The real reason Ben & Jerry's released their new 'Core' flavors
February 27, 2014 11:48 AM   Subscribe

There Is No Childhood Obesity Epidemic Paul Campos in TNR reviews the latest report from the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The New York Times reports that "Obesity Rate for Young Children Plummets 43% in a Decade."

More from Campos about Michael Gard's book, The End of the Obesity Epidemic.
posted by MisantropicPainforest (53 comments total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
 
So all this data we've been basing these efforts on is flawed? Yecch.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 11:58 AM on February 27, 2014


It's worth noting that Campos is a lawyer and law prof, not anyone with any actual training in the area, and the writer of the Times article is a journalist not a scientist. This seems like one of those situations where finding someone with direct expertise to comment would be the best course of action.
posted by asterix at 12:02 PM on February 27, 2014 [6 favorites]


ARGH I HATE SCIENCE/MEDICINE REPORTING. Behold, the conclusion from the actual JAMA article:
Overall, there have been no significant changes in obesity prevalence in youth or adults between 2003-2004 and 2011-2012. Obesity prevalence remains high and thus it is important to continue surveillance.
Kids didn't get fatter, at least. In the last decade, one in six people aged 2-19 is obese. Let's not call off our efforts quite yet.
posted by nicodine at 12:02 PM on February 27, 2014 [31 favorites]


evidence that the so-called “obesity epidemic” appears to have ended: overall, obesity rates for both American adults and children remained statistically unchanged between 2003 and 2012.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but an epidemic which isn't growing is still an epidemic, right?
posted by mikelieman at 12:03 PM on February 27, 2014 [24 favorites]


Yes, all these fat kids I see every day are clearly the product of my imagination.
posted by entropicamericana at 12:04 PM on February 27, 2014 [5 favorites]


Wait, is my takeaway supposed to be that Americans aren't losing weight, so Michelle Obama is a bad person, or Americans are losing weight, so Michelle Obama is a bad person? Or, maybe, that Americans were not gaining weight, so Michelle Obama is a bad person? What is the talking point!?!
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:04 PM on February 27, 2014 [13 favorites]


That's exactly what caught my eye as well, mikelieman. It's like saying the zombie apocalypse is over because the prevalence of zombies is holding steady at 98%.
posted by Justinian at 12:04 PM on February 27, 2014 [8 favorites]


Could this New Republic rhetoric be any more inflammatory? obesity fear-mongers ... anti-fat industry ... the obesity police. Also, fuck web publishers who use Javascript to screw up copy-and-paste.
posted by Nelson at 12:05 PM on February 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


Yes, all these fat kids I see every day are clearly the product of my imagination.

Well, first, that's anecdotal.

Second, it may indeed be the byproduct of your continued addition of psilocybin mushrooms on salads, due to your insistence that "they just taste sooo much better than that shit at the grocery store."
posted by filthy light thief at 12:07 PM on February 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


It's a coverup!
posted by blue_beetle at 12:07 PM on February 27, 2014


For context when I went to school there was one fat kid. We called him Fat Al. I just saw a picture of my childhood baseball team and he wouldn't even be considered chunky today.

Kids these days are too bloody heavy to even give proper wedgies to!
posted by srboisvert at 12:08 PM on February 27, 2014 [3 favorites]


It's a coverup!

Overall, there have been no significant changes in obesity prevalence in youth or adults between 2003-2004 and 2011-2012

It's bad science reporting!
posted by filthy light thief at 12:10 PM on February 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


The Hollowmen has a great episode on politics and childhood obesity.

Focusing on childhood obesity is good. If you're going to piss people off, you piss people off who can't vote.

It begins with the government considering a raft of social measures to combat the problem, and ends with an "awareness campaign."
posted by Paragon at 12:12 PM on February 27, 2014


Regardless of the validity of this report, a lot of American kids still eat like crap -- fast food, sugary drinks (including those billed as "juice"), snack foods, and processed and packaged foods that are overloaded with fat, sodium, and HFCS.

Healthier eating isn't an issue we (or Michelle Obama) should relax on.
posted by mudpuppie at 12:13 PM on February 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


Dude needs to tour the midwest for a week and reconsider his conclusions. It's sad and scary how many genuinely obese kids I see these days. I mean...Back when I was a kid, I was the fat kid in school. And, I definitely was obese. Huge. But, out of my entire grade school class, I was the only one. There was no other "fat kid". I was it.

Today, though...good grief. I feel so bad for those kids, knowing how hard it was for me when I was their age. Then again, they obviously belong to a large group now, and aren't outliers.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:14 PM on February 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


The New Republic article didn't exactly sound neutral and disinterested.
posted by Thing at 12:15 PM on February 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


For context when I went to school there was one fat kid. We called him Fat Al.

Was he so unusual that he hired himself out as a kind of carnival entertainment? A "Fat Al Attraction", if you will?
posted by Strange Interlude at 12:18 PM on February 27, 2014 [21 favorites]


Could this New Republic rhetoric be any more inflammatory? obesity fear-mongers ... anti-fat industry ... the obesity police. Also, fuck web publishers who use Javascript to screw up copy-and-paste.

They could have gone right to "Nanny-State Health Nazis" or "Fatstapo" or "Fatstasi" (for that Communist tang, you know)....
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:18 PM on February 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


A couple of people have highlighted the 'gotcha' sentence in the conclusion:
"Overall, there have been no significant changes in obesity prevalence in youth or adults between 2003-2004 and 2011-2012."
While that's true across youths and adults as a whole, the reason why the NYT in particular was excited about the report is because of this sentence in the results:
"There was a significant decrease in obesity among 2- to 5-year-old children (from 13.9% to 8.4%; P = .03)"
Indeed, the lead author of the paper said this to the NYT:
"This is the first time we’ve seen any indication of any significant decrease in any group ... It was exciting."
So, just because there is no overall significant changes across youth and adults as a whole doesn't mean there weren't changes in their constituent groups. Still, if you continue to have the urge to look on the bad side of the news, because you know, nothing can ever be good and all science reporting is always bad, there's this sentence from the paper's results:
"[There was] a significant increase in obesity among women aged 60 years and older (from 31.5% to 38.1%; P = .006)."
Panic over, guys - the world is going to shit after all, let's celebrate!
posted by adrianhon at 12:20 PM on February 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


*Eats fried twinkie in celebration*
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 12:23 PM on February 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


The reduction in the 2-5 year old age group is statistically significant, but there is still a lot of uncertainty about the magnitude of the decline; it very well may be much lower than 43 percent. The figure here shows that the uptick in obesity rates for 2-5 year olds from 2007-08 to 2009-10 was much larger than trend, so the actual rate in 2000-10 could have been lower, meaning that the reduction from 2009-10 to 2011-12 may be overstated.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 12:25 PM on February 27, 2014


But how will we race to moral judgement of the obese if our phoney baloney numbers aren't working for our moral panic?
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 12:32 PM on February 27, 2014 [8 favorites]


Please add 'TNR' to the tags, and give me the ability to exclude posts with a 'TNR' tag from my MeFi searches.
posted by benito.strauss at 12:32 PM on February 27, 2014


I don't have access to the whole article but it shouldn't be surprising that, in a study making many, many comparisons, two of them have a statistically significant difference. P=.03 (roughly) means that 3% of the time, the study would find a difference that isn't real. The more comparisons you examine, the more likely that one of them will, by chance, have a P value less than .05.

I think think the media's obsession with the obesity epidemic is dumb, and even I think Paul Campos is full of shit in this case.
posted by muddgirl at 12:35 PM on February 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


But how will we race to moral judgement of the obese if our phoney baloney numbers aren't working for our moral panic?

Did... did you read the links?
posted by Justinian at 12:40 PM on February 27, 2014


I just heard this program show a few days ago discussing the possibility of states attorneys general suing food companies for the obesity related costs incurred by the states.

I wonder if this article is just paid PR by big food companies to try to counter this?
posted by delicious-luncheon at 12:42 PM on February 27, 2014


So does this mean I'm supposed to hate Michelle Obama? Or start campaigning for an end to WIC, since children don't need to eat nutritious food?
posted by inertia at 12:48 PM on February 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


I thought this was going to be a discussion of the new Ben and Jerry's Core flavors. So, so disappointing...
posted by wellvis at 1:04 PM on February 27, 2014 [4 favorites]


Let's just assume for a minute that Campos is right and there is no epidemic. Why does that make Michelle Obama a bad person?

As my father-in-law likes to say, "You don't have to be sick to get better." I don't see how the First Lady encouraging kids to get healthier could possible be a bad thing.
posted by VTX at 1:38 PM on February 27, 2014 [3 favorites]


One of the Core flavors comes close to replicating the discontinued, but all-time greatest Ben and Jerry's flavor ever: Wavy Gravy. It's missing the cashews, though.

I was 20-30 pounds overweight when I was a kid and it made life hell. I would have been much happier if my classmates were fat as well, selfish as that is. But the torture did eventually get me to start eating better, enroll in a marital arts class for more exercise, and join the water polo and swim teams, which I wound up loving and got me down to single-digit bodyfat. Too bad thirty years later I'm spending all day in a cubicle or out on business trips where it's impossible to eat well and get enough exercise.
posted by Thoughtcrime at 1:42 PM on February 27, 2014


Even if the numbers aren't actually dropping, just stopping the rate of increase would represent an improvement. Again purely anecdotal, but kids now are visibly a lot bigger than when I was in school. It's not the kids' fault, and in some ways not even the parents' fault -- there have been a lot of changes in the intervening thirty years, from portion sizes to the number of kids who walk to and from school, and some combination of things is producing different outcomes. And despite my issues with his article, Campos is right that the historical data is spotty.
posted by Dip Flash at 1:43 PM on February 27, 2014


The greatest Ben and Jerry's flavor ever was Oatmeal Cookie Chunk. I will brook no argument on this.
posted by entropicamericana at 1:44 PM on February 27, 2014


Campos' piece was mostly snark, but the results of this study are interesting and a bit curious -- to economists and statisticians at least. Here is some more analysis from Kevin Drum at Mother Jones.
posted by Pararrayos at 1:53 PM on February 27, 2014


All that can be determined for certain from these article is that Campos really seems to dislike the First Lady for some reason.
posted by infinitywaltz at 2:14 PM on February 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


enroll in a marital arts class for more exercise,

is that what they're calling it these days?
posted by the agents of KAOS at 3:11 PM on February 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


The real reason Ben & Jerry's released their new 'Core' flavors

Speaking of this and soon to be obese young adults, i went out and bought the hazelnut variety of this last night... and ate somewhere between 2/3rds and 3/4 of it in one sitting.

I think my arteries are clogged already.
posted by emptythought at 3:25 PM on February 27, 2014


I haven't closely read the paper, but on first look, my feeling is that even studies like these, with just a few tests, should have some sort of multiple testing correction.* Here's the data from their key table (6). The only significant difference over time is the 2-5 age group, and then only if you compare the 2011-2012 value with 2003-2004. I imagine they are more scrupulous than that and also did significance tests on the overall trends, but in any case, doing four tests and getting one with a p-value of 0.03 does not inspire much confidence that the effect is real.
Age range  2003-2004         2005-2006        2007-2008         2009-2010         2011-2012         2003/4-2011/2     P Value
2-19       17.1 (14.6-20)    15.4 (12.8-18.5) 16.8 (14.3-19.7)  16.9 (15.4-18.4)  16.9 (14.9-19.2)  −0.2 (−3.4-3)     0.78
2-5        13.9 (10.8-17.6)  10.7 (8.5-13.3)  10.1 (7.8-12.9)   12.1 (9.9-14.8)   8.4 (5.9-11.6)    −5.5 (−9.6-−1.4)  0.03
6-11       18.8 (16.2-21.7)  15.1 (11.3-20.1  19.6 (17.2-22.4)  18.0 (16.3-19.8)  17.7 (14.5-21.4)  −1.1 (−5.2-3.0)   0.88
12-19      17.4 (14-21.3)    17.8 (14.2-22)   18.1 (14.7-22)    18.4 (15.8-21.3)  20.5 (17.1-24.4)  3.1 (−1.7-7.9)    0.20
*In fact, they write:
In the current analysis, trend tests were conducted on different age groups. When multiple statistical tests are undertaken, by chance some tests will be statistically significant (eg, 5% of the time using α of .05). In some cases, adjustments are made to account for these multiple comparisons, and a P value lower than .05 is used to determine statistical significance. In the current analysis, adjustments were not made for multiple comparisons, but the P value is presented.

posted by chortly at 3:43 PM on February 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


The apparently anomalous change in 2-5 year old obesity rates could quite reasonably have resulted from two rather extreme developments: the creation of pediatric medicine / public health standards calling intervention for toddler obesity (example) to the widely-discussed notion that toddler obesity was a form of child neglect or abuse that might justify legal intervention against the parent (loss of child custody, etc).
posted by MattD at 3:57 PM on February 27, 2014




It's like saying the zombie apocalypse is over because the prevalence of zombies is holding steady at 98%.

I know you're trying to make a point, but this is a really insensitive analogy to use when you are talking about an incredibly stigmatized group of people.
posted by Ouisch at 4:18 PM on February 27, 2014


I did not mean to offend zombie-americans.
posted by Justinian at 5:05 PM on February 27, 2014 [11 favorites]


Okay: 'fat kids' aren't actually the population that's being measured here. My best friend's two girls are both in the upper 97th percentile of the growth charts, and have been since their births. They are by no means even chubby, or in any way different from what I looked like at their ages. You would never look at them and think 'fat', and neither their parents or grandparents are obese.

They are tall, and they are healthy, vibrant, exuberant and active kids.

This makes me very skeptical of the diagnosis of childhood obesity.
posted by jrochest at 6:13 PM on February 27, 2014


First off, I find it hard to get all happy inside at the news that our preschool-age children are getting skinnier; when they can confirm a significant loss in excess weight in middle-aged adults, that's when I'll work on getting happy.

Secondly, I can't help but wonder just how much of this weight loss in infants and preschool kids isn't a result of the ban on Bispenol A in baby bottles and sippy cups since BPA operates as a synthetic estrogen, thereby tending to increase weight.

I just hope the weight loss isn't due to a decrease in the availability of food due to cutbacks in food stamps and WIC programs.

Certainly there's a level of obesity in children that's unhealthy, but most of those fat kids come from fat mothers and grandmothers and all of us are consuming unhealthy levels of hormones through the use of flexible plastics. I'm just not at all convinced that fat kids are solely a result of too much ice cream and fattening food.
posted by aryma at 6:56 PM on February 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


Man, imagine the vitriol if Michelle Obama had focused on Laura Bush's issues of childhood education and women's health, rather than just encouraging kids to eat healthier and exercise more.
posted by dirigibleman at 8:04 PM on February 27, 2014 [3 favorites]


I did not mean to offend zombie-americans.

Comparing fat people to zombies is just so incredibly dehumanizing and offensive I don't really know what to say.
posted by Ouisch at 8:35 PM on February 27, 2014 [3 favorites]


Oh, you were serious?
posted by Justinian at 9:17 PM on February 27, 2014


I too immediately suspected BPA bans, but that's not a popular explanation because if obesity decreased by 42 percent, it must be because we're 42 percent more morally virtuous!
posted by Ralston McTodd at 3:59 AM on February 28, 2014


...or because the sample sizes are small and the data is inherently noisy...
posted by muddgirl at 5:31 AM on February 28, 2014


Okay: 'fat kids' aren't actually the population that's being measured here. My best friend's two girls are both in the upper 97th percentile of the growth charts, and have been since their births. They are by no means even chubby, or in any way different from what I looked like at their ages. You would never look at them and think 'fat', and neither their parents or grandparents are obese.

Yea, and I know this one guy who is a bodybuilder and his BMI says he's just fat so BMI and any kind of population measurement is bullshit, amirite?
posted by the agents of KAOS at 5:14 PM on February 28, 2014


Yeah, BMI is a population measure not an individual one. I don't know why that is so hard to deal with. Objecting to BMI because you know someone in the 97th percentile of growth charts is like objecting to global warming because it was unusually cold outside last week.
posted by Justinian at 6:06 PM on February 28, 2014 [1 favorite]


Oh, you were serious?

Yes. You seem pretty pleased with yourself. It must be nice to feel so safe.
posted by Ouisch at 6:24 PM on February 28, 2014


It's not so bad.

Mostly I don't have any idea how you could get what you got out of what was said.
posted by Justinian at 6:26 PM on February 28, 2014


Yeah, BMI is a population measure not an individual one. I don't know why that is so hard to deal with.

Probably because large numbers of people (including journalists and doctors) use it as an individual measure? It's not surprising the general public misunderstands when the experts apply the tools badly....
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:18 AM on March 2, 2014


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