YOUR HEALTH: The Obesity Myth exposed again

I have long and often criticized the BMI and its definitions for ‘healthy’, ‘overweight’ and ‘obese’ weight.  Without going into details again, the BMI used for its calculation a sample population of predominantly white adult males. This is now recognized even by the United Nation’s WHO (which stilled used it for its  recent world health report) as a major ‘limitation’ when applied to other ethnic and racial groups, and children under 18.

I have long argued that an even more important flaw is the assumption that ‘lean’ bodies are healthier and will live longer.

Insurance actuarial studies for some 40 years have disproved this.

They have found that people who have an extra 10 lbs of weight or even 10% above BMI adult ‘ideals’ simply live longer.

Why?  Because when severe illness or surgery cause major weight loss, people with extra weight have ‘room to spare’ and do not fall below the body’s innate ‘tipping point’ and die.

Now, as reported in York University Magazine, fall 2018, “How obesity measures up as a global crisis”, longitudinal studies in the U.S.A., Denmark, Japan and Asia -- involving well over 1.8 million people -- refute the obesity epidemic mania; a mania that has become doctrine in North American and UN medical circles, and which has inundated our mass media and culture.

The results of the above studies have been summarized by York University’s Professor Dennis Raphael in Critical Public Health (2017).

“People considered overweight – measured by body mass index (BMI) – had the highest life expectancy, followed by those considered obese. The most short-lived were those with the least fat.”[i]                     [My bold and italics.]

Any health issues: from heart disease to diabetes, are not usually due to extra ‘fat’ but the stresses of personal life and the workplace. 

Consequently, both Professors Raphael and Professor Angela Alberga of Concordia University in her article in the Journal of Obersity (2018) have gone further and argued the BMI and obesity mania are not only wrong
but, in fact, endanger human life.

The physical stresses of repeat, failed dieting and the low self-esteem of overweight and so-called obese individuals is threatening their well being!

They therefore recommend our physicians and governments cease their false fixation on weight and ‘fat’.

So, as I have long suggested, ditch the BMI and similar methods.

Ditch your household weighing scale and daily weigh ins.

Unless your body's bulk is a problem when trying to move or breath, stop stressing out on your body image and weight.

Let your body tell you what is ‘normal’ for you.

We must also stand up and repudiate the current medical profession mindset and government policies that have gotten it all wrong.

For example:

The Ontario government’s 2012 “No Time to Wait” strategy projected that without major intervention as many as 70% of today’s children will be “overweight or obese by 2040, with severe impact on health”[ii].

What garbage!!!

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[i] Cited in York University Magazine, Fall 2018,  page 15.

[ii] Ibid.

Your World :Corporate ingenuity outpaces Politics and Environmentalists

This weekend, some 200 nations of the world – including surprisingly the U.S.A. --have signed an agreement at a Global Warming conference in Poland to use one and the same ‘universal’ standard and rules for carbon reduction.

This is a follow up to the original agreements of the 2015 Paris Climate Accord.

Already, environmental activists are upset that the timeline for reduction are too long on the one hand, and will probably not even be met -- based on past government performance.

It is therefore worth noting that oil and mining related companies are not waiting for government (in)action but are proceeding on their own to innovate solutions that are practical and which generate a profit.

Maclean’s magazine (November 2018, pages 23-24 ) highlighted the American oil company, Occidental Petroleum Corporation which is reviving old oil wells by using a new process that injects Co₂ – carbon dioxide -- underground to force out oil deposits while simultaneously ‘storing’ the injected carbon deep in the ground.

According to the article, Occidental is storing at its Permian Basin site as much carbon as is emitted by the entire state of Maine or Hawaii in a full year!

As well, the article notes that on September 24, Occidental, ExxonMobil and Chevron joined with other world leading oil companies to create a $1 billion (U.S.) research fund for new energy reducing emissions – including methane; a gas 30 times more heat trapping than carbon[i].

And Time magazine recently (November 23 – December 3, 2018 issue, page 57) listed among the 50 best inventions of 2018 a 3M roof shingle that breaks up smog particles so they can wash away in rainfall.                           

So while governments talk and make promises that are never fully kept, and environmentalists and climate scientists fixate on carbon and hope to ‘eliminate’ the use of all fossil fuels: by the imposition of tax penalties and forced use of super-expensive and non-continuous/unreliable solar and wind technology -- and even NUCLEAR (suicidal) power, oil and mining businesses are innovating to solve Global Warming and atmospheric concerns in ways that are straightforward, profitable and allow the underground resources and  ‘gifts’ of Gaia, our planet, to be harvested for the betterment of humanity.

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[i] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140327111724.htm