Fatness: Now a disease!
The American Medical Association has officially recognized obesity as a disease, a move that could induce physicians to pay more attention to the condition and spur more insurers to pay for treatments.
“Recognizing obesity as a disease will help change the way the medical community tackles this complex issue that affects approximately one in three ( Read more... )
“Recognizing obesity as a disease will help change the way the medical community tackles this complex issue that affects approximately one in three ( Read more... )
The problem I have with this view is that these are good things we ought to be doing regardless of our nation's weight. I'm also worried that, when such programs failed to produce any weight loss (spoiler alert: they won't), they will be discontinued.
The main reason I can't get onboard with Michelle Obama's obesity campaign (or any similar health campaign) is its focus on obesity. Making sure kids have adequate time to play? Great! Promoting fresh food, including gardens, farmers' markets, and the like? Great! Doing all of these things because kids today are perceived as way too fat? Not okay. These are things that should be done because kids having enough time to play is a good thing, full stop. People having access to sufficient fresh, nutritious food is a good thing, full stop. These things should be done because they are intrinsically good things to do.
Never mind that access to food and safe exercise places are only the tip of the iceberg and every health campaign I've come across has failed to address the more complicated and less glamorous causes of ill health. Poverty is a huge determiner of weight and poor health: most bodies tend to pack on weight when stressed as a defense mechanism, and stress taxes your immune system. Poverty is one of the biggest stressors out there, and yet none of these health initiatives have attempted to curb poverty. Instead they promote ideas like "Get 60 minutes of play outside!"* and "Eat fresh organic veggies!"**.
*not available to a child who has no safe place to play outside
**not available to quite a few people--I am a 23-year-old programmer making the standard for entry-level programmers, have no expenses aside from a discounted rent and my student loans, am cooking solely for myself, have a garden to supplement what I buy, make mostly from scratch, and I find the cost of local/organic/sustainable food prohibitive. I am just about as well-placed as possible financially, and buying "healthy" is still a burden. I don't know how anyone with poorer circumstances could pull it off.
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Exactly.
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Agree with this so much! I mean I agree with your whole post, but this part in particular.
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(My other issue with Michelle Obama's obesity campaign - the biggest one - is that since it's called an "obesity campaign," not only does it start the body-hating young and start kids out thinking that being fat is absolutely the worst thing because even the First Lady says so, which is already a prevalent social attitude, but it also makes fat kids more of a target for bullying than they already are, and fat kids already basically have a target painted on them. Focusing solely on "making kids less fat" makes fat kids visible, targeted, and "to blame" for anything about the initiatives that the thinner kids don't like. It's so incredibly gross, and thinking of my own childhood and the serious abuse I suffered because of my weight not just from my peers but from my own family... it makes me want to be sick and I feel like there's nothing I can do. Because apparently making it a "health campaign" just wouldn't be good enough?? Ugh I HATE THAT PROGRAM SO MUCH. /tl;dr and slightly OT, sorry )
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