You could put it that way
….but why?
The Herald passes on figures from a
New Zealand is overweight – collectively the adult population weighs more than 232,000 tonnes.
But while New Zealand accounts for only 0.08 per cent of the total weight of the world adult population, it makes up 0.22 per cent of the world’s excess weight due to obesity, according to a new study.
It makes sense to talk about NZ having more than its share of carbon emissions, because this is a global resource that is valuable to everyone. Obesity, not so much. Alternatively, it could make sense if there was a linearly increasing health risk with weight, but again there isn’t: there’s a broad low-risk region with health risks increasing dramatically at higher or lower levels.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »