Radio 2 topic today: Fat people- working class or not?

[Supertramp]

Alright then, aren't peoples' diet choices to eat processed food, which are typically high in fats and salts, to keep profit as high as high as possible, keeping people in work eand paying tax? e.g. manufacturing food and the NHS?

 

They are choices the people make? Business aren't forcing you to eat crap.

 

John Barnes' dad was a Colonel in the Jamaican Army!

 

Yah mon an ting

[flamingjimmy]

In the absense of specific medical conditions which cause obesity the healthy lifestyle bit is the only part which has an impact on obesity.

Yes, true, however people of higher socio-economic status are more likely to have a healthy lifestyle.

 

There are plenty of well paid highly educated people who eat too much and exercise too little and end up obese as a result. Lots of people in highly paid jobs get little or no exercise from their work,

I'm not denying that, I was quite careful with my choice of language, using words like 'tend' and 'less likely'.

 

There are plenty of well paid highly educated people who eat too much and excercise too little, however, proportionately there are significantly less of them than there are low paid people with poorer education.

I would imagine a study of obesity in say roofers vs lawyers would probably find that on average the lawyers were more likely to be obese even though the lawyers earn more and will be better educated on average.

 

You don't have to imagine, there have been quite a lot of scientific studies into this. They all tend back up what I'm saying and go against what you're saying. Google is your friend.

[andygardener]

You don't have to imagine, there have been quite a lot of scientific studies into this. They all tend back up what I'm saying and go against what you're saying. Google is your friend.

 

http://www.poverty.org.uk/63/b.png

http://www.poverty.org.uk/63/c.png

 

Full report

 

Yes, it is.

[flamingjimmy]

http://www.poverty.org.uk/63/b.png

http://www.poverty.org.uk/63/c.png

 

Full report

 

Yes, it is.

 

Whoa fair enough! Wasn't expecting that.

 

Be honest, did you ignore any studies before you found that one? Because the first 3 I found yesterday all backed me up, good sources too I was confident! The top 3 results from googling "obesity vs socio economic status".

 

The first was the BMJ, the second was Oxford university, and the third was the NHS, hardly scraping the barrel!

 

Edit: The 4th, 5th, and 6th results from my google search also back me up! What did you google out of interest?

 

Also, in spite of the headline on the graph you've linked to it is very easy to read of a negative correlation between obesity and income for women at least, it's practically jumping out of the page. Just Look at that nice smooth downward slope showing a proportional relationship! It almost looks the other way for men though!

[andygardener]

Whoa fair enough! Wasn't expecting that.

 

Be honest, did you ignore any studies before you found that one? Because the first 3 I found yesterday all backed me up, good sources too I was confident! The top 3 results from googling "obesity vs socio economic status".

 

The first was the BMJ, the second was Oxford university, and the third was the NHS, hardly scraping the barrel!

 

Edit: The 4th, 5th, and 6th results from my google search also back me up! What did you google out of interest?

 

I googled "obesity and class" on the UK site and that report was the first report using UK data that came up. Your 1st link relates to sweden, your second to Canada. The third basically says the same as mine, no pattern for men but for women there is a trend towards less obesity the higher up the socio economic scale you go.

 

The point I was making is that good diet and exercise are the key to not being obese so there isn't anything particularly useful to be gleaned from stats about class, if we look at the stats then we'd recommend men to be poor and women to be rich if they want to stay in shape, not very useful advice imo.

 

Eat sensibly and get plenty of exercise is though.

[flamingjimmy]

I googled "obesity and class" on the UK site and that report was the first report using UK data that came up. Your 1st link relates to sweden, your second to Canada. The third basically says the same as mine, no pattern for men but for women there is a trend towards less obesity the higher up the socio economic scale you go.

The third actually does show a pattern for men, just not as significant as that for women.

 

" When all manual and non-manual groups are combined, obesity prevalence is

significantly higher in the manual group for both men and women.

 The National Statistics Socio-economic Classification (NS-SEC) shows a similar

picture. Obesity prevalence is higher among both men and women in lower

classifications, with smaller differences between groups for men (Figure 4).

 Obesity is also associated with educational attainment. Obesity prevalence is higher

in both men and women who have fewer qualifications (Figure 5)."

 

And it's from the same website the one you found is on, how odd! Things seem to be a little confused.

 

The point I was making is that good diet and exercise are the key to not being obese so there isn't anything particularly useful to be gleaned from stats about class

I disagree, the stats tell us that people with higher socio-economic status tend to have healthier lifestyles, which is useful information. I imagine it's quite hard to quantify lifestyle healthiness, having to rely on people responding to surveys and filling them in accurately, but it's much easier to measure obesity.

 

Eat sensibly and get plenty of exercise is [good advice] though.

I certainly won't argue with that.

[andygardener]

 

I disagree, the stats tell us that people with higher socio-economic status tend to have healthier lifestyles, which is useful information. I imagine it's quite hard to quantify lifestyle healthiness, having to rely on people responding to surveys and filling them in accurately, but it's much easier to measure obesity.

.

 

They don't as poor men are the least obese and poor women the most. However lets say that wasn't the case, what possible use is it? The advice to a poor fat person and a rich fat person is the same, eat sensibly, do plenty of exercise. Intelligent fat person and thick fat person, eat sensibly, do plenty of exercise. Fat CEO and fat long term unemployed, eat sensibly, do plenty of exercise.

 

Whats the point of the stats, what action could be taken on the basis of them?

[flamingjimmy]

They don't as poor men are the least obese and poor women the most.

If that is the case, its odd that it says:

 

"obesity prevalence is significantly higher in the manual group for both men and women"

 

"Obesity prevalence is higher among both men and women in lower classifications, with smaller differences between groups for men"

 

"Obesity prevalence is higher in both men and women who have fewer qualifications

 

what possible use is it? The advice to a poor fat person and a rich fat person is the same, eat sensibly, do plenty of exercise. Intelligent fat person and thick fat person, eat sensibly, do plenty of exercise. Fat CEO and fat long term unemployed, eat sensibly, do plenty of exercise.

 

Whats the point of the stats, what action could be taken on the basis of them?

To give us more information so we can try and change things. Yours is an after the fact solution. Yes of course the advice to give an obese person is the same whether they're a CEO or on the dole, however we need to try and understand why the guy on the dole is more likely to be overweight in the first place.

[cressida]

Meat and two veg. has always been a staple for lower and middle classes, maybe the plates and portions are larger nowadays

 

Junk food is blamed but how many people actually buy burgers and chips more than twice a week

 

Or perhaps people believe more food is associated with affluence

 

Actually I don't see many obese schoolchildren, but a lot of adult obesity at supermarkets

[andygardener]

To give us more information so we can try and change things. Yours is an after the fact solution. Yes of course the advice to give an obese person is the same whether they're a CEO or on the dole, however we need to try and understand why the guy on the dole is more likely to be overweight in the first place.

The lowest income quintile in both my and your reports shows men in that quintile as the least obese of anyone by quite a margin. Average out into halves and the difference between the two halves is so close it makes no difference.

 

People are more likely to be fat if they do not eat healthily and exercise. Some poor people eat healthily and exercise, some rich people do not. Regardless of their income/background/education adults can make a choice to live a healthy lifestyle or not. If they choose not to, that's their problem whether they are rich or poor.