That's the heading of an article on page 9 of the Times of India, Bangalore today. And the accompanying graphic which shows a lady about 4 times the size of the man standing near her sure startled me enough to make me read the article in detail.
What they actually want to say is "Twice as many Indian women are obese compared to number of men!" or that's the best I can make of it - that of course doesn't sound as catchy a headline does it ?!! And even for proving these numbers (I mean, twice as many - really!?) the kind of statistics provided are sketchy at best. They say 1.3% of women aged 20 and above were obese in 1980 and 2.5% in 2008 - for men apparently this percentage stayed at 1.3% all along.
Quoting from the article - "In absolute numbers the number of obese men in India increased from 2.3 million to 4.4 million between 1980-2008" - so how did that 1.3% of men stated above stay constant? The extra 2.1 million obese Indian men were under 20??
I'm sure there's a way to structure the statistics to explain away the article, but does such a sweeping statement really make sense at all? Where do these statistics come from - I understand that it has to be a cross-section and they can't actually take everyone into consideration - but is it really an accurate cross section? Considering100 people in each of 10 metropolitan cities hardly gives a picture of India's women as a whole!!
There are quotes from the senior author of the article who's based in London (of course if it's a study from abroad it has to be right isn't it?) so it would be really interesting for me to know where he and his team got these statistics from. It just irritates me to read these kind of generalizations which just want to sound dramatic and may not really mean anything at all! And the actual headline - it's just wrong - I can't even say its a grammatical error - it's just an error, period.
P.S: Another one on page 15 - "Children of working moms gain weight" - Don't even get me started on that. It's apparently based on a survey made in 10 U.S. cities!!
What they actually want to say is "Twice as many Indian women are obese compared to number of men!" or that's the best I can make of it - that of course doesn't sound as catchy a headline does it ?!! And even for proving these numbers (I mean, twice as many - really!?) the kind of statistics provided are sketchy at best. They say 1.3% of women aged 20 and above were obese in 1980 and 2.5% in 2008 - for men apparently this percentage stayed at 1.3% all along.
Quoting from the article - "In absolute numbers the number of obese men in India increased from 2.3 million to 4.4 million between 1980-2008" - so how did that 1.3% of men stated above stay constant? The extra 2.1 million obese Indian men were under 20??
I'm sure there's a way to structure the statistics to explain away the article, but does such a sweeping statement really make sense at all? Where do these statistics come from - I understand that it has to be a cross-section and they can't actually take everyone into consideration - but is it really an accurate cross section? Considering100 people in each of 10 metropolitan cities hardly gives a picture of India's women as a whole!!
There are quotes from the senior author of the article who's based in London (of course if it's a study from abroad it has to be right isn't it?) so it would be really interesting for me to know where he and his team got these statistics from. It just irritates me to read these kind of generalizations which just want to sound dramatic and may not really mean anything at all! And the actual headline - it's just wrong - I can't even say its a grammatical error - it's just an error, period.
P.S: Another one on page 15 - "Children of working moms gain weight" - Don't even get me started on that. It's apparently based on a survey made in 10 U.S. cities!!
