JUST DO THE MATH

Has the U.N. food agency lost its mind, and the Globe and Mail?

This week the UN report FAO: The State of Food and Agriculture 2013 ( found at http://www.fao.org/docrep/018/i3300e/i3300e00.htm) was highlighted in a  half-page spread in the  Globe and Mail, July 15, 2013 L3 “Obesity is taking on epic proportions globally” which was simply a list of statistics and an oversized, fat-at–the-waist globe graphic.

The data and G&M focus on obesity is interesting as the actual report mentions the issue but it is almost - but not quite - buried in the 79 page report -- whose actual focus is on world hunger and malnutrition.

Obesity, in fact, accounts for less than 4% of the print space and UN focus.  The country by country obesity statistics used by the G&M are from the tables of the Statistical Annex, pp. 71-79, and are the last column of five columns; the first four focusing on malnutrition and its effects on child growth stunting (col 1), Anaemia (col 2), Vitamin A Deficiency (col 3) and Iodine deficiency (col 4).

So why the G&M focus on only the obesity data?

Because it is a hot issue and the new ‘enemy’.

And the UN statistics are horrendous – if they were credible!

Yes, the U.N. report mentions on p. 1 that 500 million people world-wide as of 2008 are obese. Pages 57-58 discuss the mixed results from enforced nutrition labels and reviews the literature on junk food advertising and beverage restriction recommendations.  And it concludes, p.60, that better nutrition education will help everyone: from the  2 billion who are malnourished to the millions who are obese; and of course, regular exercise is important.

What earth-shattering news!!!!

The Obesity numbers, country by country, as highlighted by the G&M, are truly dramatic.  The U.N. report in fact notes the obesity rates worldwide have gone up from 6% to 12% between 1980 and 2008 (p.12) citing the study by Stevens et al., 2012.

 

Canada is listed as having 24.1% of the adult population as obese (i.e., 1 in 4) and the U.S.A., in the actual report, Statistical Annex p. 79, is rated 31.8% (i.e., 1 in 3)!!!

If these numbers alone do not warn you that SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH THE UN METHOD OR CRITERIA FOR OBESITY, then the other statistics should.

The top 20 obese lands are Nauru at a whopping 71.1%, Cook Islands at 64.1%, Tonga at 59.6%, Samoa at 55.5%, Palau 50.7%, Marshall Islands 46.5%, Kiribati 45.8%, Kuwait 42.8%, Micronesia 42%, Saint Kits 35.2%, Saudi Arabia 35.2%, Belize 34.9%, Egypt 34.6%, Jordan 34.3%, U.A.E.  33.7%, South Africa 33.5%, Barbados 33.4%, Qatar 33.1% and Mexico at 32.8%.

At the opposite extreme are Bangladesh 1.1% obese, Ethiopia 1.2%, Nepal 1.5%, Vietnam 1.6%, Madagascar 1.7%, Eritrea 1.8%, D.R. Congo 1.9%, India 1.9%, Cambodia 2.3% and Burkina Faso at 2.4%.

Regionally, only Africa, Asia and Oceania are below 12% in obesity with the Americas and Europe all over 20% obese.

So what is going on here?

Since medical and government records are limited for many of the over 2.6 billion people of India and China (which make up over 1/3 of the world’s population) a tiny sample with massive extrapolation must have been used.  The same extrapolation would be needed for the Arab world and rest of Africa, so the statistic methods used may well be skewed.

What is more likely, and more important, is that the U.N.’s assumed ‘normal’ weight range is too low and does not sufficiently take into account the fact that once drought and famine are eliminated, people eat more and gain weight – returning to a more normal weight for their bodies under optimal – or more optimal -- food conditions.

But the real culprit in distorting the numbers is the BMI – again!!!!!

Too bad the G&M and U.N. did not pay more attention to this yardstick used in the report for determining obesity – the now highly disputed and error-prone BMI!!!

Yes, that BMI against which I have railed in previous blogs; using both more recent expert reviews and common sense observation: Do 1 in every 4 Canadians over age 19 look OBESE to you? – as the UN’s Canadian BMI statistic of 24.3% claims?

The U.N. report, to its credit, does give its BMI definition and mentions some concerns:

 

p. 72    Obesity

Adults over 20 years of age are considered obese when their body

mass index (BMI) is greater than or equal to 30. BMI equals body

weight in kilograms divided by height in metres squared (kg/m2).

And it does point out that the BMI has been criticized by reputable experts, and has been shown to be especially unreliable regarding Asian populations.

To quote the U.N. report and its many caveats – which it then ignores --

 

p. 17 (my underlining)

 

Limitations of using the body mass index in measuring excessive body fat

Body mass index (BMI) is a convenient and widely available measure of underweight,overweight and obesity. It is a proxy measure of excessive body fat. BMI does not distinguish between weight from fatty tissue and that from muscle tissue;

nor does it indicate how an individual’s body mass is distributed. People who carry a disproportionate amount of weight around their abdomen are at a higher risk of various health problems; waist circumference can therefore be a useful measure to gain additional insight, but it is measured less often and less easily than BMI (National Obesity Observatory, 2009). BMI classifications were established based on risks of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, but populations and individuals vary in terms of how BMI relates to both body fat composition and the prevalence of disease (WHO, 2000). The limitations of the international BMI classifications are particularly evident among Asian populations. For example, in 2002 an expert group, convened by the World Health Organization (WHO), found that the Asian populations considered have a higher percentage of body fat as well as higher incidence of diabetes and cardiovascular disease at lower BMIs than do Caucasians (controlling for age and sex). However, the experts also found differences in the appropriate BMI cut-off points among the Asian populations themselves. The expert group decided to maintain the existing international standard classifications, but also recommended the development of an additional classification system for Asian populations that uses lower cut-offs and encouraged the use of country-specific cut-offs and the waist circumference measure (Nishida, 2004).

 

 True obesity is not, contrary to general belief and UN conclusions, simply the result of prosperity, good food supplies and manufactured food processing. It is a metabolism issue, not a food access issue.

Only surgery to reduce the size of one’s stomach or intestinal tract -- to allow for weight loss by reducing the body’s organs which extract calories from food – really works.

Even medically supervised, short-term weight loss dieting does not last,  and lifetime Weight Watcher programs are just that: lifetime semi-starvation to get that thinner look your body’s genetics refuse to allow under normal conditions.

So the U.N.’s report, like the other studies using the misguided and error filled BMI standard, is JUNK science and dangerous!!!

The outlandish numbers defy reason and what our eyes see all around us.

A reality check says they are wrong.

Shame on UN and shame on the Globe and Mail for promoting this false mania.