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EventsSwedes Soon the Slimmest People in the Western World?
A new OECD report shows that the number of obese people in most developed countries has doubled or tripled between the 1980s and 2009. This disaster coincides with the fear of fat.
Interestingly Norway and Sweden are among the slimmest countries in 2009. Considering the LCHF revolution going on in these countries (butter shortage and everything) the future looks promising.
Will Sweden soon be the slimmest country in the Western world?
More
How bad science created the obesity epidemic
Stupid fear of cholesterol and obesity
A diet book for kids (!) and what it can teach us
The American obesity epidemic 1989 – 2010
PS: Japan and Korea has a lower percentage of obese people (measured as BMI>30) than the rest of the countries in the chart above. I removed them as BMI isn’t a good comparison between mostly Caucasian and Asian populations.
Asians are (on average) of a slimmer build with less muscular limbs. They get truncal obesity and obesity-related diseases (e.g. diabetes) at lower BMI levels. The comparison thus isn’t really fair.
Race is rarely more than a cultural construct- I thought all such differences (ie BMI - yes I know there are a some genetic factors in disease etc!) disappeared amongst emigres? Is your Asian "truncal obesity" "at lower BMI levels" true for asians born in Sweden/America raised on similar diets?
--Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04854XqcfCY&ob=av3e
I live in the Czech Republic and have been to Sweden many times, and I'm just not seeing it in my N=1 opinion. Men tend to be fatter here from beer consumption but Swedish women are definitely fatter than Czech women as far as my ogling eye can tell.
Your no 1 opinion is spelled "anecdotes". Has nothing to do with real sciense i´m afraid.
And in my n=1 observation, Americans are just as slim as the French.
Well, maybe that's just because my time divides between Manhattan and San Francisco, where very rich young white people in designer clothes skew the view?
Maybe if I went to a rural Mississippi or Iowa town I'd have a different perspective?
@Maggan A, that's why I said it was just my skewed opinion, not a matter of sciense (sic). As I just pointed out, my main point was, blah blah. Let me guess, you are Swedish and you'd prefer to let a nationalistic thrill run up your leg in the guise of a Queen song?
I would be happy if every other country on the list beat us in this the next time, if it is because of them eating better food.
If i´m not mistaken Your main piont is that you are from the Czech Republic. Sorry but that is not enough to prove anything.
Shoud we not trust the OECD reports?
Scania? my husband is working there. There is a hwole lot of people loosing weight with LCHF...
@Maggan A, yes you are very much mistaken.
I meant Scania as in the region in southern Sweden, not the company. Another wow.
No I did not follow any link of yours. Read Docs post higher up in the begining of this post. It starts "A new OECD report..."
I dont know anything about the wheigt of people hwo live in Scania/Skåne. Sweden is a large country.
I keep on going whit "this"(LCHF) for the rest of my life. Minus 15 kg in ten months and never felt better.
Yes you are right. Sorry if I got carried away - this post is not about LCHF. But you are a bigger idiot than me because i never discuss whit people i consider "real" idiots.
Look, I can keep doing this all night, you make it way too easy. How about we both agree that LCHF rocks and English is not your native language? Also, that Sweden is a really cool country despite taking itself a bit too seriously at times? Oh, and that all Scanians are really crypto-Danes.
I agree 100% ;-)
I would be interested to hear Dr Eenfeldt's opinion on that.
I am as big a fan of LCHF as you will find, and I want us to succeed in persuading people. We must be careful about citing data so easy to refute, because it implies that we're not serious about scientifically deciding on the cause of obesity.
As for trusting the OECD, I am not inclining to rely on any agency funded by governments: the political establishment is one of our biggest opponents in trying to get a healthy message out.
We have plenty of sound evidence to support LCHF. We should be better than the LFHC crowd, and carefully scrutinize data that appears to support our position as well as data that appears to oppose it. Most of it, on both sides, is highly suspect, and I am grateful to Sean for getting me to click on a link I probably would have skipped, assuming a much greater degree of rigor than was actually applied.
The fact that the OECD chart is a misleading mess does not, in any way, refute LCHF. But it isn't a particularly useful support for it. And I suspect Dr. Eenfeldt was mainly enjoying a chance to engage in lighthearted bragging about Sweden, and didn't seriously consider this report to be the foundation of a scientific defense of LCHF.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2066060/British-women-fatte...
No data for Sweden.
@JAUS, of course it's totally subjective I'm pretty sure I made that clear. I've been other places in Sweden including Loftahammar after I took a boat from Prague to L. with a friend (long story). My reasoning is not flawed because I freely admit my skepticism is based on opinon. You might want to look up the definition of a skeptic.
@Less Antman, very well said. Abandoning scientific rigor and honest skepticism is not the way to go.
Your basic premise is flawed ("measured, not self-reported, which is what the chart is supposed to show"), the data is self-reported unless noted by the "1" (as for Luxemburg, UK, Austria, etc.). If you look at Sweden in the chart for example it's listed at 5.5 for 1990 with the note that it's the 1989 data, when you look at the (excel) self-reported data for Sweden it's lacking data for 1990 and has 5.5 at 1989.
Unless I misread your post that explains the discrepancy.
I've seen people use self-reported diet studies to "prove" that low-fat diets don't work any better than low-carb diets. (Matt Metzgar thought this study, http://www.mattmetzgar.com/files/lowcarb2years.pdf, proof that LC diets don't work any better than LF). Using the Dr House rule (everybody lies) I don't consider self-reported data very useful. And don't tell me he's just a TV character, damnit!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_race
We Swiss have some typical cheese based dishes that are regularly eaten by most families. There is a shift towards low fat cheese though. When I speak to teenagers about what they like best, they say pizza, spaghetti and Turkish kebab. With an energy drink.
Oh my!
Just saw this older thread.
Hmm, just happened to exclude those two nations due to them being Asian?
or excluding them because their diets don't fit a theory or theme?
:Please, by that definition we'll need to exclude the dietary patterns of over half the world.
Humans have a unbelieveable ability to find exactly what they are looking for.
The internet has made this trait all the more pervasive.
I wonder how many of us there are..