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I don't even know where to begin with this post without it turning into a full blown rant. But, I'll give it a try. Are you freekin kidding me? Is there not already enough discrimination against the overweight in this country?
It seems to me, the media took a boring study encouraging walking and riding bikes to work, and turned it into a story blaming fat people for Global Warming. This kind of thing just makes me so angry. Does anyone really think that we could solve the problem of obesity by blaming fat people for Global Warming? Does anyone really think we could solve global warming by getting rid of fat people? It's beyond absurd.
I was actually working on something totally different for tonight's post, and then I caught the tail-end of this segment on Fox...
From The LA Times...
We don't imagine Edwards and Roberts wrote their letter to be mean -- their point seems to be that it would be good for various reasons if urban policies worked to promote biking and walking -- and we haven't yet heard of mobs with torches roving the streets in search of those with BMIs of 30 or above. Nonetheless, Yale University has been quick with a news release urging "caution on obesity and climate change link."
Declares Kelly Brownell, director of the university's Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, "Saying that obese people are contributing to climate change is highly stigmatizing and assigns blame to the individuals who are obese rather than the conditions driving the obesity in the first place." Things, he says, like junk food marketing aimed at children, the demise of P.E. programs, behemoth portions offered up in restaurants, more.
From ABC News...
Obesity experts overwhelmingly condemned a letter in the medical journal the Lancet Thursday that suggested growing rates of obesity pose a threat to the environment.
"Obese people have enough issues to deal with without being demonized for their impact on the environment," agreed Keith-Thomas Ayoob, pediatric nutritionist and associate professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. "The truth is, all people are an environmental burden.
"It is offensive, and I'm not overweight," he said. "I hope the writers are not in the position of seeing patients. They must have missed the lecture on bedside manner."
Katherine Hobson wrote an article for US News and World Report, that started off by comparing public stigma against smokers and public stigma against fat people. Can Blaming People for Being Fat Help Curb Obesity?
Brownell authored a 2006 study showing that when overweight people feel stigmatized because of their weight, they respond by eating more and giving up on diets. "Obese people are under such enormous pressure to lose weight," he says. "They understand the health consequences, they see fat jokes on TV, they were teased and ridiculed as kids. To think that you could add much more to that pressure is wishful thinking." The stress may make them turn to food for comfort or, as one researcher hypothesizes, might even contribute to the physiological processes of obesity through, say, stress hormones. It can also keep people out of the gym, most likely thanks to embarrassment and shame. A study published this year in the Journal of Health Psychology suggests, at least among the college-aged, that having more experience with weight stigma makes people less motivated to exercise.
So if blaming the obese doesn't work, but their behavior still contributes to their condition, what does? It's a delicate balance; we don't want to encourage obesity, but nor do we want to swing the other way and promote unreachable body ideals or eating disorders. (Last summer, my colleague Deborah Kotz wrote about this thorny issue as it relates to obesity prevention programs for kids.) Maybe, Latner says, the focus should be on healthful eating behaviors rather than a number on the scale—and we should leave the character issues out of it.
BlogHer Stephanie Fierman writes - Scared Thin? Fat Chance.
And for those low-income families for whom obesity is a terrible problem, (a) less of them are likely to have
