"You Made Me Fat" and other weight loss taboo's

Straight off this is a spin off thread from the "Is it just me or does everybody seem like PIGS" thread. 

NOTE: Just in case it comes up, I am in no way advocating harassing people about their weight, food choices, or grocery carts in a one-to-one scenario. 

The heat on the thread above came from the idea that an individual would look at another individual (in a store, in a food court, at their lunch desk) and think there were a "pig" for their food choices.

It's hardly surprising that this was an inflammatory remark on a weight loss board. 

The second interesting flash point in the thread came when a poster said that it was this negative judgement of others that contributed to her eating more and continuing her over eating disorder (I would assume the same could be said for an under eating disorder). 

From these two comments we ended up with what I will call a strong support for rampant individualism. 

On one hand posters were outraged that people would have the audacity to judge the contents of someone else's grocery cart, because that is mean and rude (to summarize). On the other hand those who said it's those judgmental people who helped make me fat were also denigrated for not taking personal responsibility for their own eating choices. 

Basically the overwhelming consensus became what I eat is none of your business and what you eat is none of mine. 

I can't pin point exactly why but this rang as a really bad idea to me. 

It's hardly a secret that North America is engaged in an obesity epidemic. Over 50% of adult American's are overweight, the percentage of overweight and obese children is growing exponentially, and this generation is the first generation projected not to live as long as their parents. 

Ultimately what we put in our mouths is our decision, but a decision is reached from the choices available and I began to question how free our choices are. 

The individualist argument will tells us that we simply have to choose to eat healthy foods in moderate quantities and exercise. This is the secret to a healthy weight and lifestyle. 

If it is that simple I have to ask, why are so many of us increasingly overweight?

I know I didn't wake up one morning and decide that I wanted to be overweight, I did not make a plan and decide to become overweight, I did not make an effort to become overweight. 

I suppose an argument can be made that I should have kept myself better informed as to what my nutritional requirements were and met them. I didn't. A lot of people didn't. In fact 50% of adult American's didn't. 

At this point I have to think that there is more at play here than my individual choice to choose a healthy lifestyle or not. 

My argument is that a healthy lifestyle is no longer intuitive. Or, that our intuition is so heavily bombarded by outside influences that it is rendered useless. 

Fast food is a multi-billion dollar industry, as is packaged goods, as are soft drinks. 

Fashion, cosmetics and the diet industries are each also multi-billion dollar industries. 

Our junk foods are heavily engineered products including taste and fragrance enhancers engineered to trigger our endorphins for pleasure. 

Billions of dollars tell Americans to find pleasure in fast food, and then to diet it off to fit into a size 0 dress. 

Jenny Craig is owned by Nestle (hardly the only major diet plan owned by a food company that also produces junk food). 

I can think of half a dozen fast food restaurants in less than 6 seconds (McDonalds, Wendy's, Arby's, Taco Bell, Burger King, Tim Hortons - yes I'm Canadian) but I can't think of one single healthy food choice restaurant that would have brand recognition internationally (or even nationally). 

Supermarkets are (in a well proportioned supermarket) 70% packaged goods. Retailing research helps lay out supermarkets to the extent that they have demographics on exactly which way the majority of people turn when they walk into a store (over 90% of people turn right by the way). 

With this kind of money, marketing and research behind the scenes of our food and image industries I really do have to question how much individual choice we really do have when choosing our foods. 

This is where I think judgment becomes important. Until we think about what we as a society are putting into our grocery carts we will not ask why. 

It's too easy and too reductionist to say that we are not influenced by or simply have to ignore the billion dollar a year food advertising industry. 

I think we are where smoking was 15 years ago. We now *know* without a doubt that obesity is bad for us. It's not just unfashionable, it's not just poor choices in clothes it's actually killing people at a higher rate than smoking ever was. 

Now sure, second hand fat doesn't kill.... well not in the same way that second hand smoke does...

However if 50% of the adult American population is overweight then there is something in our culture that is making it acceptable for us to slowly kill ourselves this way, and it obviously does affect others (witness the growing rates of obesity).

As I said at the top I'm not saying we should start picketing taco bell, or ridiculing the person in front of us at the grocery line... 

What we do need to think about is how far we're willing to push individual freedoms to allow ourselves to ignore a social epidemic.

I am at work trying to work, but this topic is intruiging - my point is though, that my research is a little sloppy as I should be working.... I wanted to pose the question "Although obeisity is on the rise in many developed countries, what do you think is the differenc in the  US, UK, etc. who rank at the top of the obesity charts vs. those who are at smaller obesity percentages?" and then I went online to find some statistics for examples and ran across this: 

 

Amazing.

Back in July, doctors in New Zealand promoted the idea to ban fat people from entering their country. It sounded crazy. It was crazy.

But now, it has happened. 35-year-old Rowan Trezise has been rejected from entering New Zealand. Her husband had applied for a work visa and, in fact, chose to lose weight to get admitted himself.

How much truth do you think is in this?

new zealand has socialized medicine.  insurance companies in the US can deny fat people health insurance; the government of nz is doing exactly the same thing when they say they won't provide health care and other services to people who are high risk due to obesity.

i'm not agreeing, i'm jut saying that it's not that radical.

My mum has just come back from there and she said there is no such thing as an overweight NZr so I think it may have some backing to it.

it appears to be true

 

Here in the UK our Health service can and do refuse to treat you if you have a BMI over 30

anndjoe, the articles about this state that about half of the NZ population is overweight or obese. Probably most of those are overweight, and you wouldn't see someone who looks really big like you see in the US. (Technically "overweight" people can look pretty normal-sized). It's all about levels, right, and obese is different than morbidly obese, and super-morbidly obese, etc. Certainly morbid obesity is growing in the US even faster than obesity as a whole, but the morbidly obese are still a minority of the "obese" here, and are pretty darn rare in other countries.

I suspect your mother meant that she didn't see anybody really big, which is definitely possible.

...and here in canada (and elsewhere), you can't get travel insurance to cover a "pre-existing condition."  obesity would fall into that category, right?

Regarding trustwomens response in post #61- I don't believe that supersized had meant that overweight people were socially irresponsible, I believe she meant that the "rampant individualists" were socially irresponsible.

Also, while overweight may not be associated with increased mortality, it is associated with increased morbidity.

My reading of trustwomen and supersized's posts makes me think you two actually agree on most points....

Trustwomen...oh I don't know....that's just what my mum said....all the locals she saw were of normal weight.

PG...yeah that's the same here travel insurance is very hard to get if you aren't in what they class perfect health!..I don't agree with it though.

jsdamdam, I reread her post, you are right. She said that "considering obesity to be an individual's problem" is socially irresponsible. I can pretty much get behind that, and I think you are right, we do agree on most things.

I guess I am not used to thinking about socialized medicine it did not come to my mind that it would be like an insurance denial.

I guess obesity would fall into the category of pre-existing.....

 

I've really enjoyed both trustwomen and supersized's contributions to this entire forum in general- so, I like to see you on the same side! Thanks to both of you.

anndjoe, check out this flickr site showing illustrated BMI categories (pictures of people at various weights and BMIs).

It really helped me to break down my own illusions about what "big" or "overweight" means. For me, when I see the pictures, the only people that really strike me as large are the ones who are frankly obese.

as far "rampant individualism" - i agree.  there's a fine line between respecting others' choices and choosing to be oblivious and/or uncaring.

trustwomen.....wow now for me if I saw many of those people on the street who they said were obese I would just say they are over weight and the morbidly obese, just obese...how people view the same thing but come up with a different analysis. Very interesting....

Ah, but remember, on that site, the people submitted their pictures plus their height and weight. Considering the tone of the site, I believe that the information is accurate. And from people I have known of about those heights and weights, the pictures look about right. BMI categories are pretty clear - BMI 25-29.9 is overweight, 30-39.9 is obese, 40 and above is morbidly obese.

What got me was that so many of the overweight people looked so good and so healthy. This seems consistent with medical data which show that mild overweight (BMI 26-27) does not seem to be associated with any significant extra risk, especially if the person is physically fit/muscular.

The girl on the bottom left of the first page - "Ginny", in the capri jeans and paisley top - really doesn't look especially overweight to me, let alone nearly obese. Goes to show that BMI categories get even weirder when people are taller. Not that there isn't some value to them - of course there is! - but that it's important to remember that when we hear "1/3 of americans are obese and 1/3 are overweight", those overweight people include all the healthy, fine-looking people pictured there who are at BMIs of 25-27, too.

Original Post by anndjoe:

Whilst I appreciate the moderators intervention I'm am puzzled as to why a post I made in an effort to get the subject off of world population was removed yet comments a certain person made and who is out to cause trouble on many threads still remain...when they still mention "world population" and name calling. Rather unfair I think.

You have mail.

Original Post by andybarc:

I think the mods have gone OTT here. I had a post removed in which I said that the fella who had a masterplan to cleanse the population and a plan B to limit parentage to 1 child per family seemed odd to have his plans that particular way around! Hardly offensive.

Guys, don't you check your email? You have a PM from me now as well as an email from earlier today to your email account which you registered with.

Trustwomen...totally agree...they had some discussion over here about the health service refusing to operate  on folk with BMI 30-30+ they argued that an ultra fit rugby player at the top of their profession had in fact a BMI of between 30-35 it was argued that on that basis many other factors should also be considered when assessing someones fitness to undergo surgery.

Definitely, anndjoe. A significant excess of body fat can be a contraindication for some surgeries, and/or for anaesthesia. But you can't measure that purely by BMI.

I used to work at a surgery clinic and the anaesthesiologists would have to evaluate very obese patients to see whether they could be asleep - and the important thing was their neck and airway (in case they would require intubation). Some people were quite large but were all-cleared by the doctor (especially the "pears"), and others were less large overall, but due to a different fat distribution (i.e. heavier in the face, neck and shoulders) were refused.

I think there is some validity to excluding immigrants based on health status, in countries with universal health care (including my own). I don't like it in theory, but I recognize that it is probably necessary in practice.