NBC News - smoking in China

[jeanvieve]

I wonder if anyone has ever researched the effects of the tobacco industry on weight in the US.

They were just talking about how Indonesia, China, and India were the worlds largest growing smoking nations, with the numbers in China smoking now larger than the entire total population of the US. Now, we have an image in our heads of the slender Asian physique. The healthy people, of herbs and seaweeds and not too much meat. They're going to get skinnier with all the Starbucks and Marlboroughs.

But in 10 years, they'll start to push the no smoking campaigns as the state run health care systems start suffering under the smoke related long term effects from cancer to asthma. So. They'll start to give up smoking en masse in obedience to the governmental pushing. (Far more complicated than the sentence suggests.)

Will they gain weight without the coffee and cigarettes? How much? Did the cigarette pushes during the first and second world wars directly affect our weight as a people today? Not to blame my grandfather's smoking on my weight, but what is the statistical correlation?

Comments

[balutakat.livejournal.com]

My only comment isn't very scientific, but I can tell you quitting smoking definitely caused me to balloon. I think it's the anxiety and stress your body goes through, though - pretty much every super stressful thing I've ever gone through socked 20 lbs on my frame, and then when I was happy I never sat still long enough to eat very much. On a really small scale the same thing happens to me when I cut down on my coffee consumption, which I have to do every few years when my tolerance is just ridiculous. If I have to drink four cups of coffee in a morning (not those little cups, either) and end up peeing every twenty minutes and unable to sit through a lecture, I know it's time to cut down! But when I do, I always bounce up in weight. It happens in a matter of a week or two, definitely less than a month - instant 5-10 lbs. I don't even notice that I'm eating more. In Romania people have finally started to get a clue about quitting smoking but they're all flipping out about being unable to quit. I imagine the drug companies will move in there soon. Maybe you could check French or better yet, German papers, it sounds like a scientific study a German might think to do. Just think about all those Asians who are now feasting on cheap McDonald's beef!

[prosefromdover.livejournal.com]

Most of what I've read suggests that the weight problems in this country are due to an abundance of heavily marketed, cheap (as in "inexpensive"), bad (as in "unhealthy") food. Yes, if you eat at McDonald's everyday, you're going to gain weight. There's a strong correlation between poverty and obesity in the U.S.

It's not clear that the same will happen in China or India; their eating habits are different. But that could change rapidly. As Amabel points out, McDonald's is growing in Asia ...

[jeanvieve.livejournal.com]

Totally smokin' hot new picture, you stone fox!