Hi all, I wanted to draw your attention to this article on AlterNet (thanks to the Admiral for the heads-up). It's about a 2007 documentary that somehow I never heard about, called "Fat: What No One Is Telling You", which definitely sounds worthy of checking out on Netflix.
The article itself (don't know yet about the movie) is stuck on the old idea of "obesity" as a "disease" and suffers from a few other misconceptions, but it made me happy anyway (well, "happy"... I mean, it's not a happy article, but I'm glad it was written). It's not all that common for lefties to come to the defense of fat people these days (unfortunately you see this in some of the comments on the article, which I recommend avoiding), so it's nice to see this on AlterNet.
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We've argued before so I doubt this will be received well, but this part of the article:
Doctors cannot help the vast majority of obese people lose weight -- and keep it off -- because doctors don't know what causes obesity.
Is simply untrue. If it were true, obesity rates would not be going up at the rate they are. The consistent increase belies the idea that most people can not lose the weight they may have gained through a balanced diet (balanced, not starvation) and exercise.
This of course doesn't preclude genetics and other issues outside of people's control for a percentage or people, but the idea that a "majority" of the people can't is logically wrong.
The main reason proffered by many studies is an increase in high caloric food for less money combined with a decrease in manual labor. So economically speaking, it became less expensive to eat more and more expensive to get exercise. These factors are within most people's control.
Disclaimer: I know BMI isn't an accurate measure of obesity, but it's consistent increase certainly coincides with overweight individuals in the aggregate.
1. How do "obesity rates" "going up" have any bearing on the question of whether doctors can help people lose weight? Wait, don't answer that -- just think about it for a sec and realize that you don't know what you're talking about.
2. Why do you read this blog? Whoever you are, if you're just going to come on here and make comments that you already know will not be "received well", what's the point?
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