There was a great pointer on Big Fat Blog to a UCLA report that concludes that “the so-called obesity epidemic is at best a metaphor and not a very effective one at that.” (I’ve talked about why I agree with this perspective a while back, so I won’t go into it here.)

The full report was published in the Oct 2005 issue of the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, which is a special issue on the politics of obesity. In a curious bit of serendipity, the research library where I work gets this journal, so I borrowed this issue and am working through it. So far I’ve read the editor’s note and Kelly Brownell’s commentary on the four main articles.

Since the Brownell piece isn’t online, I’ll post just a brief snippet that speaks to the issue of environment, which is something that I keep coming back to here. He writes:

A long chain of causal factors terminates at what [the authors] call private behaviors, what people eat and whether they exercise. Body weight is governed by these two behaviors–no mystery there, but directing focus to the terminal behavior diverts attention from a more important question: why are people eating too much and being sedentary?

…

Average weight in the U.S. population has increased year after year, a phenomenon now seen in many other countries. This cannot be ascribed to biology and if personal responsibility is eroding, the question is why.

It’s really interesting stuff. It’s making me get all itchy about going back to school to study this more formally!