). That wouldn't be evidence of a cancer epidemic.

    4. NumptyScrub

      Re: Muscle, not fat

      Most of these people are obese, and some may even be morbidly obese according to their BMIs.

      It is an epidemic ^^;

  5. Thomas Gray

    How about "Graph Grappling" as descriptor?

    Would fit in with El Reg's penchant for alliteration.

    1. Soap Distant

      Re: How about "Graph Grappling" as descriptor?

      Maybe... attraction to alliteration? :)

      SD

    2. Michael Hawkes

      Re: How about "Graph Grappling" as descriptor?

      Since they're analy(s/z)ing someone else's analysis, maybe it could be "Analysing Analysis". That might be too redundant, even for the Reg, however.

      How about "Data in Depth"?

      "Featured Figures"?

      "Tabulature Tomfoolery"? "Table Tales"?

  6. Omgwtfbbqtime
    Flame

    Good article, I'll raise a pint or 6 to you tonight, and maybe a good cigar.

    There is nothing like a good cigar, and a Hamlet is nothing like a good cigar.

  7. tony2heads
    Pint

    fat vs terrorism

    Stand back ! I have a bacon butty and I know how to use it! And I have a drink to wash it down

    1. stucs201

      Re: fat vs terrorism

      I think you've found the problem: A significant fraction of terrorists disaprove of bacon sandwiches (*)

      (*) Note: not the same as saying that disliking bacon sandwiches makes you a terrorist.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: fat vs terrorism

        But think of the TAX the NHS benefits from every time the lard arses go into Mcdonalds and buy their burger and fries.

        Oh wait a min...........................

        1. Robert Helpmann??
          Childcatcher

          Re: fat vs terrorism

          But think of the TAX benefit the NHS benefits from every time the lard arses go into Mcdonalds and buy their burger and fries.

          Yes, I guess we know how to tax WMDs (because it's not food that's sold at Mickey D's).

    2. Sooty

      Re: fat vs terrorism

      you joke, but you could probaly be arrested for wielding a bacon butty these days

      1. jonathanb Silver badge

        Re: fat vs terrorism

        The ability to eat a bacon sandwich is an important test of your suitability to be prime minister, which Ed Milliband apparently failed.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hail the Fatty Heroes !

    Hmmm sounds the report might have touched a sore spot in many.... :-)

    What the report did not consider is that fat is essentially a carbohydrate and that us swingbellies are actually sacrificing our health and greek god (and goddesses) physiques to contribute to the world wide effort of carbon dioxide sequestration in our adipose rotundities !

    Should we all suddenly become treadmill afficionados and convert from bacon sarnies to kale chips the world production of noxious gases would immediately increase 5 fold.

    Hail the much maligned fatty heroes!

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