Her claim is not that people may not weigh more but that "diets" have no effect on weight. Are you claiming that forced hunger and starvation are a diet?
Because of improved nutrition United Statsians are taller than they
were before 1950. Italians. are taller since 1960. This has nothing
to do with "programs" of tallness. Why would you expect that weight
would be any different than height in this respect? If as a thought
experiment we try to divorce ourselves from all of our cultural
notions and the shibboleths we have learned for the past 100 years or
so, why would you expect that a change in a food regime would effect
weight anymore than effects height?
>
> > 2) As compared to French and Italians. She says that the French and
> > Italians don't worry about weight and the doctors mostly don't weigh
> > their patients so with weight among French and Italians it is all
> > self-reported weight. Have you ever actually seen the statistics one
> > weight -- as opposed to weight related diseases from other countries?
>
> The WHO has a BMI database:
>
> <http://www.who.int/bmi/index.jsp>.
>
> Percent "normal" BMI:
>
> Japan 68.9%
> Italy 54.1
> Canada 46.7
> U.S. 35.1
> U.K. 32,7
>
Yes but her point is that the same experiments on weight range have
been performed in all affluent countries, and simply stated a Japanese
person can't change his her weight range anymore than a United
Stateser can. You have to look to other all environmental factors as
to why the weight range is set differently in different countries.
All evidence points to the fact that once the weight range is set it
cannot be changed. I am just not sure what evidence there is that it
is other wise? Do you have any such evidence? If she is right,
putting yourself on a diet regime will not help anyone, so just
exercise and eat well and stop worrying about it.
But another question, why would you expect that you could compare Japan say, with the U.S. on body mass in the first place? If the weight range is set sometime before adult hood, wouldn't the relevant comparison be between various people who have very similar environments in order to see how and why the weight range is set?
I notice that this is an epidemiological study based on 100 adults, But how the data is collected is not mentioned. Frankly, there have been very few studies of weight among Italians and there are hundreds of scientific studies of weight among we USers. Why is that? As far as I know there have been no _recent_ studies on Japanese people, or at least I have heard it claimed on a podcast I recently listened to from ABC (Australia). The Japanese do one of these studies every once in a while but not very often. We seem to do these kinds of studies every year.
Jerry