Funny bones

Random quote of the day:



"The world is a joke God has played on many."

—Eugene Ionesco



( Illustrated version. )

A slim chance for understanding

You think political discussions are touchy? Try talking about the issue of obesity. There are firebrands on either side of the fat/thin divide who turn into blowtorches at the drop of a donut.

The issue, however, is far more complicated than the zealots would have you believe. That doesn't preclude some politicians from trying to make obesity political. Some legislators are even trying to make it illegal for restaurants to serve fat people, but the cost/benefit ratio of ending obesity is, like obesity itself, a far more complicated issue. Turns out, it may cost more in the long run to keep large folks alive.

I recommend reading the entire Slate article referenced above for it's sane and balanced approach to the subject. I particularly appreciated this, which appears near the end of the article:

But these estimates are more than meaningless—they actually make the problem worse. A second study, published in the American Journal of Public Health on Jan. 30, looked at the relationship between body image and health. The authors compared people of similar age, gender, education level, and rates of diabetes and hypertension, and examined how often they reported feeling under the weather over a 30-day period. It turned out that body image had a much bigger impact on their health than body size. In other words, two equally obese women would have very different health outcomes, depending on how they felt about their bodies. Likewise, two women with similar insecurities would have more similar health outcomes, even if one were fat and the other thin.

These results suggest that the stigma associated with being obese—feeling fat—is a major contributor to obesity-related disease and ill health. This would account for the strong association between body-mass index and depression (especially among women), and the high rates of morbidity and mortality that ensue. Sure enough, racial and cultural subgroups with more moderate attitudes toward obesity seem to experience more moderate health effects. Overweight and obese African-Americans, for example, are much less vulnerable to weight-related illness—even among women who are 5 feet 5 inches and 250 pounds.

I'd also recommend this article for a nuanced analysis of just exactly what makes people fat. Yes, environment, especially the privileged environment of the last twenty years—but it's about 77 percent hereditary as to whether you will be predisposed towards being a thin person or a fat person. Predisposed. That doesn't mean someone with bad genes can't maintain a healthy lifestyle, that they are completely helpless when it comes to gaining weight, but it does mean they're going to have to be constantly vigilant. And as the author of this article points out, thin people need to put away their holier than thou attitudes towards fat people. Turns out they have almost as little to do with their thin waistlines as obese people have to do with theirs.