My friend and colleague Lisa Morrison sent me a link this morning to an editorial from San Antonio, Texas (on MySanAntonio.com, a partnership between the newspaper San Antonio Express-News and the television station KENS 5) that had gotten her worked up before her morning coffee. But after taking a look at it myself, I understand her frustration. It’s enough to turn your hair red. The editorial is so ridiculous the author didn’t even sign their name to it, presumably they’re too embarrassed to forever link themselves to such blather. The entire argument, if you can even call it that, can be summed up neatly by the title, “TV + beer = round bodies.”
It’s mercifully short, at least, so go ahead a take a look for yourself. The entirety of their support for the argument that drinking beer and watching too much TV is responsible for the country’s obesity problem stems from three data points from an abstract released by the U.S. Census Bureau last week by way of a Reuters article. The first is that “two-thirds of Americans are overweight, including one-third of whom are obese.” Next is that “Americans will spend an average of nearly 4 1/2 hours daily in front of the television” (although the editorial says 10 hours, including “reading books and surfing the Internet” but leaves out the other Census data about listening to the radio, “listening to recorded music,” along with “reading newspapers, playing video games and reading other media.”). Lastly, we drink a half gallon of beer each week on average — I know I’m doing my part. So the editorial takes those pieces of Census data and believes they have the proof that “[b]eer and television lead to big bellies.” And not only does this constitute proof in the mind of the article’s anonymous author, but they also believe that their reasoning is “common sense.”
Here’s some more brilliant analysis:
The bureau does not interpret the data; it merely presents it, but it does not take a social scientist to see that there may be a connection between obesity and beer drinking and television viewing.
If people spent less time watching television and drinking beer, we might see a more encouraging figure when the bureau does its next abstract — a decrease in the amount of overweight Americans.
What the author fails to mention is the figures cited by Reuters come from a “1,300-page book of tables and statistics” that includes 1,376 separate tables of data. To cherry pick three of them and claim to prove a correlation between them is ludicrous.
Other data includes “Per capita consumption of corn sweeteners, including high-fructose syrup, totaled 78.1 pounds in the United States in 2004, up from 35.3 pounds in 1980 but on a downward trend from 81.8 pounds consumed in 2000.” But I’m sure all that sugar had nothing to do with obesity trends. It has to be the beer. That’s just common sense, right?
As Lisa put it:
I cannot believe this editorial actually targets beer consumption (and nothing else except watching TV) for the increased weight of Americans. Like eating too much food or drinking sugary sodas or even sipping too much of the Blessed Red Wine (caps intended) wouldn’t contribute to the creeping numbers on the scale …
There are obviously so many factors that lead to obesity that to simplify it as being caused by beer and television is more than a bit insulting. Not only do many other drinks — both alcoholic and non-alcoholic — also pack on the pounds but snack foods and other empty-calorie eats do at least as much to increase weight gain for sedentary people.
I can’t help but wonder who wrote the editorial and what their real motives or agenda were? Do I smell neo-prohibitionists trying to connect dots that aren’t there? Or merely some misguided journalist with a deadline and not much time to think about what he or she is writing?
One would think a paper with a competent beer writer, Travis Poling, would’ve RAN THIS STORY BY HIM FIRST!
http://www.mysanantonio.com/specials/weblogs/beer/
JFC…
Isn’t Lisa’s hair already red? Met her at Magnolia last year. Good times!
Happy Holidays!
“It’s enough to turn your hair red.”
So THAT’s what happened! 🙂
Loren: I would love to hear Travis Poling’s thoughts on this ridiculous excuse for an “editorial.”
Anybody shoot him a link to Jay’s posting?
Hoppy Holidays,
Lisa
Hard to believe that simple common sense is in such short supply in San Antonio! As I wrote recently in Ale Street:
“Plainly put, beer alone will not make you fat. Beer and bad diet and night after night sitting in front of the television, on the other hand, will. But then again, lethargy and poor food alone will also increase your middle, with no help needed from beer.”
Quicker route. I asked a friend to send him this page at his BeerAdvocate handle, tpoling.
And if beer alone makes you fat…why am I 180lbs? Chasing 2 sons around maybe? Nah…
Idiots.
Cheers!
Those are good folks over there, but the editorial writers are a
separate department from the newsroom. Oversimplification of an
issue is sometimes an occupational hazard for folks who are not
specialty writers.
I wrote in February in defense of beer: “What about wine belly, scotch belly, foie gras belly or duck confit belly? Again, society gives beer the low class rap. When wealthy trend setters eventually make well-crafted beer a part of their diet perhaps “beer belly” will disappear from the language.”
Prosit!
http://www.mysanantonio.com/specials/weblogs/beer/archives/2006/02/the_myth_of_the.html#comments
And I bet it doesn’t explain how the year 2006 for me equated to a 30 pound weight loss, the running of the NYC Marathon, and drinking/appreciating more beer than in any previous year. It’s all about balance and common sense. Fortunately, we all know that 🙂 Why do these articles find the light of day???
I live here in San Antonio. I think the beer plus tv equation is actually accurate based upon my non-scientific personal observations of my fellow citizens. It’s so hot here that no one exercises. There’s really not much of an outdoor culture at all except for shooting deer. It’s just beer, tv, and tacos.
Yeah, what Steve, Loren and Bryan said.
I drink more beer than I care to admit. 6-0 and 160lbs (same as high school, which was more than 20 years ago). Guess eating a good diet and excercising every day play a part in things.
As a full-time newspaper guy, I can explain something that got Jay upset. Editorials might be written by one person, but the reason they do not have bylines is because they represent the feelings of the newspaper’s editorial board, which might consist of 4-6 people (usually the editorial page editor, the managing editor, the executive editor, the publisher and couple of designated and distinguished community representatives. The paper often prints a list of who is on the editorial board. Sometimes the members of the board take turns writing editorials, picking ones about which they are particularly knowledgeable or passionate. But the whole board approves them before they’re published. Guest op-ed pieces get bylines and sometimes column sigs (a headshot of the writer), but editorials from the editorial board do not. Now … let’s have beer.
I wrote a reply letter to the editor expressing just how ludicrous I felt the editorial to be. I also pointed
out that the US is actually far behind many countries in per capita beer consumption and those countries
(all 12 of them) do not have the obesity problem we have here nor do the countries slightly behind us in
beer consumption.
I then showed how we are the undisputed world leader of fast food with a fast food chain almost literally
on every corner and that in almost all of those countries people walked or rode bikes for transport far more
than Americans do.
Apparently, they printed my reply. I got a call while Christmas shopping asking if I cared if they printed it
and confirming my identity. Doesn’t make the original editorial any less stupid, but at least a common sense
rebuttal might get read by some who read the original piece.