Study: Exercise Won’t Cure Obesity

Researchers from Loyola University Health System and other centers compared African American women in metropolitan Chicago with women in rural Nigeria. On average, the Chicago women weighed 184 pounds and the Nigerian women weighed 127 pounds.

Researchers had expected to find that the slimmer Nigerian women would be more physically active. To their surprise, they found no significant difference between the two groups in the amount of calories burned during physical activity.

“Decreased physical activity may not be the primary driver of the obesity epidemic,” said Loyola nutritionist Amy Luke, a member of the study team.

While it may be true that diet, not exercise, causes the obesity, it’s fallacious to conclude that exercise won’t make any difference. It just isn’t a factor in this example. You have two variables that affect weight (Calories in and Calories burned), and only see that one is different here. At the very basic level, it’s conservation of energy.

People burn more calories when they exercise. Thing is, they compensate by eating more, said Richard Cooper, co-author of the study and chairman of the Department of Preventive Medicine and Epidemiology.

“We would love to say that physical activity has a positive effect on weight control, but that does not appear to be the case,” Cooper said.

It’s not clear if this was tested in the study — there’s no mention in the story — so one doesn’t know if it was a crappy experiment or it’s crappy reporting.