The New York Times Sunday Magazine discovered fat acceptance. There’s a good summary of fat acceptance, down to noting that the word “fat” is used deliberately, same as “queer”. There’s discussion of Linda Bacon’s Health At Every Size study & book.
One quote I liked:
Asking how someone got to be so fat is as meaningless as asking how he got to be so tall. “The severely obese have some underlying genetic or metabolic difference we’re not smart enough to identify yet,” says Dr. Rudolph Leibel of Columbia University Medical Center. “It’s the same way that a 7-foot-tall basketball player is genetically different from me, at 5-foot-8.”
Does this mean nutrition is meaningless? Hell no. There’s a reason developed countries have higher average heights than undeveloped countries. But we don’t expect that trying really really hard will make someone taller or shorter, or that people who are taller/shorter are mentally ill, or that people who are taller/shorter are the height they are because they’re slothful gluttons.
Interesting that we chose the same comment to blog about…this one really bothered me b/c like you said, its just not true: http://www.beyondprenatals.com/2008/10/making-your-baby-healthy-months-before.html
Debra,
You may find Linda Bacon’s book Health At Every Size interesting – she discusses how changes in the overall North American diet have affected average weights (by about 10lbs).
I do try to make it clear that most overweight or “obese” people are NOT that fat – supersize* folks like myself, who are so eyecatching in news photos, are very much in the minority.
*Supersize is a common descriptor for “women larger than size 24” – “plus” sizes are usually women’s 14-24, “supersize” are 26/28 on up.
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