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Weighing
the numbers on obesity
December 23, 04
Suzanne Havala Hobbs
Have you heard the news? The government’s estimate of
the annual number of deaths caused by obesity was inflated.
The correct figure, it appears, is not as high as reports
earlier this year led the public to believe.
A report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
published in the Journal of the American Medical Association
in March, had obesity about to overtake smoking as the leading
cause of preventable death in the U.S.
Since then, the CDC has acknowledged a computational error
that resulted in an estimate higher than it should have been.
But that’s not all.
Other scientists have contested the methodology used by CDC
to arrive at its figures and say the estimate should be even
lower. At issue is how best to demonstrate the effect that
lifestyle factors – including diet, exercise, smoking,
and alcohol consumption – have on health and longevity.
A formal review is now under way, including input from national
experts who met this month at a conference organized by the
Institute of Medicine to discuss approaches to calculating
mortality rates associated with obesity and lifestyle factors.
In the meantime, the CDC has submitted a correction to JAMA
and expects it to be published in a matter of weeks. The agency
has not said what the new figure will be.
Regardless, CDC says obesity will remain a top public health
concern.
“The errors in the study’s calculations do not
diminish the threat that obesity poses to public health. CDC
still considers obesity a leading cause of preventable deaths
and a major public health issue,” said Dixie E. Snider,
the CDC’s chief of science, in a letter directed to
public health advocates and other health professionals.
Public health advocates aren’t the only ones with a
stake in the number crunching. The food industry has increasingly
been on the defensive for supersizing American waistlines
with larger portion sizes, more processed foods with minimal
nutritional value, and advertising that targets kids and encourages
high-calorie meals and snacks.
Among researchers and health professionals, the magnitude
of the obesity epidemic and its toll on health has a direct
bearing on priorities for funding and policy. If estimates
of the number of deaths caused by obesity are lowered, might
some funding be redirected to other issues, such as deaths
related to alcohol or infectious diseases?
“The kind of policies one would develop for something
that is killing about as many people as tobacco or a quarter
as many people as tobacco are very different,”Dr. Stanton
A. Glantz, director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research
and Education at the University of California San Francisco,
told The Wall Street Journal.
What does the controversy mean for you and me?
* It underscores the difficulty inherent in teasing out the
effects of diet, exercise, and other obesity-related factors
from other factors that may affect health and longevity.
* Obesity is still a major public health problem, whether
it’s No. 1, 2, 3 or 4.
But most importantly, we should all remain mindful of the
well-documented adverse impacts that excess weight has on
individuals’ long-term health and seek lifestyle choices
aimed at controlling our weight.
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