Tag Archives: obesity

Is this why we’re fat?

The Atlantic today on why it was easier to be skinny in the 1980s:

They found a very surprising correlation: A given person, in 2006, eating the same amount of calories, taking in the same quantities of macronutrients like protein and fat, and exercising the same amount as a person of the same age did in 1988 would have a BMI that was about 2.3 points higher. In other words, people today are about 10 percent heavier than people were in the 1980s, even if they follow the exact same diet and exercise plans.

The piece goes on to explore three possible reasons for this: chemical exposure and its effect on hormonal processes, use of prescription drugs tied to weight gain, and excessive meat consumption that alters “gut bacteria” in ways that add up slowly over time.

Obesity by occupation

Here’s a fun, even if somewhat disturbing, graphic from the Wall Street Journal regarding obesity rates for different occupations.

obesity by occupation

Some of this didn’t make sense to me at first, but remembering how obesity is correlated with socioeconomic class (negatively) and race clears things up. Four of the top five most obese occupation classes in the graphic above earn less on average, I’d bet, relative to the bottom three classes. Asian-Americans, who are highly unlikely to be obese, are over-represented in two of the bottom three classes—physicians, dentists, EMTs, nurses and economists,scientists, psychologists.

On a related note, here’s an interesting piece on the “race gap” in America’s police forces, which are dominated by whites.