Are You Fat? This Poll Claims It's Likely Even If You Don't Think So

Posted on | September 2, 2010 | No Comments |

Next time you decide to comment on another person's weight, you might want to ask them to comment on yours. At least that's what the results of a Harris Interactive/HealthDay poll say. That's if you tend to believe the same experts that brought you the H1N1 epidemic in 2009.

From Yahoo! News via Healthday:

Many Americans Don't Even Know They're Fat

Many Americans have skewed perceptions when it comes to their weight, often believing they are thinner than they really are, even when the scales are shouting otherwise, a new poll finds.

As part of the Harris Interactive/HealthDay survey, respondents were asked to provide their height and weight, from which pollsters calculated their body-mass index (BMI), a ratio of weight to height. Respondents were then asked which category of weight they thought they fell into.

Somehow, I'm thinking these pollsters are no better than the carnival weight guesser. At least you get a fat stuffed animal when the carny gets it wrong. All you're stuck with when the "expert" thinks he gets it right is higher taxes.

Thirty percent of those in the "overweight" class believed they were actually normal size, while 70 percent of those classified as obese felt they were simply overweight. Among the heaviest group, the morbidly obese, almost 60 percent pegged themselves as obese, while another 39 percent considered themselves merely overweight.

These findings may help to explain why overweight and obesity rates in the United States continue to go up, experts say.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 34 percent of adults aged 20 and older are obese, and 34 percent are overweight. Among children, 18 percent of teens aged 12 to 19 are obese, 20 percent of children aged 6 to 11 are obese, as are 10 percent of kids aged 2 to 5.

That means 68% of Americans over 20 can be classified as overweight.

Are these experts correct? According to Bigfatcats.com, not so much:

THE CLAIM: The government, politicians, media, journalists, scientists, universities, medical establishment, sociologists and social commentators, claim that obesity is an epidemic, a plague, a crisis, an outrage, a catastrophe, a time bomb responsible for killing 400,000 overfed Americans every year, while ringing up over a $100-billion in health care costs.

THE TRUTH: We are experiencing mass moral outrage over fat. Nearly all the warnings about obesity are based on statistical conjecture made by those with the most to gain from the claims.

Weight is not a barometer of wellness. More Americans die every year from weighing too little than from weighing too much. An estimated 25,000 people die from obesity. Moderately overweight people live longer than those at normal weight. (Flegal, et. al.) (See reference notes at bottom of report)

The researchers who estimated that obesity is costing us more than $100 billion a year in medical costs came up with this figure by calculating ALL expenses associated with treating type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, hypertension, gallbladder disease, and cancer. They ASSUME that if we get heart disease or breast cancer, it is because we're fat.

Organizations like the International Obesity Task Force (which authored many of the World Health Organization's obesity reports) and the American Obesity Association (which actively campaigns to have obesity officially designated as a disease) are largely funded by pharmaceutical and weight loss companies. Nearly every prominent obesity "expert" has received financial support from the $50-billion weight loss industry.

The "obesity epidemic" is worth billions to the pharmaceutical, diet, weight loss, media, and government agencies fueling it.

Sounds a bit like global warming alarmists. It also seems they rake in the dough when the child element is added to the equation. The website goes on:

THE CLAIM: The International Obesity Task Force estimates that 300 million people worldwide are obese and 750 million more are overweight, including 22 million children under age 5.

America is frequently cited as the fattest country in the world with an obesity rate of 30% and another 35% of us classified as "overweight."

According to the formula the U.S. government employs to measure weight, any person with a BMI over 25 is classified as overweight. BMI stands for Body Mass Index. It is a number that shows body weight adjusted for height. BMI can be calculated with simple math.

The B.M.I. doesn't tell you the percentage of body fat you're carrying, or how your fat is distributed. According to this measurement, half of the National Basketball Association is overweight or obese.

THE TRUTH: Today's average American adult is 7 to 14 pounds heavier than one thirty years ago.

Until a report by the National Institute of Health (largely paid for by weight loss industry money paid to the International Obesity Task Force and the American Obesity Association) "overweight" was defined as having a BMI greater than 27 and "obese" meant your BMI was greater than 32.

After the 1998 NIH report, suddenly tens of millions of Americans became "obese" even though they had not gained a pound. Shifting the BMI down two points helped turned obesity into moral panic.

If you want to know if there's money to be made from obesity, take a look at the more than 6,500 on Amazon written by "experts" who are probably only in it for the children.

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