The Obesity Epidemic

Mar 3 15:57 UTC 2006

America is allegedly in the midst of an obesity epidemic, but our 
obsession with weight is the real disease. 


 
If you watch any mainstream news, you know that apparently America is 
in the midst of an obesity epidemic. Fear-producing news segments 
feature footage of overweight men and women, cut off at the heads like 
criminals, lumbering along the streets in Anytown, U.S.A. Ads with 
skinny women touting weight loss miracles as they look disdainfully at 
old pictures of their fatter, sadder selves run on a continuous loop on 
daytime television.

The scare tactics are working. Americans continue to pump billions, and 
blood, sweat, and tears into their "body projects," convinced that if 
they are fat, they are doomed.

Conflating fat with sickness is a dangerous delusion. The truth about 
fat, reinforced recently by a $419 billion federal study involving 
49,000 women, is that it does not automatically indicate unhealthiness. 
Many thin people, who don't exercise or eat balanced diets, are at a 
greater risk for disease than those with some extra padding who work 
out and eat relatively right. Your health can only be improved by 
movement and moderation. That's it. The study, published in the Journal 
of the American Medical Association last month, concludes that low-fat 
diets do not, despite all of the hype, reduce a woman's risk of cancer 
or heart disease.

Being fat is not equivalent to being unfit. In fact, being underweight 
actually kills over 30,000 Americans a year. Equating weight loss, 
instead of lifestyle changes, with improved health is "like 
saying 'whiter teeth produced by the elimination of smoking reduces the 
incidence of lung cancer,'" argues J. Eric Oliver, author of Fat 
Politics: The Real Story Behind America's Obesity Epidemic. Even a 
group of CDC researchers admit that "evidence that weight loss improves 
survival is limited."

So why do highly educated, media-savvy Americans continue to buy into 
the idea that the thinner one is, the healthier and happier one is? The 
mammoth diet industry, not to mention the exercise, beauty, fashion, 
and cosmetic surgery industries, certainly has something to do with it. 
In America, alone, we spend $40 billion annually on diet products, even 
though diets prove to be ineffective 95 percent of the time. Not only 
is our stupidity disturbing -- those stakes wouldn't even lure the 
drunkest of Vegas gamblers -- but the implications are foreboding.

There is a slippery slope from dieting to disease, as the 7 million 
girls and women suffering from eating disorders in this country will 
attest. Thirty-five percent of those who diet go on to yo-yo diet, 
dragging their bodies through a cycle of weight gains and losses far 
more unhealthy than just being overweight; 25 percent of those who diet 
develop partial or full syndrome eating disorders. Mindfulness advocate 
Susan Albers writes: "The dieting mindset is akin to taking a knife and 
cutting the connection that is your body's only line of communication 
with your head." There is little hope for long-term health improvement 
with this vital line severed.

Cut off from our ability to listen to our authentic hungers, we ride a 
roller coaster of marketed cravings and emotional upheaval -- 
overeating, then guiltily undereating, then overeating again. But 
unlike brief and thrilling amusement park adventures, we can't seem to 
get off the ride. The explosion of coverage on "the obesity epidemic," 
though well-intentioned, has not served as the emergency break 
nutritionists and doctors so hoped it would. Instead, the sensational 
news spots on the dangers of obesity have often fed misperceptions 
about the direct link between fat and unhealthiness, or worse, fat and 
unworthiness.

Hyperbolic reportage on the expanding waistlines of America's children, 
in particular, has created a damaging hysteria. Fat camps are flooded 
with applicants who are solidly within their recommended body weight. 
In 1995, 34 percent of high school-aged girls in the U.S. thought they 
were overweight. Today, 90 percent do. And those who really are fat, 
and yes, there are many, are subjected to increasing scrutiny and 
scolding. The fat kid in school, once the butt of mean jokes, is now 
the target of a societal assault. A recent survey of parents found that 
1 in 10 would abort a child if they found out that he or she had a 
genetic tendency to be fat.

We are being brainwashed by sensationalistic news segments and the 250 
ads we see a day that tell us, not only that fat is unhealthy, but a 
sign of weak character. In a recent poll by Ellegirl magazine of 10,000 
readers, 30 percent said they would rather be thin than healthy. Over 
half the young women between the ages of 18 and 25 would prefer to be 
run over by a truck than be fat, and two-thirds surveyed would rather 
be mean or stupid. The single group of teenagers most likely to 
consider or attempt suicide is girls who worry that they are overweight.

The messages are coming in loud and clear, and they are riddled with 
disempowering dichotomies -- all or nothing, feast or famine, 
disgustingly fat or virtuously thin, deeply flawed or triumphantly 
perfect. There is no talk of what Buddhists describe as "the middle 
path," no discussion of the pleasure of walking, eating homemade food, 
slowing down. There is no permission to say "no" sometimes and "yes" 
sometimes, and have those no's and yeses be simple answers, 
insignificant scores on a Scrabble board, representative of nothing 
more than a mood. Instead our yeses and no's signify our desirability, 
our life expectancy, our self-worth.

It is not fat itself that is unhealthy, but our hypocritical attitudes 
and compulsive behaviors that are. We drive two blocks to the grocery 
store and then spend 20 minutes circling the parking lot so we can get 
a close spot. Once inside we load up our carts with low-fat, microwave 
meals and diet shakes filled with artificial everything. In the 
checkout line, we read about the latest fitness trend in Men's Health 
or Self, then get back into our cars, drive the two blocks home, and 
sit in front of the television all night eating Pizza Hut while 
drinking a liter of Diet Coke. We go to bed late, wake up early, head 
to work -- in our cars, of course -- where we will spend the next eight 
hours stationary and bored. Rinse. Repeat.

We don't need expensive, genetically engineered foods or state-of-the-
art exercise equipment. We don't need fancy doctors or pharmaceutical 
drugs. We don't need the latest diet craze book or even the latest 
medical study -- they all seem to contradict each other anyway. We 
don't even need Herculean willpower.

We just need to leave our cars in the garage, stroll down to the park, 
and play some softball with our neighbors on a Saturday. We just need 
to enjoy every last bite of our home-baked birthday cakes, then have 
some oatmeal for breakfast the next morning. We need to resist the 
pressure to overwork and underenjoy. If we want to live long, healthy, 
happy lives, then we need to stop believing the hype. We need to 
rediscover our own wise instincts that know far more about well-being 
than a whole country of experts. 

Courtney E. Martin's book, "Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters," will be 
published by Simon & Schuster's Free Press in March 2007. You can read 
more about her work at www.courtneyemartin.com.


Original article: http://www.alternet.org/story/32958/