How do they Know

[mazie]

I listened to the Today programme this morning and the report says that two thirds of the Adult population of the UK are Obese and one third of our children are obese.....How do they know that? I haven't been to the Doctors for 10 years, so are they counting me? They are talking about applying a "Fat Tax" on all foods that have too many calories.......So here's my statistics....Perhaps we could do our own study

5'2" about 9 stone or just under

[tenrec]

5'5" just 9 stone in stocking feet!

[boxtops]

It's pro rata, mazie - look at a percentage of the population and multiply it up. A lot of 'em seem to live near me.....

[ladyalex]

I'm not telling anyone my stats, Mazie but yours sound pretty good. I've wondered that too. I live very near to both a primary and a secondary school and I'm really not seeing all these obese children. There's the occasional chubby one, but there always was.

[boxtops]

I'm not telling either, ladya - I've done enough of that on the slimming thread!

[Buenchico]

181cm (5'11") & 67kg (10½ stone)

[mazie]

Hi boxy...You cant do a survey and give figures out just by looking at folk... There are 60.2 Million people in the UK....How do they do that? All I want to know is where do they get their figures from

[ladyalex]

I think that Drs base their stats on the people they see...the ill ones...not the population as a whole.

[factor-fiction]

There is afascinating series on Radio 4 called More otr Less (sadly the latest series has finished but check it out on iplayer) which looks at statistics/claims like this and often they are nonsense statistics based on one street in Essex or taken in MacDonals carpark
This one maybe more reliable though- I'm sure proper sample are taken on this topic

[mazie]

It's not really that important if you are a stone overweight, thats not Obese...I just dont understand how they can lump us all together and come up with these figures. It makes a mockery of it all...

[boxtops]

When you go to the docs and join, they do a new patient check and get people's weight etc that way - you've only got to tot up a week's worth of them to get a representative picture.

However - it's like some of these surveys in the Daily Mail - if you only use stats from 1000 people, they might not be the right 1000 people, so any percentage survey is often skewed.

[ummmm]

I also wonder about this as I'm sure I don't see that many fat people.

[ladyalex]

I've also wondered about BMI figures....how convenient that 25, a nice round number , is 'normal' and 30, 5 units up from it is 'obese'.

[mazie]

Unless they included everyone Factor they cannot make statements like " two thirds of Adults in the UK are Obese" I dont believe it.....I stuggle to find a handful where I live and we are all very working class

[boxtops]

BMI's not reliable anyway, it doesn't take account of people's underlying structure. My mum always said our family have heavy bones!

[mazie]

When did you all go to the Doctors and have your weight checked... (Me too Ummm)

[ladyalex]

My bones are positively leaden, boxtops!

[NOX]

Male, a shade over 6ft and smack on 12 stone- and yeah it depends how much of you is made up of fat ( which weighs less) or muscle ( which weighs much more. My one son is statistically overweight but he doesn't carry any fat at all, it's all muscle- so lumping people together statistically is just absurd.

[mazie]

I'm Big Framed boxy (well thats my excuse)

It's all a load of eyewash, the same as all these statistics that are flying around at the moment...Really winds me up!