a controversial perspective on obesity

[jrtom]

http://www.obesitymyth.com/excerpt.html

http://www.bigfatblog.com/columnists/archives/001240.php

Hmm. I should probably read more about this.

A thought that has occurred to me in this context: as long as we have death, there will always be a leading cause of it. (This is true of any phenomenon, of course.) This is kind of obvious when you put it that way, but what this means is that it's not entirely obvious that something being "the leading cause of death"--which obesity-exacerbated health issues might even be--should mean that we all have to drop everything and do all that we can to reduce that risk.

I do get the feeling that the author might be confusing a couple of things here. It may indeed be the case that the mortality rate among overweight people and thin people is the same for a given level of exercise. This doesn't necessarily mean that being overweight can't make some health issues worse, or give you a greater risk of acquiring others.

Comments

[darcydodo]

I haven't followed those links, but I do know that there's a particular type of diabetes that one really only gets if one is overweight. And it can cause the loss of toes and things.

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

see tildequinn's comment below, and my response.

yeah... so...

[tildequinn.livejournal.com]

his stats are kind of twisted. it all feels a bit skeptical environmentalist, or the people saying second hand smoke has no ill effect. and beyond his cherry picking of science, the idea of telling people that feel physically bad in the course of normal activity that they don't have a health problem seems rediculous on the face of it. i *like* having the option of running for the elevator. type 2 diabetes *is* at previously unseen levels, and increasingly starting in childhood. we make 3700 cals a day for every 2000 we need. we *do* have a fast food culture that uses dopamine influencing foods- the action of addiction- how could we not be addicted to eating?

the culture that demonizes fat is stupid, especially paired with the industries that create addicting foods. it's like putting people in an evironment full of pyschoactive drugs and criminalizing them for becoming addicts. oh wait....

Re: yeah... so...

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

I do feel as though there may be something a bit weird going on there in terms of his presentation of the studies' findings. And I agree that not being able to, say, dodge a hurtling pallet of frozen chicken fat is (a) contra-survival and (b) not a state I want to be in.

(I also think that he's getting a bit ad-hominemy by presenting his anecdotal finding that a lot of people who are involved in making policy and writing position papers appear to have, or be at risk for, anorexia. This may be true but doesn't necessarily invalidate their conclusions.)

That said, I think that he does make a couple of good points, which may have been underemphasized by most of the organizations which have weighed in on this point:

* Being thin isn't necessarily healthier than being fat (in terms of your life expectancy), all other things being equal.
* It may be better to focus on making sure that you get enough exercise than trying to make sure that you weigh less than a particular threshold.

I also agree with him that BMI is an asinine way of measuring how healthy a given weight is.

His response to the early-onset type-2 diabetes problem might be something like "well, it's better than scurvy, isn't it?" (Which may be true, but even if so, it's a false dichotomy.)

In any event, though, I haven't read enough of his stuff to find out whether he addresses non-fatal medical conditions. But I find it entirely plausible that our society is focusing too much on trying to figure out how not to be fat (for a variety of reasons) and not enough on how to be healthy.

I am reminded of a conversation that I had with a friend a while back (who got an audiology degree at Gallaudet) in which it became clear that a lot of deaf people don't consider themselves to be handicapped, and get really pissed off if you suggest that being able to hear might actually be, overall, an advantage.

Re: yeah... so...

[tildequinn.livejournal.com]

it's not better than scurvy, they both kill you. i mean, you can argue one is a more pleasant death than they other, but at that level you've really lost me. :)

i do agree that our society focuses too much on fat, not enough on health, but i think it's wrong to conflate society's focus and the findings of medical study. doctors will often point out thin != healthy, and the programs commonly recommended include exercise. weight loss alone is merely a stop gap measure to get to where exercise is comfortable and safe- the goal is always exercise. a lot of getting to a target weight from a health perspective is about making physical activity easier, or seeing encouraging tangible results that its working.

i like bmi, but i don't like how it's used. the range is quite large on what constitutes optimum weight, but all it tells you is a weight factor- people treat it like health. % body fat, how you feel at your target heart rate, blood pressure, cholesterol, and many etcs... health is a lot of things.

Re: yeah... so...

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

I agree with everything you said (although I think I have more reservations about BMI than you do). However, my understanding is that this guy was saying that there are a number of organizations, many of them associated with weight-loss programs, that have done a pretty good job of molding society to focus on fat rather than health, and on losing weight as an end in itself rather than a means to an end. In fact, I believe he was claiming that the medical studies themselves were being set aside, or distorted, in an effort to further the "weight-loss-as-end" agenda.

Like I said, I think that he may be leaving some things out to strengthen his point (although I haven't read his book so I shouldn't judge it by my memories of the excerpt) and I don't approve of that, or of the ad hominem attacks. But I think he makes some good points (unless I was simply reading into the essay what I wanted to see).