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Comment by jasonlaramburu | Hacker News Reader

India has a significantly lower obesity rate than Japan and a much higher death rate. It is human nature to try and rationalize a tragedy (eg ‘obese people should just lose weight’), but in reality there are many complex factors at play in each country.

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Indians have poor metabolic health otherwise though: extremely carb-heavy diets, widespread diabetes etc.

Source?

India has a lower rate of diabetes than Japan does, and a lower rate than the global average [0]

India has a large population of diabetics, but that’s due to their massive population size overall.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diabetes_in_India

I was watching how India was dealing with Covid early on and one observation that popped out at me was how culturally people handle the deceased. Not to be insensitive, but I saw a lot of outdoor burning of bodies. This produces a lot of smoke. Smoke causes inflammation in the lungs. The downstream effects of Covid can be highly exacerbated by lung inflammation. Maybe this is not the differential factor but as I understand it, India already has a serious pollution problem at least in the industrial areas. Are there parts of India where the air is free of pollution that stats are also gathered from?

I am unable to verify your claim. What I've seen is that Japan has about the same rate of overweight, obesity, morbid obesity and type 2 diabetes. Is it possible that you compared a figure that combines multiple categories to a figure that just looks at a single figure? For example combining type 1 and type 2 diabetes would be misleading, as type 1 diabetes is caused by fundamentally different factors than type 2 diabetes. Also did you ensure that you are comparing data for the same or similar year?

What were your sources?

CIA world factbook measure Indias obesity rate to be lower than japan’s, though the data is from 2016:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_obesity_r...

But that source contradicts OP. OP claims that India's obesity rate is significantly lower than Japan's, while your source shows them as being about equal.

Is it OP's position that an obesity rate of 3.9% is significantly lower than a rate of 4.3%?

Ah yes I misread you.

OP seems to have overstated their claim.

>Is it OP's position that an obesity rate of 3.9% is significantly lower than a rate of 4.3%?

Yes, in my opinion a 10% difference is significant. The source in no way contradicts that. If you believe 10% is not significant, that's just your opinion as well.

Why are we comparing the number of deaths in a first world country (Japan) vs a third world country (India). Isn’t it obvious that poorer countries would have higher death rates? Is it really so complex?

The US is arguably the most developed country in the world and #18 in terms of per capita deaths. Nothing about COVID is that simple.

#1 for obesity.

Actually the US is #12

Obese BMI is a lower number for South Asians no?

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