(no subject)
Dec. 13th, 2006 06:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
djm4_lj"A quarter of England adults are obese, costing £3.7bn a year. It causes more harm than smoking, alcohol or poverty."
It's not that I don't believe the BBC news site - as it happens, I don't, but that's not quite the point - it's that I don't think a bald statement like that should sit there uncriticised. At the very least, I'd like the journalist to expand a little on how they're quantifying 'harm'. I'd also like to know whether they're using 'obese' as defiend by BMI, and if so, are they simply assuming that 'obese' means 'serious health risk'? Thing is, that's actully highly controversial, as anyone writing in this area should know.
Obesity does not cause more harm than lazy journalism, but then very little does.
It's not that I don't believe the BBC news site - as it happens, I don't, but that's not quite the point - it's that I don't think a bald statement like that should sit there uncriticised. At the very least, I'd like the journalist to expand a little on how they're quantifying 'harm'. I'd also like to know whether they're using 'obese' as defiend by BMI, and if so, are they simply assuming that 'obese' means 'serious health risk'? Thing is, that's actully highly controversial, as anyone writing in this area should know.
Obesity does not cause more harm than lazy journalism, but then very little does.
