Quote:
Originally Posted by chemgear
Eh? Your link has stats that is over a decade out of date and is self admittedly too low of a number as it only accounts for several illnesses.
This figure is suggested to underestimate the overall economic cost of excess weight in Canada as it does not include the costs for those who are overweight, but not obese. Further, it only includes costs of adult obesity and costs associated with eight chronic diseases.
EDIT: And again, I'm not sure what the full number is in Canada. There was this report just a few months ago that suggest it was north of 20% for the US. (linked earlier in the thread: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0409103247.htm) The assumption is of course that the obesity rates are comparable along with the consequential cost. While one could argue that the rate is higher in the US, it is probably not much better. I would estimate that the cost is closer to 20% than 2% (given the 2% is already acknowledged by the source itself as being significantly underestimated). |
Alright, where to start… Yes it admits that it’s too low, but its first reason for this is because it doesn’t include people who are overweight. I’ve found many sources who have stated that being overweight does not notably influence your health or healthcare costs. In fact, I took the time to read the research article that your Science Daily article was based on (The medical care costs of obesity: An instrumental variables approach), and it said itself “It is reasonable to combine the healthy weight and overweight in this context because the two groups have similar health care costs”, so that should not increase the predicted medical costs.
While my source (PHAC) does say that it may “underestimate the overall economic cost of excess weight in Canada”, it does not say it is “significantly underestimated” (those were your words, not theirs). One would assume that if they thought it was “significantly” underestimated (say by 20% or so) they would have actually said “significantly”.
In addition to this, the information that you’re quoting is from the US. If you do a quick google search of obesity by country Canada is generally placed much lower than the US, so I don’t think using information about the US is particularly relevant since I would guess that the majority of the users on this forum are from Canada (I haven't read the whole article, but just as an example this article from 2012 places Canada quite a bit lower for obesity rates when compared to the US:
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/1/61/49716427.pdf). My information may be a bit out of date, but at least it’s from the right country (though to be fair, the information in the research article that your Science Daily article talks about comes from 2000-2005, which is also 7-12 years old, so I guess that’s a bit out of date too, no?)
Some things that make me question the validity of the research done for your article is that they chose to use only individuals who were between 20-64 years old, with biological children who were 11-20 years old.
First, how many 20 year olds do you know that have biological children that are 11 (since that would make them 9 when they had the child)? In my opinion I would say that means that this information is more likely coming from individuals who are 29-64 years old (though I suppose we could reasonably say that it’s 26-64 since it’s not completely out of line for a 15 year old to have a child). As people age they naturally gain weight, so we’re already using a group of people who are more likely to be heavier, so I’m not sure if this accurately reflects the general population. Based on their numbers, people who are 35-54 years old represent 86% of their data, but I certainly don’t think 86% of the US population is between the ages of 35-54 years old (please correct me if I’m wrong, I have no stats on this).
In addition to weight going up with age, health goes down, so the older you are the more likely you are to have health problems, whether obese or not. Not only are they taking an age group that is more likely to be heavier, they’re also taking an age group that is more likely to have health problems. They even go so far as to say in the article “We acknowledge that the effect of obesity in our subpopulation...may not generalize to the entire population, so the primary focus of this paper is the marginal effect of obesity for our subpopulation rather than the national estimate.”
Another thing that makes me wary of using this population to represent the entire nation is that, from personal experience, I find that it is harder for people with children to find time to be active, and they’ll also possibly have less money to devote to healthier foods (since they’re using more of their income for the needs of their child). In addition to this, it is very common for women to gain weight when they have children, and with the new commitments that they have with this child it’s often quite hard to lose that weight. For these reasons, using only a population of people who have children seems flawed to me.
They also state in the article:
“It is a very small percentage of the sample at high levels of BMI that incur disproportionate shares of obesity-related medical costs”
And
“The large average effects of obesity… are explained by relatively few individuals with very high BMI that incur very high medical expenditures”
Which admits that simply being “obese” by BMI definition does not automatically equal being an economic burden, rather it is a very small percentage of people who have an unusually high BMI that are accounting for this significantly increased cost.
I admit that it seems nearly impossible to do research that is 100% perfect with no flaws to speak of; all I’m saying is that it’s important to look at things with a critical eye. Journals don’t always report all the information, (even Science Daily apparently) so you can’t always take what they say at face value.
Some other interesting things that I did notice throughout that article and thought were worth mentioning:
There was a strong emphasis on how influential genetics are on BMI. In addition to other things, they succinctly stated that “A large literature in behavioral genetics confirms that there is a
strong genetic component to weight, and that
any similarity in weight due to shared environment is so small as to be undetectable.” I think this basically says that environment has a very small role in having a higher BMI for most individuals, and so the argument that it is genetics and thus incredibly hard to change is completely relevant.
Also, they had a graph showing the medical care expenditures for the adults in their sample. I’m not sure of the legality of posting a copy of this graph as it’s an article that has to be paid for, but it does show that medical costs do not start to significantly increase until a BMI of ~35. In fact, the medical expenditure for a person with a BMI of 17.5 (considered to be a “healthy” or “normal” BMI) is about the same as the medical expenditures of someone with a BMI of 35. This article seems to uphold the statement that flylock shox made earlier about health problems not going up significantly until BMI reaches 35.