Fifty plus size offended or not??

[ubermaus]

Is the term "plus size" offensive? Is it dangerous or healthy to promote a "big is beautiful attitude".

 

'Plus size' models the size of normal size women is sending out unhealthy signals.

I think the attitude should be people come in all shapes and sizes and health in general, good diet and excercise is more important than being stick thin.

 

---------- Post added 23-04-2015 at 07:59 ----------

 

---------- Post added 23-04-2015 at 08:10 ----------

 

We've had pizza shops and easy access to food for the last 50 years, yet obesity has massively increased in the last 15 to 20... Something changed.

 

Excess sugar and salt in foods.

Doctors are saying you cant 'outrun' a bad diet and saying exercise isnt important in todays most read bbc article.

Edited April 23, 2015 by ubermaus
.......

[medusa]

Any chance this can be resolved without bans for posting inappropriate language? Polite request here, before I ask one of the mods who hasn't posted to come in with a big stick.

[ubermaus]

 

Specific to the last 15 - 20 years, unlikely IMO.

Olive may well be correct though in her (I assume) explanation.

 

One thing for sure is as a nation we are getting FATTER (not you of course but generally).

 

Portion sizes? lack of calorie control? I mean you never used to be able to buy 'donut burgers' etc. at 2000 calories a pop.

 

A possibility is less activity...but I see more and more on the cycle and running thing. Gyms are booming. So not sure...

 

Cuts in diet education funding, public health?

Edited April 23, 2015 by ubermaus
....

[Olive]

Olive may well be correct though in her (I assume) explanation.

 

You would be correct in your assumption Cyclone

 

 

Something I've been wondering about is the concept of "ideal weight".

 

I know that BMI is a very blunt instrument, but I can see that it's a useful guideline. However, I do wonder if the bands are set sensibly?

 

For a long time, I've come across articles relating to research that has shown that people who are slightly overweight live longer than people who are slightly underweight.

 

Now I don't know what's meant by "slightly", but I think we could all agree that you don't have to look like a supermodel to be fit, active and healthy.

 

So it leaves me wondering why we set the "ideal" weight parameters to be lower than those within which you'll be more likely to live longer. Maybe "ideal" is actually "slightly chubby" in terms of a long life?

[willman]

I was brought up on a combination of what we referred to as packet food - Smash, burgers in tin, Heinz sponge puddings and a variety of home cooked meals from scratch.

Apart from fairgrounds and the seaside i never experienced fast food (burgers) and KFC wasn't local to me in Sheffield until the time i had bought my first house.

 

I'm overweight now, due to convenience food in my diet and the availability 24 hours a day.

I can leave home at 6 in morning and get a calorie filled breakfast from McD's, before i had to visit a greasy spoon or have something from home.For convenience i can grab calorie filled snacks on the road and get fish and chips on the way home in the evening.

I'm old enough and intelligent enough to know better BUT it's more convenient than going home and cooking a meal every evening that fits in with our lifestyle. Although i do cook at weekends and 2 nights in the week.

I genuinely know few people who cook for the family everyday, in fact i visit 136 homes every week(between 3 and 6pm) and i can count on one hand the number who are cooking meals for the children coming in from school.

[alternageek]

Any chance this can be resolved without bans for posting inappropriate language? Polite request here, before I ask one of the mods who hasn't posted to come in with a big stick.

 

Well, I can as I havent posted.

 

Please behave yourselves.

 

Thank you.

[medusa]

You would be correct in your assumption Cyclone

 

 

Something I've been wondering about is the concept of "ideal weight".

 

I know that BMI is a very blunt instrument, but I can see that it's a useful guideline. However, I do wonder if the bands are set sensibly?

 

 

There is growing evidence that BMI is only appropriate for people who are in the middle ranges of height. For those who are quite a lot shorter than average, a 'normal' BMI gives a much higher than is considered healthy level of body fat, and for those who are a lot taller than average the inverse is true.

 

There should be some sort of sliding scale which adjusts for deviations away from the mean on height to compensate for this.

 

A lot of weight graphs and charts are horribly oversimplistic though. The growth charts for babies assume that a baby is being bottle fed, meaning that breast fed babies get flagged up as gaining too little weight when they are perfectly healthy when measured on the scale of babies who are breast fed. Both of these scales are appropriate for Caucasian babies but also can fail to be appropriate when the baby is of another ethnicity.

 

Height and weight charts for children, which are used frequently in schools, are also calculated on Caucasian children and may consequently mark down children of other ethnicities as being over or under weight because of the characteristics of their ethnicity.

 

There is no such thing as a simple answer to this though. Every scale has to have parameters and although I think that they could all do with updating to take into account the known problems with them, for a government/health service which is obsessed with numbers, they are unlikely to be done away with at any point.

[ubermaus]

You would be correct in your assumption Cyclone

 

 

Something I've been wondering about is the concept of "ideal weight".

 

I know that BMI is a very blunt instrument, but I can see that it's a useful guideline. However, I do wonder if the bands are set sensibly?

 

For a long time, I've come across articles relating to research that has shown that people who are slightly overweight live longer than people who are slightly underweight.

 

Now I don't know what's meant by "slightly", but I think we could all agree that you don't have to look like a supermodel to be fit, active and healthy.

 

So it leaves me wondering why we set the "ideal" weight parameters to be lower than those within which you'll be more likely to live longer. Maybe "ideal" is actually "slightly chubby" in terms of a long life?

 

You can be fat clinically, yet still be fit. Some people are just prone to being fatter than average.

Being a man, I know fat round the waist is a bad thing for health.

 

---------- Post added 23-04-2015 at 14:24 ----------

 

There is growing evidence that BMI is only appropriate for people who are in the middle ranges of height. For those who are quite a lot shorter than average, a 'normal' BMI gives a much higher than is considered healthy level of body fat, and for those who are a lot taller than average the inverse is true.

 

There should be some sort of sliding scale which adjusts for deviations away from the mean on height to compensate for this.

 

A lot of weight graphs and charts are horribly oversimplistic though. The growth charts for babies assume that a baby is being bottle fed, meaning that breast fed babies get flagged up as gaining too little weight when they are perfectly healthy when measured on the scale of babies who are breast fed. Both of these scales are appropriate for Caucasian babies but also can fail to be appropriate when the baby is of another ethnicity.

 

Height and weight charts for children, which are used frequently in schools, are also calculated on Caucasian children and may consequently mark down children of other ethnicities as being over or under weight because of the characteristics of their ethnicity.

 

There is no such thing as a simple answer to this though. Every scale has to have parameters and although I think that they could all do with updating to take into account the known problems with them, for a government/health service which is obsessed with numbers, they are unlikely to be done away with at any point.

 

BMI doesnt take into account muscle tissue either. You can be an elite sportsman and be obese which is obviously ludicrous.

Someone told me the best way to tell if you are fat or making progress is look at your body composition.

Literally take photos of yourself naked and then compare in increments. Just ignore the scales.

[Jeffrey Shaw]

They banned all the E numbers and preservatives and things in food that made people hyperactive?

 

It's one theory..

'E' numbers are mere shorthand for ingredient names. The numbers aren't "banned" as such!

[Cyclone]

You would be correct in your assumption Cyclone

 

 

Something I've been wondering about is the concept of "ideal weight".

 

I know that BMI is a very blunt instrument, but I can see that it's a useful guideline. However, I do wonder if the bands are set sensibly?

 

For a long time, I've come across articles relating to research that has shown that people who are slightly overweight live longer than people who are slightly underweight.

 

Now I don't know what's meant by "slightly", but I think we could all agree that you don't have to look like a supermodel to be fit, active and healthy.

 

So it leaves me wondering why we set the "ideal" weight parameters to be lower than those within which you'll be more likely to live longer. Maybe "ideal" is actually "slightly chubby" in terms of a long life?

 

It's a very good point. If slightly over weight is correlated with lower mortality, then we should redefine that as the ideal weight.

 

---------- Post added 24-04-2015 at 17:06 ----------

 

There is growing evidence that BMI is only appropriate for people who are in the middle ranges of height. For those who are quite a lot shorter than average, a 'normal' BMI gives a much higher than is considered healthy level of body fat, and for those who are a lot taller than average the inverse is true.

Isn't that obvious from the maths involved? BMI uses a square value.

Volume (and therefore mass) is a cube function of height, not square, so away from the centre measurement it will get increasingly inaccurate.

 

There should be some sort of sliding scale which adjusts for deviations away from the mean on height to compensate for this.

A new scale should be developed.

 

A lot of weight graphs and charts are horribly oversimplistic though. The growth charts for babies assume that a baby is being bottle fed, meaning that breast fed babies get flagged up as gaining too little weight when they are perfectly healthy when measured on the scale of babies who are breast fed. Both of these scales are appropriate for Caucasian babies but also can fail to be appropriate when the baby is of another ethnicity.

 

Height and weight charts for children, which are used frequently in schools, are also calculated on Caucasian children and may consequently mark down children of other ethnicities as being over or under weight because of the characteristics of their ethnicity.

 

There is no such thing as a simple answer to this though. Every scale has to have parameters and although I think that they could all do with updating to take into account the known problems with them, for a government/health service which is obsessed with numbers, they are unlikely to be done away with at any point.

Surely the obsession with numbers should lead them to improve the scales that they measure against. Particularly when the flaws are so well known.