Thursday, February 27, 2014

Erm, doesn't a 40% decline in obesity among children tell you other things than just yay?

The rate of obesity in preschool-age children in the U.S. dropped about 40% over the past decade, according to data from a comprehensive federal survey published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association—the latest sign that attempts to help parents improve children's diets and exercise habits might be starting to have an effect.

Great news!  State manipulation of human behavior finally shown to have real effects that are the same as intended!  Yay!  Woo hooo!  Right?   Except, except:  Anytime you see a major demographic statistic move so fast you wonder WTF?  It's not normal and certainly not for behavioral interventions, and I would suspect not for child rearing.  So my first reaction is either the original or new data are crap or the analytics are or there is something else going on.

But let's say its true.  Great news:  we should see significant improvements in health and mortality among this cohort because the reason we were doing this was for health reasons right?  Not aesthetic or left-puritanical reasons, right?  There was a true public benefit to all this fol de rol right?  So c'mon gang, let's see it!  Whip it out.  I await the shocking truth with bated breath.

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