Obesity: health or hype?
Posted by Lance Gravlee on September 26th, 2007 |
Yesterday we discussed the question that Wayt Gibbs posed in a recent issue of Scientific American: Is obesity an overblown epidemic? This question is also the focus of a three-part debate that took place last week in the Los Angeles Times. The LA Times pits Kelly D. Brownell, a professor of psychology and public health at Yale, against Paul F. Campos, a professor of law at the University of Colorado. Campos is featured in the Gibbs article you read, too.
This debate has also played out recently in the scholarly literature. For example, see the series of point and counterpoint articles in the February 2006 issue of the International Journal of Epidemiology. What do you make of this debate?
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5 Responses
It seems that Kelly and Paul actually agree more than they disagree – at least about the idea that “obesity” is a cultural syndrome. Most of their disagreement surrounds the “how-to” aspects, i.e., that role of govenrment regulation, etc. I found it interesting that they both agreed that blaming the victims was a useless exercise. The rubric of “personal responsibility” is a major mantra of neoliberal ideology, and both writers seemed to disparge this position.
Personally, I have experienced many sides of this argument. I’ve worried about my own weight for years, even when I was 5’10″ and 130 pounds. Now, in late middle-age, I am shorter and considerably heavier, despite years of dieting, vegetarianism, health-conscious eating, and regular exercise and yard work. As a health care provider, I’ve advocated healthy diet and regular exercise to others for years, only to rarely see it make a difference in weight loss over the long term. Reflecting back on on this now, it’s apparent to me that my positive, pro-active stance on diet and health throughout my life hasn’t prevented me or others from becoming “obese.” However, my blood pressure is excellent and I have no diabetes. I feel healthy and relatively energetic. I find I am actually healthier than many of my thinner cohorts, who suffer from osteoporosis and multiple menopausal symptoms in spite of their worrying about every bite of food that goes into their mouths! Moreover, I’ve lived long enough now to see some of my most “physically fit” friends drop dead from heart attacks and acquire cancer and other chronic diseases.
The issue of “obesity” is a complex phenomenon for which we simply have no real answers. The fine points of scholarly debate on the subject probably won’t generate much change in behavior. The burgeoning of technology and the sedentary nature of modern life seems to me to have created a situation where many people are substantially bigger. At this point, we can only speculate as to what the outcome of this ‘obesity epidemic’ will be. However, I think that as long as the cultural myth of “thinness as beauty” continues to be rewarded as heftily as it is, there will be no real answers. IMHO, people who like and accept themselves, fat OR thin, will ultimately take better care of themselves and be a better example to others than those who are obsessed with a popular media concept of physical beauty.
It seems that now-a-days as soon as anything goes on a rise it’s considered a disease. I had to grab my Webster’s and look up the definition because I was beginning to second guess myself. Disease n. an abnormal condition that impairs normal functioning; illness. Obesity is in no way abnormal. We weren’t always stalk thin. Thinness is a relatively new concept. Look at the pin up girls in the 60s, they were “plumped” women, so for obesity to all of a sudden be abnormal we would have to delete a good chunk of our history.
Also, obesity doesn’t impair normal functioning. Walking, talking, sleeping, doing household chores are not off limits to an obese person(unless they are morbidly obese and are physically impaired). Most Americans are about 30-40pounds overweight. The way that Paul was going on in the debate you would think that all obese people are lying or stretchers in their homes because they are unable to walk to move. Being thin doesn’t stop you from having disease, stroke, or any other risk disease that “comes along with being obese”. There are overweight-and I say overweight because obese has such a negative connotation-people who are healthier than normal size people. What about the people who eat right and exercise but still cannot loose the weight? Would they be considered unhealthy? Or is that just their genetical make-up kicking in. What about he mother who have just had a baby? Are they going to suddenly have a stroke now and die? I think they should change the definition of obesity, because the obesity that people are baggering(which are the small percentage of extreme cases) the obesity that is taking place are of two different caliber. A person shouldn’t be termed obese until it has ACTUALLY been PROVEN that it can and will indeed lead to a deteriorating health. Because statistically no such correlation exist.
Normalcy is a group majority.
I find it interesting that in the “land of opportunity” our culture chastise individuals that don’t fit the norm. We label large figured individuals as being atypical, but we rarely emphasize equality. There are two things that bother me about the word “Obesity.” For one, as a culture we’ve fallen into this idealistic perception on what is considered normal. It seems to me that we are living in an individualistic era where we find it remotely offensive to be considered the same as someone else. We come up with ways to reveal our indifference by categorizing individuals. For instance, the ideas of homosexuality, transgender, asexuality etc. are clear examples on how we label individuals as distinctive from normalcy. This may be one of the very reasons why we’ve come up with the word “obese”, to differentiate ourselves from others.
Another issue that disturbs me is obesity is centered on white individuals, in particular white women. The media and or dietetic professionals come up with standards on body mass index and nutrition based on the body types of white individuals and rarely addresses the different body composition of particular ethnic groups. You can’t possibly tell me that a white woman’s body structure is similar to a Caucasian individual. What may appear to be obese in one culture may not have the same response in another culture. Take for example immigrants (Africans and Hispanics). Due to the level of large portion sizes of enriched foods individuals may appear to be larger, but some of their levels of activities compensate for the foods they eat. As a result these individuals may become larger not necessarily because of the amount of fat in their bodies but because of the dense foods eaten and the amount of activities (indigenous hard labor: working in fields, walking multiple miles etc.) being tended to. If our society continue to reprimand “obese” people and fail to include nutritional information/BMI for different cultures there will be a habitual stigma on large figured individuals; or in this case the censure on people who don’t fit the norm.
While walking through the supermarket, my eyes darted over the catchphrase, “Is Stress Making You Fat?” on a magazine cover. I was instantly reminded of our class and of the discrepancy between rural Jamaican views on health and our own. I had always held a semi-subconscious belief the being under high amounts of stress led to an increase in weight, but I had not thought objectively about this until I read in the Sobo article that there is a saying in rural Jamaica that, “People with worries can’t fat.”
So how does stress affect the body (in regards to body weight)? Does stress affect people differently in dissimilar cultures because of culturally defined responses to stress? For instance in America (mildly generalizing) pleasure or compulsive eating and self destructive behavior s are if nothing else the stereotypes of stress related responses. Or does it affect people more or less similarly, but our cultural interpretations are skewed? That is, Americans automatically think that being overweight is bad and is caused by bad things. Stress being one of those “bad” things must cause weight gain. Or perhaps both cultures exhibit self destructive behaviors when confronting stress, but we interpret ‘self destructive’ differently.
Does anyone have any thoughts on this matter?
I agree with Joanne. Who exactly came up with the idea of certain people being “normal” and others being “obese”? I wish that there was no word for obese just like how in Japan they did not have a word for menopause. I wonder what people would think then of their bodies becoming larger. Discrimination in the workforce due to being obese is one of the many problems heavier weight people have to deal with. It is sad to say, but in my previous job, a heavier person would have not been hired because the standard was to look pleasing to the customer’s eyes. I worked at a restaurant where all the associates would have to end up splitting the tip. Pretty discriminating I thought.
Anyways, in other cultures, being obese means that you are wealthy and well fed. No one would dare make fun of you. Children bully children that look different because their parents have not taught them manners. When I visited Germany this summer, my German friends would point out the heavier people. I guess they are not used to seeing heavier people and I would yell at them for being so rude and pointing at them.
I also agree with the fact that some races are more prone to be heavier due to their body structures. It is sad to say that obesity is not looked at as disease because if it was people would be more accepting toward it.