I presume most people have heard the term "middle age spread"?

It's a well known phenomenon that people's waistlines tend to expand a little as they grow older.  I heard somewhere that it's due to the muscles slackening off a bit after the excesses of youth, causing the contents of the abdomen to head south and settle in a nice comfortable pudding of entrails around the waist.

Well, bugger me rigid but "research" has just discovered this feature of aging. 

As a natural consequence of aging, apparently 80% of us are now obese?

They tried measuring our BMI.  They discovered that 36% are obese and a further 48% are overweight.  But having come up with these figures they decided that maybe BMI wasn't the best method so they scrapped those figures and decided to measure our waistlines instead.

Now correct me if I am wrong, but from my somewhat narrow experience of life, people tend to come in different shapes and sizes.  Some are short and some are tall, and a lot of people tend to fall somewhere in between the two?  So as height can vary from four to eight feet, waistlines also must vary accordingly?  Yet in their infinite wisdom they decided to use girth as their yardstick?  And their conclusion is that 80% of us have noticed an increase in belt-size.  Fuck me but that's amazing!

Having made this staggering discovery they then go on to say that people of increased girth visit their doctors more often – "Levels of arthritis and the frequency with which older adults go to the GP or take medication also increase as their waists expand."  Good God!  Surely this must be deserving of a Nobel Prize?  Or at least a Pulitzer?  So older people are visiting their doctors more often because their trousers are getting tighter?  And here was I thinking that older people visit their doctors more often because various bits of them are beginning to fail as a consequence of old age and that the spreading waistline was another consequence of the same ageing process?  I stand corrected.  How very silly of me.

"A 2012 study estimated that overweight and obesity issues cost the economy €1.3billion through increased use of health services, absenteeism and early deaths."

€1.3 billion?  Wow!  I wonder how that figure comes about?  Surely every illness disease or injury costs the health service something?  Isn't that what the health service is there for?  But of course throwing out a figure like that is going to shed a poor light on the older generations and have the younger braindead Twitter Generation calling for a culling of the elderly?  And absenteeism doesn't cost the economy anything.  It may be a small headache for the employer but it has zero effect on the overall economy.  As for death?  Surely death must be a bonus to the economy?  No more pensions to pay out?  No more annoying calls on the health service?    No marks for that little statement.

The only surprise about this "research" is that they have failed to mention any damage to the cheeeeldren, which is a major oversight.

Quality of research: 2%

Conclusions: 0%

Overall score: Would you ever fuck off and stop wasting oxygen.