Smoking vs. Obesity

Heresy: Tobacco Prevents Obesity or You Don't Need an Epidemiologist to Know Which Way The Smoke's Not Blowing.

I am not a scientist, though I have hooked electrodes to things you might not have thought of. Nor am I a doctor., so please take my dietary advice with a grain of salt (get it? No? I'm going to link up an explanation. You'll get it once I explain it to you. You see 'grain of salt' is a figure of speech and...I got to finish the column.) I believe wholeheartedly that widespread tobacco cessation caused widespread obesity.

OK, I said I wasn't a scientist but I can make observations as well as a lot of scientists. If an apple hits me on the head I might not re-invent physics but I would eat the apple. My observations would lead me to shake the tree so I could get another apple. And another. I guess I am more of an applied scientist than a theoretical scientist. But there is an observational scientist in me who is all the more observational when he is not presented with the option to eat his data. I am an armchair anthropologist.

As an armchair anthropologist I wish to share my observations with you.

1.As smoking becomes less common, obesity becomes more common.
2.Adults in the 1960's and 1970's (my parents, my aunts and uncles, my neighbors, my fellow parishioners) were thinner than adults in the new century.
3.Most adults in the 1960's and 1970's smoked. (In 2008 that number is under 30%.)
4.The adults of the 1960's and 1970's exercised less than their present day counterparts. This one deserves some discussion. While it was true that more people worked blue collar jobs in the old days, a lot of them transitioned into sales or management, especially during their middle years. As well, there were a lot more homemakers whose lives were not exactly sedentary but who probably burned fewer calories in their day to day than did working women.
5.Amongst people I have known, smokers have almost always been thinner than non-smokers.
6.Almost everyone I know who has ceased smoking experienced an immediate weight gain.
7.As a rule, ethnic groups who smoke a lot tend to be thinner than ethnic groups who abstain.


No doubt, tobacco brings health risks along with its pleasures. But it probably would never have been so massively popular if it did not yield benefits. Some research has been done on the health benefits of tobacco but the results have been underpublicized. I wish to continue this thread in the coming weeks.

By the way, I have never been a smoker. I would smoke cigars when new fathers handed them to me. I smoked one or two cigarettes with my ex-wife, who is still a smoker. But I get a discount on my health insurance for not having smoked in two years. I don't plan to start smoking anytime soon. It does not appeal to me. I am clumsy and would probably burn furniture or carpet. Cigars are OK but cigarettes hurt my throat. Cigarettes generally decrease appetite. If I want to decrease appetite, hoodia is cheaper and more convenient. But I want to lose weight via selective gluttony. The how is important to me.

Some years ago a local talk radio host posed the hypothetical situation of a middle-aged obese non-smoker. Should he take up smoking at say, age 50? If the cigarettes were going to get him, they probably would not do so until he was 80 or 90. But the weight brought a more immediate threat. It might be better for him to start smoking.

I do want to think outside the dunce cap on weight loss. Let's explore all avenues, including tobacco. I will post links here that spread the good news about tobacco especially as it pertains to weight loss.