Re: cleaning the car

In alt.usage.english, Vinny Burgoo wrote:

You forgot "adult". The NIHCE guidelines specified adults.

I think 8% is the proportion of the population of the UK with a BMI over
35, and the footnote does refute the headline, and they're depending on
people not reading or taking in the footnote.

The fact that you interpret it differently prompted me to re-evaluate
the piece and I came to the same conclusion as before, albeit with less
certainty.

As you said earlier, it's a figure from their own (apparently secret)
survey, so we can't know for sure.

But just look at that (sub)headline: "3.6 million Brits are overweight
enough for weight-loss surgery". But what percentage is that? Well,
lower down they refer to "2.4 million (5%) of people" so that means
they're (strangely) working off a population figure of about 48 million,
which is a bit odd considering there are actually 60 million of us.
Anyway, they've provided us with a calibration, so their "3.6 million"
and "8%" are clearly referring to the same people. It's clear to me from
the wording of that headline - "overweight enough" - that BMI is the
only criterion being applied when selecting those 8%.

No, I can't see that. It's a Nuffield footnote to a Nuffield claim in
a Nuffield press release. It would be very odd if it cast doubt on the
claim it's attached to. As I see it, it's saying who the 8% are. They
have a 40+ BMI or a 35+ BMI and 'other significant disease'. Who do
you think the 8% are?

[...]

The same planet where health experts can be startled to find that only
5% of the population would ever consider gastric-band surgery. (A very
high number, I reckon, given that 'gastric bands ... provide an often
much-needed kick-start to a new body shape'. Ouch! Shome elashtic!
(The 'kick-start' cliché was clapped out twenty years ago, yet it's
used now more than ever. Is it taught in Media Studies or something?
(Hi, Ron!)))

Here's a Nuffield Foundation (no relation) paper on the ethics of
health education and research:

<http://www.nuffieldbioethics.org/fileLibrary/pdf/Public_health_-
_ethical_issues.pdf>

'The minimum hurdle for [medical] evidence to be reported [in the
press] (or to be considered in public health policy more generally) is
that it should be published in the peer-reviewed literature, or have
been subject to an equivalent scrutiny by expert peers.'

Quite.

--
VB

In alt.usage.english, Vinny Burgoo wrote:

That's true if you equate "explanation" with "refutation". The footnote
shows that an unspecified proportion of that 8% could *not* be
considered for gastric-band weight-loss surgery.

I agree 100%.

My favourite part of the article was this:

  “The majority of people go to see a doctor within one week of
  noticing a cold, cough or ingrown toenail [...]".

They fail to say which planet this applies to.

Au contraire, in English usage. The info you summarise below was
attached as a footnote to the 8% claim and was presumably intended as
an explanation of 'could be considered for gastric-band, weight-loss
surgery'.

Given the poor quality of press releases and of science reporting in
general, the research itself may well say what you say the press
release says but the research isn't available online so we can either
accept what the press release actually says or pooh-pooh the whole
story. I think we should do the latter. There's too much bad science
floating around out there. If Nuffield can't be arsed to back up its
somewhat extreme claims with a PDF of the paper (or, better, the raw
data), I don't see why we should treat the story as more than an
attempt to grab headlines - which attempt, alas, has succeeded all too
well: <http://www.newsbiscuit.com/2009/07/01/fat-people-%E2%80%98not-
that-funny%E2%80%99-says-obesity-expert/>.

See also: <http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/printable/7104/

--
VB

In alt.usage.english, James Hogg wrote:

Thanks.

Careful reading shows that those 8% of Britons could *not* all be
considered for surgery. Only adults qualify. And there must be "other
significant disease (for example, type 2 diabetes or high blood
pressure)" or a much higher BMI (40 instead of 35 - I don't see a
percentage for that).

Quoth Mike Barnes <mikebarnes@bluebottle.com>, and I quote:

Try this:
http://tinyurl.com/lbrghz

In alt.usage.english, Vinny Burgoo wrote:

Sounds pretty implausible to me, and as you imply, the weight-loss
surgery link is highly suspicious. But the link you gave doesn't work
for me, even if I remove the whitespace. Try again?

Several GPs I know are of the opinion that the boundaries of categories
- the BMI-based ones - are set too low. It's as much about where you
draw the lines as it is about how heavy people are. Even as a skinny
teenager I was in the upper half of what's now called "normal".

[...]

[...]

Apparently. A study released yesterday* claims that 57% of Britons are
overweight, 23% are obese and 8% 'could be considered for gastric-band
weight-loss surgery'. It also predicts that 'the entire British
population will be obese before the turn of the century'. The research
was done by a professor of weight-loss surgery on behalf of his
employer, a chain of private hospitals offering weight-loss surgery.**

Not that the National Health Service is any more believable. When I
weighed a bit less than I do now and had a BMI of about 22, I
registered at the local NHS general medical practice. The nurse looked
at a chart and told me I was perilously close to being obese. Somehow
managing to ignore the disparity between my scrawny appearance and
what she thought her chart said, she then gave me a lecture on
sensible eating - cut out fatty foods and alcohol, don't snack etc.
When, in an attempt to wake her up, I mentioned that I sometimes
skipped entire meals, she gave me the standard spiel on excessive
dieting. And on it went. She was a tick-box automaton incapable of
independent thought. Not having been back, I still don't know whether
she was natively stupid or had been in the NHS for too long.

-- VB

*<http://www.nuffieldhealth.com/Individuals/News-and- Information/
Press-Releases/Current-Affairs/Obesity-levels-double-within- 10-years/

**In fairness, the professor seems more angry than greedy: 'The
increased acceptance of obesity is alarming. It beggars belief that in
the last five years the emergency services have had respond to over
1,700 requests to help move obese patients stuck in their
homes.' (Yikes!)

Out of curiosity, is there a lot more "tooth rotting" today than there
was when you were a kid?  It really seems to be *way* down in the US
than it was in the '70s.  My son is ten and has yet to have a cavity.
I'm sure that I had about a dozen by the time I was his age.

[somewhat tongue-in-cheek] Is there?  I went looking for norms in an
attempt to bolster my arguments to my son (just sliding into the body
changes that accompany puberty and becoming unsure of his self image)
that he is not, by any stretch of the imagination "fat", when I
discovered that the Body-Mass Index (BMI) norms for kids are different
from those of adults.  For adults, they're absolute thresholds (<18.5
is "underweight", >25 is "overweight", >30 is "obese"), but for kids
the "overweight" threshold is apparently the 85th percentile for that
age and sex.  So 15% of all kids are overweight, by definition, and it
will always be the case that 15% of all kids are overweight.

But seriously I thought that the current wisdom was that snacking (as
long as it's healthy) when you're starting to get hungry is actually
better than waiting and sitting down to big meals really hungry,
because when you're really hungry you eat more than you need before
your body tells you it's no longer hungry.  

When I was in kindergarten, in 1969, there was an official "snack"
(juice and cookies) partway through the morning.  That didn't happen
in the other grades, but it was certainly standard for kids to get
something when they got home from school "to tide them over until
dinner".  For my son, the school encouraged the kids to bring a snack
at least through third grade (age 8), and he has something when he
gets home from school.  

My wife and I are of that generation, and snacks are something that we
don't have.  The early lessons stuck, and I am sometimes amazed at
people pushing trolleys out of Sainsbury's filled with crisps,
biscuits, tooth-rotting drinks and the like.  No wonder there's an
obesity problem.

When I was young, eating between meals was at least as sinful as
omitting to clean one's teeth before bed.  "Snack" still carries
automatic overtones of "bad" for me, so that I have to re-calibrate
every time someone innocently suggests I partake of one.

It may be part of my childhood experience that makes me the way I am.  I was
an active child, but the difference was that I simply had no time to waste
on eating.  Eating was a necessary evil to put up with, not something I
enjoyed.  Yes, I was thin as a rail then.  In our family, mealtimes were
mealtimes, and there were no snacks between them -- not that I still adhere
to that regimen.

A risk I gladly assume to have the grandchildren with me for the day.
Someday, I'll trade in the car.  Not the grandchildren, though.

If you are as active as my two grandsons, you'll burn it off as fast
as you eat.  Perpetual motion.

I don't remember ever washing the cars when I was living on Florida's east
coast.  It rained often enough to ceep the cars clean.

Yeah, that happens.  Fortunately, not often.

I am against eating in the car, although I don't protest much when others do
it in my car.  Too often there are very messy or sticky mishaps.  Why can't
people wait until mealtime to eat, as I usually plan not to be driving at
mealtimes.  It is not necessary to be munching on something constantly, as
many do.  That can lead to obesity.

If so, then I'm peculiar in a different way.  I rarely wash the car.
When it needs it, I take it to a drive-through car wash.  I frequently
clean the car.  Florida's sandy, and I spend a lot of time out in the
boonies looking for things photographable.  I track sand and dirt into
the car, and clean it when it gets too much.

When I take the grandchildren out, I clean the car when I get home.
They always have some sort of snack with them that leaves crumbs.

I see that other have given answers to your question.  I'll go with number
3.

I have a different point to address -- I don't think that Americans use the
expression "clean the car" very often.  They usually wash the car.  Sure,
there can also be some vacuuming involved, but it is still just washing the
car.  I notice that my wife, a Filipina, and her relatives /clean/ their
cars.  Me, I /wash/ mine.  Vacuum it too.

Is this, possibly, pondial?  Or am I a bit peculiar.

Hello:

In AmE:

1. The first thing I did yesterday was cleaning the car.
2. The first thing I did yesterday was to clean the car.
3. The first thing I did yesterday was clean the car.

Do you feel that the first isn't correct?
How about the other two?

Thanks.
Marius Hancu