Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Maybe Stop With The Hot-Take Childhood Obesity Rate Trend Stories And Reports?

Or at the very least stop until we're actually as a society trying to do something about it? Because why would we expect it to change if we're not doing anything about it?

As to why stop? Well because despite not doing anything as a society, it seems to be changing....but not really the way you might expect.

Here's what coverage has looked like for the past 8 years

STABILIZE IN 2010
SLOWLY RISE IN 2012
FALL IN 2013
BARELY EXISTS IN 2014
LEVELLED OFF IN 2015
STILL RISING IN 2016
STOPPED RISING IN 2017
GETTING WORSE IN 2018
All this to say, these annual takes? They don't make sense both in terms of the outcomes (up, down, sideways, gone, up, down, etc.), but also not in the context of change. Changes tend to occur consequent to changes, and given there really aren't any initiatives going on in the US or Canada that one might expect to impact on childhood obesity rates, perhaps the coverage instead could be about our inaction as a society on this sad file, rather than whether there's been a tiny blip up, down, or sideways in some survey's reported incidence.