Still more obesity predictions

There were more obesity predictions made yesterday and they were deeply implausible, as usual. I wrote about them for Spectator Health...

Whether obesity rates rise in the future remains to be seen but there is no particular reason to assume they will. Nor is there any reason to assume that they will rise among boys but not girls, or among poorer children but not wealthier children. In fact, I would happily wager a reasonable sum of money on obesity rates being well below the predicted 43 per cent in 2020 for any group you choose to name.

It’s all so much flim-flam, but the objective is not to make an accurate forecast. The objective is to scare people into accepting bans, taxes and restrictions. A sugar levy is already planned for 2018, and when you recall how loudly the ‘public health’ lobby campaigned for this regressive tax, you’d have thought their models would show a fall in childhood obesity between now and 2020. Instead they forecast an implausibly large increase. If the sugar tax is not going to have any impact — and of course it won’t — why are we going ahead with it?

No one has taken me up on my bet yet.

Read the whole piece here.