Is our attitude on obesity more dangerous than obesity itself

Great Debates
121

I agree. Its best to just let things go as they are going now, encourage everyone to try to practice competent medicine and better diets and wait until medical science understand enough about adipose tissue to actually make fat people thin who want to become thin.

Humans evolved in a time of scarcity. I was watching a documentary on neanderthals, and when the arcaeologists went into their homes/caves they found alot of baby skeletons with crushed skulls in a corner. The archaeologists, after researching the issue, eventually came to the conclusion that the reason all these babies with crushed skulls were there was because tens of thousands of years ago there wasn’t enough food to go around, so the parents had to kill their own kids to keep themselves alive as they didn’t have the calories necessary (neanderthals required about 4,000 calories a day). We aren’t evolved from neanderthals (we come from cro magnons) but its not unrealistic to think our DNA wasn’t formed in an environment where parents had to kill their kids due to food shortages. Bypassing something that ingrained into our DNA in the name of a social fad masquarading as a medical intervention is never going to happen.

If you read the book ‘guns, germs and steel’ farming and domestication of animals that leads to an excess food supply is what is responsible for civilization.

So we really just need to be realistic about everything. Civilization revolves around having an ample food and our DNA was forged in an environment where starvation was rampant and people killed members of their own family to avoid starving. And now that we live in an ‘age of plenty’ people are only about 10-20% heavier than they were when we were 100 years ago (after you adjust for height that is, since people 100 years ago were about 4" shorter). A 10-20% weight gain is a tiny price to pay for all the benefits of having an ample food supply brings.

And whatever health effects obesity gives can be dealt with without promoting weight loss.

As far as obesity research, according to Laura Fraser most studies on obesity are funded either by diet companies or pharmaceutical companies that stand to gain by exaggerating the health effects of obesity (to be fair, sites I’ve listed like tech central station are funded in part by food industries that stand to gain by minimizing the dangers of obesity). But yeah, taht is a major factor, the fact that the money is designed to promote research that supports a pre existing conclusion on obesity. That its a horrid disease that needs to be wiped off the face of the earth.

She also wrote a chapter about her going to a medical conference on obesity where alot of obesity physicians were in attendance. She says she was startled by how many of them were fat. If their interventions worked so well, you’d assume they wouldn’t be fat. But there you go.

122

15% cut in intake and 15% increase in physical activity?

I’m not sure that’s really what “thin people” are telling “obese people” to do. At least the ones that aren’t supporting Jenny Craig.

I’ve been reading this entire thread too. I don’t have any more scientific studies to contribute to the slew that have been provided. DSeid and Wes have certainly contributed great amounts from both sides of the issue.

Is our attitude towards obesity dangerous? Sure, it is. Maybe not from the official medical point of view, but from the common man’s point of view it is. It affects relationships. People look down on obese people on a regular basis, without fail. As a thin man, I will say I do this all the time. Sometimes I can’t even help it. My mind will see an obese person and the first thing that pops in my head, to be brutally honest is, “Man, don’t you want to take care of that?”

It’s vanity at it’s finest, and lately I’ve been more concerned about what the heck is going on in my head than what people doing with their diets. It simply is true that the “War on Obesity” has been somewhat destructive, not because of what sound advice and information is being put out there (and to that end, I must say that I agree personally with a lot of what DSeid has said), but because of all the other stuff that’s being put out there on both ends of the spectrum.

“Just exercise and you’ll be thin!” (this isn’t true).
“Don’t bother exercising. It doesn’t matter. People should just accept you. It’s them that’s weird, not you.” (Opinions vary wildly with this position).

I think one of the factors this discussion has sort of avoided is the issue of vanity and sexuality. Maybe me bringing it up isn’t very helpful to the thread, but let’s face it, if people weren’t considered unattractive because of their weight, the War on Obesity simply would not exist.

To be more exact: If we didn’t see larger women as being less attractive, this war wouldn’t have started.

We do create unrealistic standards of beauty, I think. But on the flip side, I think it’s being met with an equally unrealistic opposition. On one hand, we have the destructive “You must weigh less!” On the other hand, we have the “Don’t even bother ever trying. Ever. Oh, but your dressing standards, your speech patterns, your method of charming others, the way you go on dates, the drugs (alcohol, et al) you take, the games you play, the way you dance, and all of that stuff better be modern and up-to-date.”

The studies don’t seem to conflict with each other so much as they simply conflict with the two most radical sides of the issue. Whether fat loss is very important or whether it is not important at all. The studies show there is a benefit to a healthy and active lifestyle. That’s it. It doens’t say that being as thin as a tv actress is good. In fact, in some cases it says that trying to be something you’re not is just terribly bad.

But I think in this thread we’ve seen numerous examples where we point out the horrible aspects of the message, but then decide to take the leap and say, “Let’s cut out the whole thing!” So we discover that losing weight is hard and taxing, and that you’re not necessarily guarenteed success based on fat loss or numbers alone. So we decide that until we’ve figured out the 100% method, we should just continue on with our sendentary lives. Those we hope to sexually attract, or people we just plain ole interact with, are therefore also expected to ignore any impulses they may have, and we’ll all just go on increasing pant sizes, naturally, together.

Correct me if I’m wrong in that assumption, or too far off topic. I’m not attempting to insult anyone here, or declare that those who exercise are greater than those who do not.

123

I don’t know what you’re getting at exactly. In my view most overweight/obese people are not that fat, the vast majority are within 50 lbs of what is considered normal. Its just my view that we can’t end obesity with diet & exercise, as we’ve tried that for a century and it han’t worked yet. Nobody who condemns the obesity war is in favor of sedentary lifestyles though.

I guess what bothers me is how one sided the public debate on the subject it on so many levels. So yeah, I think I did make that leap and say ‘lets do nothing’. I just don’t feel its pertinent right now. With death and disease rates for CVD & Cancer & diabetes complications going down why not wait 20ish years?

There was a study posted earlier by Girl From Mars showing that weight loss can increase death risk. The authors responded by saying ‘we need more research before we tell people not to lose weight’. HOwever according to Glenn Gaesser well over a dozen studies have shown intentional weight loss increases death risk. How many studies do they need? The Vitamin E/cancer thing was disproven by 1 study. One study and doctors will probably rethink the whole idea. But when a study comes out saying weight loss is unhealthy response is always ‘lets get more research’ as if they are unaware that other studies have found the same thing. Stuff like that bothers me, so I take the extremist side of the argument.

If people want to lose weight, good for them as long as they are educated on the high failure rates and risks of dieting. But they shouldn’t feel compelled to do so anymore than they should feel forced to become religious fanatics or get married for health reasons.

124

However:

You can’t have a debate on obesity and just mention the science or health aspect and expect that to be enough. The reality is obesity would not even be a medical issue if it didn’t tear at the central memes of western civilization. The science and logic supporting the war on obesity is very weak and half true, but as long as the central memes that support the war on obesity are in place it really won’t matter what the science says as health & science are just excuses to propogate the war on fat, not a reason for the war. The real reason for the war on obesity is cultural.

We live in a culture with a Horatio Alger myth. When Davis was recalled in California I have heard from some pundits and thinkers that only Scwarzenegger would be able to replace him as a conservative due to the aura surrounding him. THe reason for this thinking is that Scwarzenegger is a Horatio ALger hero. He is a first generation immigrant who, through alot of self discipline sculpted his body into the shape he wanted. After that he used his self discipline to avoing splurging on big screen TVs and instead invested his money into real estate, becoming a millionaire. He then used that discipline to become a famous actor. Had any other person without his level of bootstrapping and self discipline tried to become governor they would’ve failed.

We live in a culture full of motivational stories of people going to med school by day and working as a bartender at night. Averaging 3 hours sleep a day and never having any free time. These people are held up as heroic and admirable. The reason for this and the Scwarzenegger thing is again, the core values of our culture.

We are a culture that believes or wants to belive in resisting temptation, especially bad temptation. We believe in self discipline. We believe in aesthetics. We belive using drugs to avoid issues of willpower (antidepressants, bodybuilding drugs) is a sign of weakness. We believe in personal responsibility. We are to a degree a ‘bootstrap’ culture. THat is why these stories of people working 90 hours a week to get an education are so well respected and loved, they are bootstrap heroes.

The obese violate all of these central memes. The obese are seen as people unable to muster the willpower necessary to resist that 4th (or 5th, or 6th or 7th as the story goes) slice of pizza, lacking all self discipline. People too lazy and full of self hate to ‘fix’ their appearance in a culture full of aesthetics. People with no self discipline. People who beg for a drug that will save them from their own lack of willpower or ability to say no. People with no responsibility. People who blow all their money on crap and end up poor get little sympathy in western civilization because they can’t resist temptation or practice self discipline. And people who end up fat for not resisting pizza and pepsi get no sympathy either.

THe point is, in our culture the obese are seen as a violation of everything people believe in as proper and responsible on one level or another. THey are the capitalists in communist Russia, they are the communists in capitalistic NATO. They are just seen as a total violation of what is considered right and proper. HOpefully someone gets what I’m talking about.

I have spent alot of time on bodybuilding boards and its no coincidence that the hatred for obesity and support for the obesity war is so strong on such boards. Conservatism and the bootstrap mentality is alot more common there too.

Now onto the central idea that being fat is a result of weakness, gluttony and a weak will (all things that western civilization despises). I would have to say no for several reasons.

  1. Obese and overweight people are just as accomplished as everyone else. They get graduate degrees, they raise families all by themselves. They overcome addictions by themselves. They run their own lives fine by themselves.

  2. Obesity is, to a degree, due to not trying hard enough to avoid this fate. But so are most problems in life. If people tried harder to invest their incomes we wouldn’t need social security. If people looked for better jobs we wouldn’t need minimum wage laws or worker protection laws. If people protected themselves and their homes better we wouldn’t need police. The reality is AIDS is totally avoidable with a condom and responsible sex. Cancer is largely avoidable. Being the victim of crime is largely avoidable. The obese have control over their situation, but no more or less than victims of crime or disease. Expecting the obese to exert extreme levels of willpower while the rest of us get sympathy for gettings cancer (cancer we could’ve avoided with diet, exercise and screening) is not fair to fat people. Besides, do you really want to live in a society full of hate, condemnation and lack of sympathy? Do you want people to sneer when a person making $2.17 and hour can’t feed his family because he is ‘too lazy to get a better job’? If so why would you sneer when fat people are fat because they are ‘too lazy to eat right and exercise’?

  3. Numerous factors that are not controllable by the individual (or that the individual doesn’t know about) play a huge role in obesity. Age for example plays a huge role. So does race. So does sleep. Those are just a few of the arguably hundreds of things that affect obesity rates. Sure diet & exercise play a role. But a black middle aged person who eats healthy and exercises is still drastically more likely to be obese than a teenage asian person who eats and mcdonalds and is sedentary. A study I posted earlier showed that in Norway or Sweden 40% of people are overweight, but 25-29% of vegetarians are overweight. Even with a high fiber low fat diet obesity rates are only cut by 30-40%. However sleep deprivation can almost double obesity rates. Race can quadruple them. We are condemning people for things they can’t control or don’t know they can control. This is not fair to fat people, as they aren’t in control of a good deal of the factors that make them fat (what nation they’re born in, their race, their age). They also are probalby not aware that other things like sleep or dieting play a role in their obesity too.

So there you have it. This is by and large the reason for the rampant hatred for the fat you sometimes see in proponents of the obesity war. It has to do with our cultural memes and our Horatio Alger bootstrap culture.

There, I’ve said pretty much everything I wanted to say about obesity

-Wesley “P. Diddy” Clark

125

There are a few problems with that though.

  1. Nurses are already physically active. The health benefits of exercise come mostly with moderate activity. Steven Blair found (from what I recall) that obese moderately active people had half the mortality of thin sedentary people. Most health benefits come from going from sedentary to moderately fit. Going from moderately fit to extremely fit makes little difference. A nurse who walks, turns patients and runs down hallways 40 hours a week, then goes to the gym for 2 hours a week isn’t going to experience massive health benefits from exercise outside of work.

  2. Obesity implies being at least 20% heavier than a BMI of 25, and going from ‘obese’ to ‘thin’ is going to involve going from a BMI of 30 to 25. In real life the numbers will probably be closer to people having to lose 30% of bodyweight, something like going from a BMI of 33 to 23 or so as the average obese person and average thin person is probably closer to those numbers. Medical science cannot maintain a 30% weight loss at present. At present, attempting to lose 30% of bodyweight will not only fail 95% of the time, but may make the dieter even more obese than they were to start. Which, if bodyfat is tied into disease puts them at higher risk of cancer & cardiovascular disease.

  3. There is proof that weight loss can increase death from cardiovascular disease. There is some [URL=http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=14634673]proof](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=15841023&query_hl=1) that weight loss will decrease cancer risk though. But there is some proof that it increases mortality too or has no effect.

  4. The nurses health study started in 1976, and the followup went to 2000. Alot of medical advances have been made in the time being, even in the last 20 years CVD deaths are down by about 33%. Cancer deaths have been dropping by 1% a year for over a decade. The health effects of obesity are being overcome with modern medicine.

  5. Multiple medical interventions exist that are safer, more proven, and more effective than weight loss. Why focus on the most dangerous, least proven, least effective method of promoting health? Dangerous interventions with a 10% success rates are usually reserved for experimental, terminal disease interventions, if that. However for obesity dangerous interventions with a 10% success rate are promoted in healthy people with no symptoms of cancer, diabetes or cardiovascular disease. One study showing weight loss can increase the risk of death is one study too many, nevermind the fact that some peple like Glenn Gaesser claim to have found over a dozen studies showing this. There are no studies showing proper screening for cancer or regular exercise or healthy diet increase the risk of early death.