Why is Belgium so Skinny?

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  • jgnatca
    jgnatca Posts: 14,464 Member
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    @andrikosDE , I'm not meaning to characterize all arabic people. I am speaking specifically about Saudi Arabia, as the nutritional/obesity data is in stark contrast to Belgium. It begs the question, why? The WHO dietary cluster map says that Saudi Arabia does not eat the same as the US.

    obesity-world-map-global.png
  • jgnatca
    jgnatca Posts: 14,464 Member
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    The WHO Cluster diet map.
    Global_GEMS_CLUSTERS_2012.jpg?ua=1
  • LivingtheLeanDream
    LivingtheLeanDream Posts: 13,342 Member
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    jgnatca wrote: »
    I've been analysing cluster diet data published by the WHO, comparing against a world obesity map, and I'm finding unusual results. Belgium and the Netherlands do not have an obesity problem (less than 10% of the population), even though they consume almost 3,000 grams a day; higher than North America's diet of just over 2,000.

    BelgiumHighCalLowObesity.jpg

    Not only that, they're carb-high! How does one explain this? My working theory is that this is a happy country, with possibly a more active population. Do they walk to work?

    This does seem to fly in the face of the CICO model, and the theory that weight loss starts in the kitchen.

    Puzzling.

    I reckon they are just more active, I think thats the only explanation?
  • usmcmp
    usmcmp Posts: 21,220 Member
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    jgnatca wrote: »
    Frick. I know I posted this already. Here is my source. And I am talking grams because that is the unit of measure in the data.

    http://www.who.int/nutrition/landscape_analysis/nlis_gem_food/en/

    So Belgium eats 3000 grams of food per day.

    When you subtract water from their intake you get 2060 grams of calorie containing substance.
    When you subtract water from the US intake you get 2067 grams of calorie containing substance.

    Grams of food doesn't mean calories are equal. You'd have to find the average calories per gram for each type of food listed (citrus fruits, dairy products, fish, etc.) and do the math.
  • TR0berts
    TR0berts Posts: 7,739 Member
    edited May 2015
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    jgnatca wrote: »
    zyxst, the WHO is collecting this information from consumption of foodstuffs. It would be a practical measure.


    No, not really. You'd have to look at how much of each individual food is consumed and determine the total number of Calories consumed. I closed the link, but I seem to recall that there were just a bunch of not-very-specific categories of food called out and the average number of grams per category. As such, no meaningful conclusions can be drawn from that data - there's simply not enough "real" data.



    edit: ninja'd by usmcmp
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
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    andrikosDE wrote: »
    People in the climate-wise cooler part of EU are very active, drive less, bike more, hike_run_bike_walk_swim during the weekends etc.
    Of course all this will add up over a lifetime of an active lifestyle over a sedentary one.
    The benefits are numerous and obvious.

    Yes--these kinds of comparisons show the folly of that recent study that claimed activity didn't matter.

    Activity is much more than intentional exercise.
  • doktorglass
    doktorglass Posts: 91 Member
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    Ok, I don't know anything about this study, those food clusters, units of measurements or definitions. But it seems like some people like to draw inferences from aggregate (population) statistics of consumption regarding current lifestyles and link that to observed obesity rates. This can be misleading for that one reason that we have no idea of the distribution of obesity over population categories such as age, income class, education, gender, ethnic background.
    For example, obesity is commonly linked to poverty, which is also associated with lack of education. The share of very poor and uneducated people in NL/BE may be much smaller than in the US, because NL/BE has a much smaller income gap than US. Hence, comparing US with NL/BE is more a comparison of rich peoples' with poor peoples' obesity rates. And the causes of obesity rates in poor communities is a universal issue which have little to do with "lifestyle choices" or may not even be that country-specific.

    One thing about NL: the Dutch are also the tallest people in the World. And I think the cross-country height difference is most pronounced among the female population. It is unfair to compare calorie intake between 5'10'' Dutch women and 5'5'' US women. Especially since the obesity rate among US women are higher than for men.

    My point being, aggregate data leaves too much room for speculation. You pose questions like there aren't any answers. I think the problem is that there are too many answers, but we don't know which ones are relevant.
  • granturismo
    granturismo Posts: 232 Member
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    54 % of Dutch males were overweight and 10 % were obese in 2010. For Dutch women, overweight and obese rates were 44 % and 13 per respectively.

    irishtimes.com/news/health/ireland-set-to-be-most-obese-country-in-europe-who-says-1.2201731
  • jgnatca
    jgnatca Posts: 14,464 Member
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    @doktorglass I don't think that aggregate data leads to answers, but it does pose new questions. For instance, The North American/Russian cluster diets are pretty well the same, yet the US has a higher obesity rate. I'm pretty sure the reason is that the US represents more than one demographic profile. And I agree the most obvious split is poverty/income inequity. The obesity map by county very closely matches the income inequity map.

    obesity_by_county_large.png
  • jgnatca
    jgnatca Posts: 14,464 Member
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    So Belgians drink more water and eat more carbs by proportion than Americans.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
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    We really need more information on what these "cluster diets" are before we can draw conclusions. How are they determined? Why grams and not calories? Just changing the fat percentage would lead to a huge difference in overall calories.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
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    Also Russia obviously has more than one demographic profile too.
  • usmcmp
    usmcmp Posts: 21,220 Member
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    jgnatca wrote: »
    So Belgians drink more water and eat more carbs by proportion than Americans.

    Not necessarily.
    http://chartsbin.com/view/1160
    uzatvo9p3ai3.jpg
    m8rqjz44gaur.jpg
  • Acg67
    Acg67 Posts: 12,142 Member
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    MOAR Correlations!
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
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    Countries ranked by sugar consumption, as long as we are comparing:

    http://chartsbin.com/view/32076
  • Acg67
    Acg67 Posts: 12,142 Member
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    The rise in obesity on the US is negatively correlated with sugar consumption over the last decade. Hmmmm
  • doktorglass
    doktorglass Posts: 91 Member
    edited May 2015
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    Acg67 wrote: »
    The rise in obesity on the US is negatively correlated with sugar consumption over the last decade. Hmmmm

    Is that because of increased use of High Fructose Corn Syrup?
  • Acg67
    Acg67 Posts: 12,142 Member
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    doktorglass wrote: »
    Acg67 wrote: »
    The rise in obesity on the US is negatively correlated with sugar consumption over the last decade. Hmmmm

    Is that because of increased use of High Fructose Corn Syrup?

    Hfcs is also sugar...
  • jgnatca
    jgnatca Posts: 14,464 Member
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    Thank you for that @usmcmp
  • rainbowbow
    rainbowbow Posts: 7,490 Member
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    jgnatca wrote: »
    Thank you for that @usmcmp

    I think the only peice of information you are missing is activity level and overall calorie consumption....

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