Life Fat people still fat, vex nation
posted by on October 30 at 12:29 PM
From yesterday’s NYTimes comes an article on how fat people may be ruining the world (global warming, health care costs, simple aesthetics, etc.) but probably aren’t to blame for it (“Genes play a significant role”). The Obese are labeled as gas hogs and scapegoats (mostly the latter), but the article shies away from drawing any conclusion other than being obese is worse than being armless and fat people eat more when they’re unhappy. They what will help these folks get healthy? Regulations like militant fat taxes? Help like healthier KFC? Soda bans? Derision?
Fat people are more reviled than ever, researchers find, even as more people become fat. When smokers and heavy drinkers turned pariah, rates of smoking and drinking went down. Won’t fat people, in time, follow suit?Research suggests that the stigma of being fat leads to more eating, not less. And if reducing the stigma suggests a solution, that’s not working either.
“One hypothesis about getting rid of stigma is having more contact with the stigmatized group,” Dr. Brownell says. But with obesity, the stigma seems to be growing along with the national girth.
He cites a famous study in the 1960’s in which children were shown drawings of children with and without disabilities, as well as a drawing of a fat child. Who, they were asked, would you want for your friend? The fat child was picked last.
Now, three researchers have repeated the study, this time with college students. Once again, almost no one, not even fat people, liked the fat person. “Obesity was highly stigmatized,” wrote the researchers, Janet D. Latner of the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, Albert J. Stunkard of the University of Pennsylvania and C. Terence Wilson of Rutgers University, in the July 2005 issue of Obesity Research.
One problem with blaming people for being fat, obesity researchers say, is that getting thin is not like quitting smoking. People struggle to stop smoking, but many, in the end, succeed. Obesity is different. It’s not that the obese don’t care. Instead, as science has shown over and over, they have limited personal control over their weight. Genes play a significant role, the science says.
I don’t buy the genetics argument. If that were true, then we would have the same proportion of fat people all over the world in every culture. Instead, we have massive numbers of obese people in Western Europe and the US (two thirds of the population!), but far fewer numbers of obese people in Eastern Europe and Asia. Even here in the US the numbers vary widely, and historically there have never been this many overweight people. Now a very few people do indeed have endocrine or metabolic disorders, but for the vast majority the true culprit is too many calories and not enough activity -it’s that simple.
Andrew,
Genes are not distributed proportionately around the world. That's why the number of natural blondes in Sweden is different than the number of natural blondes in China. So, it is possible for the obese gene to be more predominate in America versus Asia. But the fact is that people eat too much and don't exercise.
For the five billionth time... EXERCISE. WE DON'T GET ENOUGH EXERCISE.
That's really all there is to it. Restore P.E. in schools to start and then start thinking not of convenience but keeping people active when building places.
I agree with Andrew about the genetic predisposition. Speaking of studies, one study tracked identical twins raised by different families. The twins raised by HWP parents wound up HWP. The twins raised by obese parents were obese. Only about three percent of twins wound up with the same body type as their biological parents, the opposite of their adoptive parents.
Lifestyle is what really counts. The thing is that drastically changing your lifestyle is really difficult.
I would also add that the social pressure on both men and women to realize a physical ideal is even more intense than ever. Who hasn’t looked at a picture of Brad Pitt and felt inadequate, even if you’re in good shape? The fact that we’re getting fatter and our beauty ideals are becoming more extreme is one of the many contradictions of our society.
No, I agree that genetics probably have less to do with it than they give it credit for. This argument doesn't explain the fact that Americans of any descent are more disposed to obesity - European-Americans are more obese than Europeans, Asian-Americans more obese than Asians, and so forth. It's the culture of "get in your car to drive from your desk job to your drive-thru to your living-room tv." People don't have physical exercise as part of their routine; they've worked to eliminate it from their routine.
I guess this just confirms how much self-loathing we collectively possess. We despise ourselves so much we literally become the object of our derision.
I think at least a portion of the cause for this has to lie in a culture that is still utterly obsessed with the automobile. We have the deadly combination of long distances, cheap gas, and widespread auto ownership leading to people who literally would never think of walking to the grocery store. In most other countries, it's much more common to walk or bicycle for transportation.
We simply spend too much time sitting. And our food portions are bizarrely large here. People think a restaurant like a Claim Jumper is good because the portions are bigger than your head, even though the food itself might as well be wet cardboard.
I remember hearing about a study not too long ago that concluded that we had evolved to eat until we've absorbed sufficient levels of nutrients, but since so much of what passes for food now has relatively low nutritional value but high energy content, people keep eating after they're full. So, the conclusion in the lead-in soundbite, obviously, was that evolution was largely responsible for obesity. Yup. Damn evolution got it wrong not designing us to eat shitty food.
Saying that obesity was responsible for Saddam's rise to power and the deaths of JonBenet Ramsey and JFK would be scapegoating. Saying that it takes more fuel to carry heavier people around is not. People need to know the costs of their actions (oh, such a good tie-in to the gas tax discussion), but a problem arises when an observation of the negative consequences of behavior becomes blanket social rejection. These things are complicated; people rally support for cancer victims regardless of whether they've been intentionally breathing smoke daily for decades, but put down people who eat too much, even if they're dying of diabetes. Smoking is seen as a sign of independence and character, a response to an intriguingly difficult life, whereas eating too much is seen as weakness, failure to deal with the difficulties of life. The more people who can grow up enough to be both honest and supportive, the better.
Also, re: the silly genes excuse... why weren't there more fat people 100 years ago if it's purely genetic? Genes don't just suddenly show up.
Don't buy it.
I don't hate you because you're fat. You're fat because I hate you.
When are people going to realize that the obesity problem isn't due to just one cause? It's a combination of genes, lack of exercise, unhealthy food, too-large portion sizes, and probably half a dozen other things.
And regarding the gene argument, it's simple fact that we evolved to hoard fat. This made sense for 99.99% of human history when food was scarcer and its supply was uncertain, but now it's biting us in our very fat asses. This is why 100 or 1000 years ago, most obese people tended to be the rich ones, who had the resources to not just eat, but overeat. It's one of the ironies of modern life that now it's the rich who are thinner, because they can afford organic food, personal trainers, yoga classes, and the like.
Hey guys, talk to me at kidbuu69@hot.com
I would enjoy talking to you very much and can't wait. If you are lonely and want some action please add me to your msn today! ^_^
Comments Closed
In order to combat spam, we are no longer accepting comments on this post (or any post more than 14 days old).