America’s Fat Hatred
Why do people hate fat people so much? I mean really. I suppose it shouldn’t surprise us when the conventional wisdom says that fat people are the way they are because they eat too much and move too little. If that’s the case, then they must be lazy, stupid, and not willing to change. They must be lazy because they won’t hit the gym. However, when I go to the gym, I see plenty of fat people there. They must be stupid because they can’t seem to count their calories and pull back from the table like lean people. Let me tell you something, I’m lean and I NEVER pull back from the table until I am full. I don’t count anything, except for how much my meat costs at the grocery store. Not willing to change? Well, why would anyone endure the social ostracism of obesity if they could help it? Do you think really think that people love to be fat?
I know, you hear a lot about minorities preferring their women with a little more curves and some “junk in the trunk” but I think that more has to do with self-acceptance and a tacit surrender to what they view as reality. If they were genetically pre-determined to appear this way, then there is nothing they can do. Despite this cop out, there is still much anger directed at the obese.
Practically the minute President Obama announced Regina M. Benjamin, a zaftig doctor who also has an M.B.A. and is the recipient of a MacArthur “genius grant,” as a nominee for the post of Surgeon General, the criticism started.
The attacks were vicious—Michael Karolchyk, owner of a Denver “anti-gym,” told Fox News’ Neil Cavuto, “Obesity is the No. 1 issue facing our country in terms of the health and wellness, and she has shown not that she was born this way, not that she woke up one day and was obese. She has shown through being lazy, and making poor food choices, that she’s obese.”
See, this accomplished woman must be lazy and stupid since she’s obese. Could we really have a fat surgeon general? That should inform us how deep the wormhole goes. If MacArthur were to read this blog, I would serve as her dietician for free and I guarantee you that if she got on board and followed my plan, she would be not be classified as obese when I finished with her.
Fat bias is nothing new. “Public outrage at other people’s obesity has a lot to do with America from the turn of the 20th century to about World War I,” says Deborah Levine, assistant professor of health policy and management at Providence College. The rise of fat hatred is often seen as connected to the changing American workplace; in the early 20th century, companies began to offer snacks to employees, white-collar jobs became more prominent, and fewer people exercised. As thinness became rarer, says Peter N. Stearns, author of Fat History: Bodies and Beauty in the Modern West and professor of history at George Mason University, it was more prized, and conversely, fatness was more maligned.
In a country that still prides itself on its Puritanical ideals, the fat self is the “bad self,” the epitome of greed, gluttony, and sloth. “There’s a widespread belief that fat is controllable,” says Linda Bacon, author of Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight. “So then it’s unlike a disability where you can have compassion; now you can blame the individual and attribute all kinds of mean qualities to them. Then consider the thinner people that are always watching what they eat carefully—fat people are symbols of what they can become if they weren’t so virtuous.”
But considering that the U.S. has already become a size XL nation—66 percent of adults over 20 are considered overweight or obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control—why does the stigma, and the anger, remain?
Some factor of diet and/or lifestyle must be driving weight upward because human biology and our underlying genetic code cannot change in such a short time. Psychologist Kelly Brownell, director of the Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders, coined the term “toxic environment” to describe an American culture “that encourages overeating and physical inactivity” and so encourages obesity. Marion Nestle, in “The Ironic Politics of Obesity”, suggested that gaining weight is good for business. The World Health Organization says that one billion adults are overweight and obesity rates have risen three-fold since 1980 in some areas in North America, the United Kingdom, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, the Pacific Islands, Australasia and China.
“As incomes rise and populations become more urban diets high in complex carbohydrates give way to more varied diets with a higher proportion of fats, saturated fats and sugars.”
They go on to describe the decline in physical activity. It all sounds reasonable except that consumption of refined carbohydrates and sugars has also been increasing dramatically. The United States is a good place to look for answers because it offers a starting point for the epidemic, between the late 1970s and mid 1980s. This period was between the second and third NHANES study.
American men at 150 more calories per day while women at 350 more. This was attributable to increased carbohydrate intake according to a 2004 Centers for Disease Control report. The percentage of fat decreased for both sexes, but the absolute amount of dietary fat decreased only for men. Women ate fifty calories more fat each day in 2000 than they did in 1971 and men ate 50 calories less. The NHANES data suggests that either calories or carbohydrates could account for the increase in weight but it would be difficult to implicate dietary fat.
The US Department of Agriculture report called Nutrient Content of the US Food Supply 1909-1997 reaches an identical conclusion. Saturated fat dropped from 53 grams per day in 1971 to 50 in 1997.
In 1997, Roland Weinsier wrote an article called “Divergent Trends in Obesity and Fat Intake Patters: The American Paradox.” There, he concluded that
“it appears that efforts to promote the use of low-calorie and low-fat food products have been highly successful but the reduction in fat intake did not appear to have prevented the progression of obesity in the population.”
Population-wide assessments of physical activity are also difficult to make in any meaningful way. They have evidence suggesting that Americans were no less active at the end of the 1990s then they were at the beginning. We also know that the obesity epidemic coincided with the exercise and sports epidemic in America. This was an era when the revenues of the health-club industry were estimated at $200 million a year; in 2005, revenues were 16 billion and nearly forty-million Americans belonged to such clubs. Sales of sporting goods and shoes increased from $21.9 billion in 1987 to $52 billion in 2004.
As many women’s magazines’ cover lines note, losing the last five pounds can be a challenge. So why don’t we have more compassion for people struggling to lose the first 50, 60, or 100? Some of it has to do with the psychological phenomenon known as the fundamental attribution error, a basic belief that whatever problems befall us personally are the result of difficult circumstances, while the same problems in other people are the result of their bad choices. Miss a goal at work? It’s because the vendor was unreliable, and because your manager isn’t giving you enough support, and because the power outage last week cut into premium sales time. That jerk next to you? He blew his quota because he’s a bad planner, and because he spent too much time taking personal calls.
I think the the author was onto something here. I kind of made this point in the video blog. When people who have never been obese pontificate on obesity, they do so from their own experience. They feel as though they are lean because they have made superior food choices than the obese. They have a self-righteous attitude that totally compromises their ability to be of any help to an obese person. We actually feed this animal because we unwittingly give our approval when a lean person proclaims how they are able to keep their weight off by eating less and exercising, making suggestions that the obese could be just like them if only they would adopt a similar lifestyle. Usually, the one making the statement has never been obese so they really have no idea of which they speak. We figure that the lean must be better calculators of math than we are, that they can somehow compute their calories and energy needs over decades. We marvel at their ability to carefully control their food intake. I think it’s time to call bullshit!
The lean don’t realize that the same metabolic condition that has made the obese is also affecting them; although they have different symptoms. It could be bad teeth, hypertension, blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, etc. Obesity is just one of many symptoms of the same disorder so it’s only a matter of time before they manifest a symptom, despite “doing everything right.”
I just spoke to two people this very week about their high blood pressure but there were both lean individuals. Even Amby Burfoot, the editor of Runner’s World, who is also an accomplished marathon runner, has high triglycerides despite his athletic lifestyle. Exercise will not mask an improper diet.
Based on all of this, I would say the obese are the lucky ones, but only if they learn the reason they are obese. An obese who discovers the truth can be a very empowered person. I lost 73 pounds and it had very little to do with eating less and exercise. It had everything to do with ceasing to consume carbohydrates. I exercised when I was 221 pounds but it didn’t do any good. The exercise only made me hungry. However, once I lowered the carbohydrates, then I began to see results. Now, it is truly effortless to remain a lean person.
We need to stop hating the obese and let them know they are not fat because they eat too much and move too little. They are obese and unhealthy because they eat the wrong foods. It’s as simple as that.
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on September 7, 2009 at 8:27 am
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on September 7, 2009 at 12:23 pm
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