UK Biobank

A while ago I took part in the UK Biobank study. It's a very large study of the health and habits of the population of the UK. Sounds like a good way to spend my tax money.

Except it isn't. There wasn't one question that made me think “why are they asking that?” Every question came out of current Government conventional wisdom about diet, exercise and personal life. I could write the text of the report now, leaving blanks for the actual percentages. It will say that not enough of us are eating five-a-day and too many of us aren't eating enough lean meat, and no-one is doing enough exercise and we're all overweight. Worse, I know that if the survey did turn up something surprising – such as that people who eat lots of red meat aren't keeling over with heart attacks (and they aren't or you would be going to their funerals, wouldn't you?) - it would be ignored or spun.

At the end I was given a summary of some results. It liked my body-fat (23%) but didn't like my BMI (28). It told me to lose 23lbs, which would take me to a BMI of 24.4 – just inside the officially-acceptable range. The last time I weighed 79 kilos (about 12st 6lbs) I was in my mid-twenties. I don't really want to lose that much muscle or useful body weight, so this means losing about 8 kilos or so of fat. This would put my body fat at 15%, which is in the “serious athlete / special forces” range. Right. That would be nice, but at my age, it would also be just a little grotesque.

Not that some of the tests weren't interesting: the one about remembering to push the orange circle not the blue square at the end of the hour-long computer quiz was neat. I liked the reaction test: hit the big button when you saw two matching shapes on the screen. Sounds easy, but I was surprised how many times I had to stop myself reflexively hitting the button. Why medical people test strength by a grip test I will never know – I could heft some weight back in the day but my grip strength was always awful. They took bloods and urine as well, but I'm not sure if I hear about the results. You know the answer anyway – a huge proportion of the population are “pre-diabetic” or even have “type two diabetes” and need to exercise, eat less and be force-fed ghastly drugs that cause nausea and diarrhoea.

Will they test for blood alcohol and drugs as well? Now those results would be really worth reading - as if they would ever be published. After all, we know the answer: it's the underclass and younger people who take drugs and drink too much. Isn't it?