stupidness in the news

[dianec42]

2 articles on the normally-quite-sensible BBC News health page really annoy me today.

First, GPs urged to help obese get slim. Where do you begin with this article?

To paraphrase a comment from a friend's journal, "Which of the methods clinically proven to work in the long term are they going to recommend?" Next, apparently one of the primary tools will be the BMI, which in this day and age seems downright medieval. Two preposterous claims are then made in rapid succession: "This does not mean someone has to change their life." Umm, sorry, yes it does. The changes don't have to be huge or earth-shattering; but if you have an unhealthy lifestyle and you want a healthy one, then you do have to change the things you do every day. I'm terribly sorry, but that's just how life works. Next, "It is not about doctors and ministers telling people what to do." Of course it is, you idiot. Giving someone constructive advice is, in a very real sense, telling them what to do and how to do it. They don't have to listen, of course...

The other headline which blew my mind: America's middle-aged are less fit than the English. But why? Umm... this study was done on people aged 55 to 64; that is NOT middle aged! Or is "middle aged" defined as "median baby boomer age" these days? Eesh.

Comments

[tobyaw]

Why isn't that middle aged? I would have thought that the decade (or more) before retirement age would be middle age.

[dianec42.livejournal.com]

Conversely, I would think, "What, people are living to 110 to 128 now?"

Perhaps the American and British usages of the term "middle aged" differ. I've always thought of middle age as (shudder) the 40-to-50 range.

Or perhaps another classical usage is in play here, "10 years older than the author or speaker is now"...

[dianec42.livejournal.com]

BTW - Even Chambers gives a range of 40 to 60. So experts agree that 64 is pushing it! :-P

[tobyaw]

The Oxford dictionary that comes with Mac OS X says 'the period between early adulthood and old age, usually considered as the years from about 45 to 65.'

[dianec42.livejournal.com]

Craziness. I'm sure that's still WAY higher than the traditional American working definition. (Unless that's gone up recently, in which case I blame the baby boomers!)

[xthread.livejournal.com]

Well, remember that UK childrearing ages start about a decade later.

[dianec42.livejournal.com]

*snork* That depends where in the UK you are. Unless Americans have started around the age of 3...?

[xthread.livejournal.com]

Unless Americans have started around the age of 3...?

Some days it sure seems like it...

[asimovberlioz.livejournal.com]

Just another excuse to bash ostensibly "unattractive" people who don't buy into the "thin is in!" consumerism.

Now they're trying to get this way of thinking into the schools. The only effect it will have will be to get the jocks to taunt the "fatties" more.

Bah!

(By the way, I was thin as a rail in high school.)