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.
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