Not the one above this post, but rather one by Reuters published on August 6th, 2008.
The article had to do with a study recently published in Obesity that looked at predictions for overweight and obesity in the US for the coming few decades.
The hypothetical study wanted to address the question of what might happen to healthcare expenditures attributable to weight and weight related disease if rising rates of obesity continued unabated.
Certainly if you simply draw a straight line on a graph eventually everyone on the planet will be overweight or obese, but natural phenomena do not occur in straight lines and natural distribution will ensure that eventually we will hit a zenith.
The authors knew this too and simply put it together as a hypothetical question.
Reuters perhaps took it a little too seriously with their alarmist headline,
"All U.S. adults could be overweight in 40 years"For their efforts Reuters has earned my first quobesity post in some time.
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I am no longer shocked by anything printed in the media. There seems to be no accountability in headline writing (or journalism for that matter). The only thing that matters is sellings stories and selling papers.
ReplyDeleteLast week, this was a headline in the Globe & Mail: "Farmed tilapia may be no better for you than a doughnut". The headline was follwed by even more brilliance: "Fish has become a go-to staple for Canadians who want to have a healthy diet. So it may come as a surprise to learn that eating farmed tilapia, a widely consumed fish that has been steadily growing in popularity, may be no better than dining on bacon, hamburgers or doughnuts."
Is this what science jornalism has become? Hyperbole with no thought or understanding to the the original reseach and no understanding of nutrition? Why does the Globe (a paper I thought was responsible) allow that to be printed? Are we helping people by allowing them to think that tilapia is no better than bacon, donuts and hamburgers?
Unfortunately, most people's 'understaning' of nutrition comes from the popular media. Scary.
That's so wrong it's almost funny. Almost.
ReplyDeleteAs you said, though, it's not even possible. There will always be people on both ends of the spectrum. Unless doctors are going to suddenly find cures for malabsorption syndromes, "skinny genes", and anorexia, I doubt everyone will be overweight in 40 years.