I'm going to make some statements, and then get on with my day.
Fatness doesn't cause stigmitization.
Fatness doesn't cause discrimination in employment.
Fat people have friends. Oh, yes, we have many of them.
"Obesity also leads to heart-wrenching psychosocial problems, such as difficulty making friends, stigmatization, and discrimination in employment.""We urge you to harness your imagination and commitment to reversing the obesity epidemic by signing an Executive Order that would create a Presidential Commission on Healthy Weights, Healthy Lives."-- From Center for Science in the Public Interest's* Letter to President Obama on June 22, 2009.
It's like these people looked at the
Fat Hate Bingo cards before writing
this to see how high they could score.
I swear, it's starting to feel like they are advocating that fat people be rounded up into detention centers in order to "reverse the obesity epidemic" and save the "tens of billions of dollars in avoidable medical costs." Is there some sort of mass-hatred playbook that these people are reading from? Does it get passed out somewhere -- "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Scapegoating, Inciting Violence and Cleansing?"
"The increased rates of obesity will negate many of our nation’s investments in health-care and could actually condemn youths to shorter life spans than their parents’."
Really? Really??? Scare tactic much? And your proof for this assertion is... the mounting evidence that weights in the "overweight" range have the longest lifespans, and those in the "obese" range have longer lifespans than those in the "underweight" range?
If you have the energy and can spare a few milimeters of mercury in blood pressure, read
the letter that CSPI wrote and too many people and organizations signed. And then come back here and tell me you aren't angry, too.
* For those of you not familiar with CSPI, they are often seen as the "food police" -- in both good ways and bad. They are watchdogs for the food industry, and do good work to highlight problems in food safety and dangerous weight loss products. They also use belittling and downright abusive language with regard to fatness and definitely don't mind being seen as bullies when it comes to "good" and "bad" foods. I did at one point subscribe to their printed newsletter, as it does contain some information I'm interested in (ie which brands of wheat bread contain the most fiber, which items in the supermarket contain the most of whatever nutrient I'm interested in getting more of, without the stuff I personally choose to try to avoid) but the way they talk about fatness was just too painful to read. Also, they don't seem to be open AT ALL to the idea that increasing stigma makes health worse. Their main target audiences appear to be people that they think, by sheer power of will, are keeping themselves from becoming fat, and politicians. Oh, CSPI, you are like a family member that I keep seeing even though I don't want to, and maybe I remembered what it was like to play with you as a kid, but you've just gotten so hateful I can't stand to be around you any more. If you stuck to what you are good at, and just left the "obesity" stuff alone, you would be such a force for good.
Comments (2)
Ugh. That reminds me of a something I read in a healthcare policy article a few days ago. Some expert or another was extolling the progress we've made with treating heart disease over the past couple of decades and then followed it up with a lamentation that if only we could get back to the obesity rates we saw in the mid-1980s...
I think if you opened up some people's heads, you'd find sound bytes instead of coherent thoughts.
If you stuck to what you are good at, and just left the "obesity" stuff alone, you would be such a force for good.
Huh. I figure if they're that crazy and "out there" on obesity, they may be just as sloppy in the rest of their "research". I realize a lot of people don't think about it and just parrot the usual tripe, but if they're actually citing studies and such, they're avoiding other studies too.