I encourage you to actually pick up one of the books and/or at least read the info here (http://tinyurl.com/bwl9g) about one of the flaws in the “obesity epidemic” concept. Also, I’ve (mostly) read both books: the authors are not cherry picking studies; in fact, it appears to be quite the opposite. So much so, that the authors of Freakonomics read an early draft of Fat Politics and gave it a strong endorsement. And the point they are making is simple: Correlation is *not* causation.

Thus, by pointing the “blame” at obesity (which is a symptom) rather than at the “cause” (poor diet, lack of exercise), people don’t address the real problem. This leads to attempts to moderate weight that may result in weight loss but not increased health. More importantly, it enables our culture (and its overweight members) to participate in a culture that makes being even slightly overweight a character flaw, despite the fact that it is our very culture that contributes to the problem.

Anyways, if you’re talking balance, then I think Fat Politics and The Obesity Myth are sorely needed to provide an alternate perspective!

“Making obesity the villain” is just that author’s perception of things. If obesity correlates with bad health, and many authorities and media trumpet that, he can interpret it as making obesity the villain, but it’s just good public health strategy on the part of the trumpeters, in my opinion.

The studies that lead him to the obesity myth conclusion are cherry picked, not conclusive, and not mainstream. I assume his poster child study is the Katherine Flegal study from last spring. That was countered by other studies (the Harvard one comes to mind), and the interpretation of the Flegal study by fat activists was inaccruate and exaggerated. The CDC countered the Flegal study a month later (which of course entered the internet conspiracy theory hall of fame).

The internet has exacerbated a sort of paranoid, contrarian echo chamber where people read only certain sites and think they are getting accurate and complete information. The Terry Schiavo case is another example. The two sides in the last presedential election yet another example. People should make an effort to get information that they don’t necessarily like or agree with. That will contribute greatly to mental health, balance, and perspective.

The author says that overweight and obesity are increasing, but that this isn’t an epidemic because obesity and overweight aren’t diseases. In fact, he says you could make the “epidemic” go away by limiting the definition to those whose *weight* is pathological, which is really a much smaller percentage.

That said, the point that they are making is that it isn’t the *weight* that is the cause of the health problems. Weight is a side effect of an unhealthy *lifestyle*. In other words, it isn’t really our weight that leads to diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, but rather, our lifestyle: eating foods high in sugar and fats, getting very little exercise, and so on.

It’s because of this that you can have a healthy person who is heavy, and an unhealthy person who is thin.

So the author basically wants us to stop making overweight the villain, especially since if you look at the research, a moderate level of overweight is apparently tied into a longer life (this is echoed by The Obesity Myth as well).

This is why the cure (diets, gastric bypass, etc) may well be worse than the “disease.” There is also apparently very little (sound) research to suggest that you *improve* your health by losing weight. The author doesn’t discourage people from trying, but he does mention that there is in fact research to suggest the opposite: dieting does hurt your health.

Also, re the BMI, what’s frustrating to me about that is that it developed to be a better measure than height and weight. But it isn’t at all! It’s just a more complicated measure that’s still based on height and weight, which means that healthy people can have a high BMI (athletes) and unhealthy people (anorectics/bulemics for one) can have a low BMI.

That’s the author’s point: BMI is *no* improvement over weight as far as a measure of *health* — and thus he’d like (as would I) to see folks relying on (or developing) better measures.

Anyways, at just under 300 lbs, I’m certainly not suggesting people with weight issues stop trying to lose weight. I’m certainly trying! But I think these books are very interesting context for that struggle.

Swingin’ 60’s Challenge Day 23 Exercise minutes: 120/1160 (Week/Total) On plan days: 1/16 (Week/Total) I’m writing this after reading Beth’s commentary on Fat Politics. In the post, she mentions Deepak Chopra’s belief that in order to change the w…

Which brings me to BMI. BMI was never intended to be a perfect measure. Nobody ever seems to read the BMI page at CDC that spells out exactly what BMI is and isn’t, directly from the horse’s mouth. Fat activists set up a BMI straw man and then knock it down.

Intelligent people can argue about whether BMI 21 or 22 or 25 or 30 is ideal, and how many false positives and negatives it yields. But the thing that BMI is most valuable for is as an epidemiological measurement of obesity trends over years and decades. The average BMI is increasing at a pretty rapid rate. Is this a good thing? Is this author really claiming that we’re getting healthier as we get fatter? Or is he just saying, “Well, yeah, it’s not good, but the degree of not-goodness is being exagerated”?