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> Overweight, including obesity, overtook tobacco use as the leading risk factor in 2024, driven by a substantial fall (41%) in the burden attributable to tobac

by yen223 2y ago

> Overweight, including obesity, overtook tobacco use as the leading risk factor in 2024, driven by a substantial fall (41%) in the burden attributable to tobacco use since 2003. According to the study, it's not so much that more people got fat, it's that fewer people are smoking. A lot of comments here missed this I think.

sneak 2y ago
It's rarely news when life gets safer and longer and the median person's risk of death falls. :/ Most people mistakenly think that the world is getting worse.
slothtrop 2y ago
Mostly yes, though people did get fatter.
swatcoder 2y ago
Imagine a chart with two lines spanning the last 50 years. One of those lines was very high at the beginning, and has generally been trending downwards. One of those lines was quite low at the beginning and has rapidly been trending upwards. The study is suggesting that we've reached a point where these two lines have finally crossed, which we probably could have anticipated coming sooner or later. That the most salient recent observation is a change to the prevalence of tobacco-attributed disease doesn't really change what it means for obesity-attributed risk to finally overtake it. That wouldn't have even been fathomable 50 years ago and the trendlines confirm exactly what needs urgent attention now.
asciimov 2y ago
And they excluded vaping.
- lblume 2y ago
  Well, yes, because there are no large enough long-term studies that have been done on vaping that can show mortality to increase significantly (yet).
gridder 2y ago
also when you quit smoking you normally end up gaining weight
lelanthran 2y ago
> According to the study, it's not so much that more people got fat, it's that fewer people are smoking. According to this study, sure, but countries, like France, with double the smoking rate of the USA still don't have double the health issues associated with smoking. I'd like to see a simple bar chart with, for each country, a bar displaying smokers as a percentage of population and a bar displaying heart-disease/cancer/diabetes/whatever[1] as a percentage of the population. My understanding right now is that countries with (for example) double the smokers still don't have double the health problems. Some may even have fewer health problems even though they have more smokers. [1] Basically, all the diseases that lead for smokers.

by yen223 2y ago

sneak 2y ago

It's rarely news when life gets safer and longer and the median person's risk of death falls. :/ Most people mistakenly think that the world is getting worse.

slothtrop 2y ago

Mostly yes, though people did get fatter.

swatcoder 2y ago

Imagine a chart with two lines spanning the last 50 years. One of those lines was very high at the beginning, and has generally been trending downwards. One of those lines was quite low at the beginning and has rapidly been trending upwards. The study is suggesting that we've reached a point where these two lines have finally crossed, which we probably could have anticipated coming sooner or later. That the most salient recent observation is a change to the prevalence of tobacco-attributed disease doesn't really change what it means for obesity-attributed risk to finally overtake it. That wouldn't have even been fathomable 50 years ago and the trendlines confirm exactly what needs urgent attention now.

asciimov 2y ago

And they excluded vaping.

lblume 2y ago
Well, yes, because there are no large enough long-term studies that have been done on vaping that can show mortality to increase significantly (yet).

gridder 2y ago

also when you quit smoking you normally end up gaining weight

lelanthran 2y ago

> According to the study, it's not so much that more people got fat, it's that fewer people are smoking. According to this study, sure, but countries, like France, with double the smoking rate of the USA still don't have double the health issues associated with smoking. I'd like to see a simple bar chart with, for each country, a bar displaying smokers as a percentage of population and a bar displaying heart-disease/cancer/diabetes/whatever[1] as a percentage of the population. My understanding right now is that countries with (for example) double the smokers still don't have double the health problems. Some may even have fewer health problems even though they have more smokers. [1] Basically, all the diseases that lead for smokers.