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Is Stuffing Your Face with Food as Dangerous as Smoking Cigarettes?

flashy dan

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I was just reading this article which asserts, among other things:

Obesity is a major risk factor for developing cancer, roughly the equivalent of tobacco use . . . .
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Seems surprising, but on the other hand both groups -- fatties and smokers -- have a harder time buying life insurance. I would guess it's harder for a morbidly obese person to buy life insurance than a chain smoker.
 
To the person doing it? Quite probably.

To everyone around them? No. Not even close. If I choose to eat five 12 inch pizzas in a row I'll be hurting myself. If I light up, I hurt everyone around me as well.
 
Also, there is a difference between "stuffing your face" and the intended use of tobacco.
 
flashy dan said:
Is Stuffing Your Face with Food as Dangerous as Smoking Cigarettes?
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I skimmed through the article in the opening post...

Keep in mind that the article seemed to be talking about problems related specifically to cancer. On the other hand, a larger number of deaths from smoking are caused by heart disease or other non-cancerous health problems.
(Now, obesity does cause other health problems as well. I don't know whether those risks exceed those caused by cancer or not.)

A couple of other things to point out:
- I couldn't see anywhere in the article where they actually gave cancer rates within the 2 groups. (Maybe I overlooked it?) Its possible that the total number of cancers due to obesity is higher than for smoking, but the actual risk is smaller (due to an increasing average weight over the past few decades.)

- They also point out that researchers don't know the exact mechanism at play. There is a chance that at least in some cases the relationship between obesity and cancer is not causitive (i.e. the weight is not causing the cancer, but some other factor is causing both the cancer and the weight gain.)
 
I guess that literally stuffing your face would present a serious suffocation and choking hazard.
 
The difficulty in comparison is establishing units. What is a unit of stuffing one's face? I'm guessing percent body fat?

A comparison could be charted with percent body fat and pack-years on the vertical vs risk ratio on the horizontal. You would see two diagonal lines and could see where the risk is equal. Just using imaginary numbers, we could find that the increase in cancer risk from 2 pack-years is equivalent to 35% body fat for an adult male.

There would probably be a need to break out the charts into demographics such as age, gender, and perhaps activity level high/med/low.
 
MarkCorrigan said:
To the person doing it? Quite probably.

To everyone around them? No. Not even close. If I choose to eat five 12 inch pizzas in a row I'll be hurting myself. If I light up, I hurt everyone around me as well.
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Apparently you have never heard of the phrase, "Silent but Deadly." After you eat five 12" pizzas I'm not going any where near you.
 
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