Obvious conclusions cannot save us from our jolly selves
The blindingly obvious findings of a study of festive weight gain concealed a rather depressing fact, writes David Mitchell.
WHAT I keep telling myself is that scientific research is not retrospectively rendered pointless just because the outcome is boring and predictable.
It’s not like a TV drama. The human urge to understand the workings of the universe cannot necessarily be satisfied entertainingly. The apparently obvious has to be tested in experiment if it is to be thoroughly understood.
So I shouldn’t blame the researchers from the universities of Birmingham and Loughborough for the fact their widely reported study into festive weightgain, published recently in the British Medical Journal, produced such depressingly guessable results. I should blame those who reported it as if it was interesting and illuminating.
The only interesting aspect of it — and that was really only slightly diverting in an ‘‘I’m staring at my phone trying not to think about Brexit’’ kind of way — is that it’s about Christmas. And it’s nearly Christmas. So everyone’s thinking about Christmas and the eye gets drawn to articles about Christmas. That’s what I’m hoping, anyway. Hi everyone! It’s Christmas, isn’t it?!
Beyond the Christmas thing, there was nothing of note. It might as well have said: ‘‘No measurable elevation of brain cancer risk from Christmas cracker jokes, says report.’’ That would get some hits: ‘‘Ooh, Christmas!’’ people would think. ‘‘Christmas crackers, jokes — that’s caught my eye and distracted me from Brexit. But ooh, cancer, nasty, frightening. Brain cancer — is that a headache coming on? Or am I imagining it? Can the imagination get cancer? Right, definitely clicking . . . Oh right, crackers don’t give you cancer. Fine. What’s next?‘‘
Sadly, this particular study wasn’t about cancer but it was about obesity. Which is linked to cancer, I think I’ve read. There are definitely links you can click on about that link. So what the study found is that if you get people to weigh themselves twice a week over Christmas, and give them a chart showing how much exercise it would take to work off each Christmas treat (for example, 21 minutes of running per mince pie), they will put on less weight than the control group, who displayed much less control. They just got given a leaflet on healthy living, which they may or may not have elected to eat.
The selfweighers actually lost 0.13kg each over the festive period, whereas the ‘‘no selfcontrol’’ group put on 0.37kg. Which actually doesn’t sound very much at all, but I suppose that’s an average and it’s all about longterm trends and, well, it all adds up, as Isaac Newton said. Or was it the Green Goddess?
Now, as findings go, I’d say this one is stratospherically unsurprising: people put on less weight, on average, if they monitor their weight. If monitoring your weight had no effect at all, or made you fatter, that would be unexpected. This is not. The summary of the findings should read: ‘‘Just guess them and you’ll be right.’’
To me, the only startling thing about any of this is that it takes 21 minutes of running to work off a mince pie and that was a preexisting fact rather than a finding of the study. But seriously, one mince pie equates to 21 minutes of running? A whole hour’s running every day won’t quite buy you a threemincepiesaday festive habit? Suddenly neither running, nor mince pies, nor existence itself, seems worth all the faff.
Anyway, that aside, fair enough, well researched, good to have checked. If you measure your weight and think about your weight a lot, you’re likely to weigh less than if you don’t. Smashing. My only objection is to people reporting it as if it’s a solution to Christmas weightgain: ‘‘Just weigh yourself twice a week and you’ll be fine!’’ the articles imply.
But that’s not really the solution, unless you keep your bathroom scales at the top of 47 flights of stairs (though it probably turns out even that would only earn you two slices of turkey and a small eggnog). The slimming isn’t caused by the weighing but by behavioural changes triggered by the thought processes the weighing provokes.
People don’t like those thought processes. They’re repelled by them in the same way they’re attracted to snacks.
That’s physics. Outside study conditions, people won’t weigh themselves twice a week if it gets them down, particularly at Christmas. It’s supposed to be the season to be jolly. Glumly standing on scales feeling guilty about canapes past, and indeed passed, is not the vibe at all.
All the report is really saying is this: people should think more about their weight and the arduous physical exercise they should take if they want to eat certain things. That’s restating the problem, not providing the solution. That’s ‘‘This toddler has a high temperature’’, not ‘‘Give paracetamol’’.
So what’s the paracetamol? Sober analysis and selfcontrol? Some people might call that the natural way, but I reckon it’s as natural as a hyena on a seafood diet.
It smacks of wisdom and, by nature, humans aren’t so much wise as clever. We use cleverness to obviate wisdom. That’s what’s destroying the planet, but it’s also the only hope of saving the planet.
The paracetamol equivalent would obviously be some way of maintaining a healthy weight without thinking about it, without having to exert selfcontrol (I’m sure the pharmaceutical industry is bristling with suggestions).
That’s what we yearn for: to be able to submit to our evolved instinctive urges once again. Delicious food is there, so eat. Merrymaking booze is there, so drink.
But we also want to live long lives and one of the flaws of evolution, from the human point of view, is that it doesn’t give longevity any credit.
Anyone who can just about survive to middle age while remaining fertile is likely to be as genetically influential as a sprightly 95yearold.
So we’ve never evolved the urges that would allow us to make old bones without constantly deliberating about our health — which you can’t do for long without also thinking about death.
And that’s the very thing all this Christmas cheer is supposed to help us avoid. — GNM