by Bill Weitze - NAAFA Newsletter Editor
Fat and Happy? A study of over one million Swedish men published in December 2005 in the American Journal of Epidemiology shows that slim people struggle with depression, and are more likely to commit suicide than fat folk. Commentators have attributed these surprising results to the woes of dieting, forgetting that many fat folk diet as well. Whether or not these findings are confirmed, they remind us that the slender are not our enemies, that even "successful" dieting isn't a ticket to happiness, and that they also suffer from size oppression.
Fat and Healthy. Confirming the recent study by Dr. Katherine Flegal of the Centers for Disease Control (reported here a few months ago), a study by Jerome Timothy Gronniger of the Congressional Budget Office shows that body mass index (BMI) is a poor predictor of a person's risk of death. (BMI is your body mass in kilograms divided by the square of your height in meters.)
Fat and Healthy, Part 2. Sociologists at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) led by Abigail C. Saguy find that while Americans are indeed getting fatter, the so-called "obesity epidemic" is at best a metaphor, and not a very effective one at that. The current anti-fat environment can keep fat people from adequate health
care.
A Japanese Perspective NAAFA Member Avery Ray Colter has translated a Japanese article that features him and his fiancee Kat Rhodes. Reporter Yukiko McCarty wrote the article for Japan's Spa Magazine based on her observations and interviews at NAAFA's 2005 Convention. (Warning: some adult content.)
Dieting Dangers. A study of same-sex Finnish twins published in June 2005 in the Public Library of Science's Medicine Journal showed that, of those intending to lose weight, the risk of mortality was actually greatest for those who successfully lost weight. The authors conclude Deliberate weight loss in overweight individuals without known co-morbidities may be hazardous in the long term.
US News Says "Stop Dieting". The January 16, 2006 issue of US News and World Report includes an article by Amanda Spake that questions thiscountry's dieting craze. In it, Ms. Spake interviews Joanne Ikeda (a nutrition specialist at the University of California, Berkeley and speaker at the 2003 NAAFA Convention), Linda Bacon (a nutrition professor at the University of California, Davis and speaker at the 2005 NAAFA Convention), Steven Blair (CEO of the Cooper Institute in Dallas), and many others in the Health at Every Size movement. While I applaud the article, and hope it helps those who are unsure of whether to diet, I find it interesting that the article's web page contains a bunch of diet ads (automatically selected by Google based on the article's content). It seems like there's still a lot of progress to be made in the fight against dieting.
Size Acceptance Spreads. There are signs of hope. The February 2006 issue of fashion magazine Marie Claire contains an article titled "Why America Hates Fat Women", investigating what they call the final frontier of open discrimination in the U.S. Also, the market research firm NPD Group found that, over a 20-year period, the percentage of Americans who said they find overweight people less attractive dropped from 55 percent to 24 percent. And El Paso Times columnist Annamaria Longo says fat jokes in movies are no longer funny.
Idol Issues. NAAFA Public Relations Chair Peggy Howell spoke against the sizism evident on American Idol this season. Although supersized Ruben Studdard went to the top two years ago, "Simon Cowell continues to make rude remarks about [fat] contestants." Peggy's statements earned NAAFA mentions online, in newspapers across the country, and even on VH1's Best Week Ever. Commentator response was mixed, as some predictably conflated fatness with laziness.
Hawaii Lawmaker Proposes Teacher Weigh-Ins. Meanwhile, sizism hasn't disappeared, as a state lawmaker has suggested Hawaii's public schoolteachers be forced to weigh in as part of the fight against obesity in students. The president of the Hawaii State Teachers Association calls the proposal "offensive". I agree; instead of teaching children to be healthy, it teaches them that it's OK to discriminate against fat folk. This seems to be part of a larger trend toward more intrusive "wellness" programs imposed by employers.
Study Spin. Sizism even infects scientific research, which is supposed to be unbiased. A study by Northwestern University researchers (published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in January 2006) found that being overweight in mid-life substantially increased the risk of dying of heart disease later in life. The headlines declared "Study confirms you can't be fat and healthy". But what they didn't tell you is that, in the words of Glenn Gaesser (professor of exercise physiology at the University of Virginia, and member of the NAAFA Board of Advisors), is that "the authors assume that diet, physical activity, and fitness play no role in health or mortality risk (I am not kidding)." Since these are known risk factors that often correlate with fatness, the authors can't truthfully say whether fatness actually causes heart disease.
Corrupted Opinions. The January 30 issue of BusinessWeek reports that "stealth sponsorship of talking heads and op-ed columnists is surprisingly common". One example: Anti-fat columnist Michael Fumento benefited from "payments totaling ,000 from agribusiness giant Monsanto Co. . . . On January 13, Scripps Howard News Service canceled his weekly column."
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