Look How Quickly the U.S. Got Fat (1985-2010 Animated Map)
25 brief, delicious year.(From The Atlantic)I was born in ‘85. Interesting to see just how fast things have changed.
Okay, cool graphic. But can we stop the bullshit discussions about how this is because people are too lazy to take care of their bodies? Can we finally address the ACTUAL root causes of this, like poverty (causing people to have no money for fresh foods, and NO TIME to prepare it because working three jobs is necessary just to pay the rent), food deserts (no access to healthy food), and lack of education (no, not that people think a Big Mac is healthy, but that they literally do not know how to cook and store food, because that’s something parents often teach and they have to time to do so - see above)?
Can we talk about how processed food is considerably cheaper and INFINITELY more convenient for working people than fresh food? Can we talk about how most agricultural subsidies underwrite the cost of processed food? Can we talk about the way physical education is being cut from schools all over the countries, and many after-school sports are making the transition from free for all to pay-to-play? Can we talk about how free of charge safe places for children (and adults) to exercise are more and more scarce, especially in urban areas?
Can we talk about how BMI, the formula used to measure “obesity rates,” is patently unscientific and absurd? And for the love of all that is good in the world, can we finally talk about how you can be healthy and obese at the same time?
No, of course not. Because then we’d have to stop shaming people for their bodies - fuck off, Atlantic.
^^ I was waiting for good commentary on this before I reblogged. Thank you.
The interesting thing about ~the obesity epidemic~ too is if you pay attention to who sponsors the research and who benefits the most from the propagation of the idea that fat=unhealthy: the weight loss industry.
A great book on this is J. Eric Oliver’s Fat Politics: The Real Story Behind America’s Obesity Epidemic (2006), which I highly recommend. Here’s a quick excerpt, although reading the book itself gives a much fuller picture of how extensive this issue really is.
“The U.S. government’s proclamation of what BMI level was overweight or obese was based…on a subjective and arbitrary call on the part of just a few researchers…. To understand this point, it is important to go back to the 1995 WHO report that helped establish the idea that a person is overweight with a BMI of 25…. Most of it was drafted and written under the auspices of the International Obesity Task Force (IOTF)…. [which] is primarily funded by Hoffman-LaRoche (the maker of the weight-loss drug Xenical) and Abbott Laboratories (the maker of the weight-loss drug Meridia)…. The primary mission of the IOTF is to lobby governments and advance particular scientific agendas that coincide with the pharmaceutical industry’s goals…. Few realize that the effort to establish a worldwide standard for what is overweight and obese was sponsored primarily by a company that makes a weight-loss pill.” (p. 28-29)
This book also addresses commonly cited ‘facts’ about obesity — e.g. that it kills 400,000 Americans a year or that it costs the U.S. $100 billion a year. Both of these estimates are based on highly flawed research and sweeping assumptions.
See also Paul Campos’s The Obesity Myth: Why America’s Obsession with Weight is Hazardous (2004) and Gina Kolata’s Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss—and the Myths and Realities of Dieting (2007), both of which go over a lot of the commonly cited studies and their statistical and methodological flaws, detail the dangers of weight cycling, discuss the origins, anachronism, and misapplication of BMI, and review the political and financial motivations behind ‘the obesity epidemic’ rhetoric.
(via elandrialore)
