The only scale my daughter will ever be subjected to...
Anti-Obesity. The phrase is so common in my circles I barely even see it any more. And yet, when I get blogged without my permission by an anti-obesity website, I am forced to pay attention. I cringe to have my work or words characterized under a paradigm that I believe has done as much to harm to a generation of American eaters as food marketers and food deserts combined. We are not just preyed upon by junk food advertisers and fast food peddlers, we are also plagued by a national eating disorder of epic proportions predicated on the faulty belief that no one can be fat and healthy, and that fat kids in particular are suffering an “epidemic” while thin kids are just fine — regardless of their food choices.
Recently, nutrition researcher Linda Bacon was accused of being “in denial” on a major food-focused listserv for proposing the radical notion that both thin AND fat kids are harmed by a diet of nutritionally devoid, industrial food. Well, wipe my jaw off the floor. Are we so stuck in this rhetoric that we can’t see how manipulated we are by the food and diet industries? As long as we keep raising our kids with a need to ‘diet’ to be ‘perfect’ the food & diet industry will have a firm foothold in this country. Our yo-yo diets (and soon, our children’s) translate to a better first quarter. Jenny Craig is owned by Nestle, and Weight Watchers is owned by the same multinational conglomerate that owns Keebler Foods. So who is really in denial here?
Acknowledging the emotional harm caused to real people by our words and beliefs is not denial. Acknowledging that the focus on fatness does NOT help anyone get healthier – and that this has been quantified over and over again – is not denial.
To understand, you have to unveil the history behind the use of fatness as a measure of health: BMI was developed as an epidemiological tool. It was not intended to measure individual health. Human adiposity exists on a bell curve – the thinnest folks being on the far left, the very fat folks on the far right and the majority in the ‘bell’ in-between. There will ALWAYS be people ‘at the tails’ that are ultra-thin or ultra-fat but naturally so. Yes, that bell curve is skewed to the right by our industrial food system — but the THIN people that eat industrial food, those on the left of the curve, they are also suffering ill health effects. The skinny kid that lives on cheetos and soda is going to be just as screwed as an adult as the fat kid who does (and even more screwed than the fat kid who eats well). We’re just not focused on him because we can’t SEE the harm being done.
In the meantime, all the screeching about obese kids is doing more harm than good. Fat kids that are made to feel subhuman because of what the scale says don’t get thinner, they get messed up in the head. They’re not reading about obesity prevention in the medical journals, they’re getting stuffed in dumpsters by their peers for being “made wrong”. And well-meaning adults reinforce that message on a daily basis. Fat kids spiral – many of them perfectly healthy to begin with (those naturally on the right end of the curve) – into social isolation, eating disorders, and a cycle of failed diets that sets them up for a LIFETIME of struggle.
We need to re-create the way we talk about sustainable food. Farms and gardens have an ability to reach ALL kids, regardless of size – and create life-long emotional bonds with healthy food straight from the plant. It’s these bonds that create health later in life, not messages of fear, hate, and doom and gloom.
We have a unique opportunity in this field to break the cycle of our nation’s collective eating disorder. I hope we actually come down from our anti-obesity rhetoric long enough to take that opportunity.
Say it with me:
Jenny Craig can kiss my asparagus.
Brilliant, Liz! I, too, am tired of hearing about the “obesity crisis” without the corresponding context of what we, as a nation, are feeding our kids. It kills me when parents hide in denial behind their thin kids, instead of realizing that weight is just one indication of health. I’ve been percolating an idea for Spoonfed on this subject, and you’ve inspired me to get moving. In the meantime, going to post this on Facebook. Go, you!
Hooray! I’m so glad that someone other than those who can be considered “fat” is considering this. Obesity is not an enemy. In fact obesity is often little more than an arbitrary standard based on bmi. People can be fat and healthy just as people can be thin and unhealthy. Neither is a guarantee and it does us as a society a disservice when we fail to acknowledge this. Thank you!
Hear, hear!
Let’s encourage people to embrace “health at any size.”
I see too many slender kids eat candy, bread, soda, and chips all day and think they’re somehow healthier than (and morally superior to) kids of varying sizes who eat well and are physically active.
Go Liz,
Pam
I love the way you worded that “health at any size”
Amen! So glad to have found your site!
Thank you for pointing out that Jenny Craig & Weight Watchers are owned by companies that make the unhealthy foods that tend to cause weight gain. It’s analogous to a drug dealer also running a rehab center. Follow the $$$ & you’ll see who’s really benefiting from all of the anti-obesity hype. It’s definitely not the fat people or their health.
That’s a great analogy! It drives me crazy that people talk about “the food industry” and “the diet industry” as if they were separate entities. Americans spend between $40 and 100 BILLION dollars a year on diets and diet products. Can you imagine what we could accomplish with those fund if we could just break the cycle?
Thanks tons, Liz! It does me good as a CSA-loving fat person and as a longtime fat rights activist, to see your good consciousness! Food justice and fat justice go great together.
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I absolutely love this. Thank you. I posted a blog addressed to the First Lady regarding her Let’s Move campaign that touches on this issue. I love to see so many people talking about this now.
http://www.allisonmdickson.com/2011/03/dear-mrs-obama.html
Hi Liz, This is so amazing, I can not thank you enough. I have a friend doing a horticulture therapy program in Rhode Island and she has to battle this issue on a daily basis. It’s a double bind for her because one of the only reasons the program continues to get funded at her residential school for “troubled teens” is because the administration says it is justified as a method to fight childhood obesity. When she lists all of her other treatment goals and objectives for the program, she receives a pat on the back, patronizing nod, and a, “That’s nice.” This article and the comment you make on the childhood obesity blog link you provided, will help her and others enormously. I put the link to your article on my website under current events, is that ok? If it isn’t I’ll remove it immediately! Warmly, Deah
Hi Deah — I feel your friends’ pain. Whenever I’ve been responsible for fundraising for a farm or garden-based learning program, I have been forced to write grants all about our efforts to ‘end childhood obesity’ in order to get funded. The times I tried to explain to them *why* that wasn’t our agenda, we didn’t get funded. Often when I’ve tried to explain my stance to colleagues in the same field, I get met by a roomful of blank stares.
I’m fine with being on your blog – thank you for asking!
My best,
Liz
It’s nice to see someone who gets that an intelligent, balanced and holistic approach to food cannot be inhumane.
What everyone above said. The real enemies to health are the corporations and their puppets in MSM!
BRAVO! I’ve been tooting this horn for many many years! Obesity is the tip of the iceberg. Easy to see, but what is going on beneath the surface- other factors in declining children’s health- will not be addressed with calorie counting.
http://www.betterschoolfood.com/tip-iceberg/
I came upon this post from Leftovers to Go. I’m crying right now, because your paragraph about screeching about fat kids doing more harm than good? Totally sums up my life experience. The more I get into FA and HAES, the ANGRIER I get. If I had a time machine so I could go back to that first pediatrician who told my mother I was overweight (seriously, she had to be told, because I didn’t look much different than the other kids my age) and told her to put me on a diet, and I could read him this blog post out loud (before telling him to just friggin SUCK IT!!) I would be soooooo there!
If my “weight loss” journey had not begun at age FOUR, had I not grown up believing I was somehow defective, had I not been teased mercilessly by my peers (and skinny-as-twig brothers, who ate more than I did because they weren’t on diets, and got the same level of activity I did) growing up, had I not spent my whole damn LIFE chasing an unobtainable ideal *for MY body*, would I have ever reached 415 lbs? Would I have had diabetes, high blood pressure, and kidney disease at this age from NOT weight cycling for 33 of my 37 years in this body????
Thank you for this post. From the bottom of my heart.
Thank you so much for this article. I am a 60 year old woman who has been bullied all her life by the “yogier-than-thou” thin people – some of them dietitians! I was a fat baby, a fat toddler, a regular sized teen and twenty something. In my 30′s after a hysterectomy, I started to gain weight again. Eventually, I got to a size 4X. I worked as a secretary in a nutrition service department and boy did I get analyzed and “couselled” whether I wanted advice or not. I really wasn’t eating much different than others I worked with. I carried the stigma of obesity wherever I went. People told me I didn’t deserve to be loved or to hope for a relationship because I was fat. The men I was interested in were insulted if I indicated I liked them – and stopped being friends. Just last year, it was discovered that my thyroid was practically shut down. And I am diabetic. As the thyroid meds have kicked in, my weight has fallen off and now I’m a size X-1X. I’m still not skinny enough to be accepted by general society and certainly not by men. It is my belief that hating fat people is the last socially approved discrimination. Fat Bashing is socially accepted. All this has made me be a hopelss recluse. I wonder how many women take their lives because of the social shunning that is considered justified by “health professionals.” Personally, I wish I had never been born.
“BMI was developed as an epidemiological tool.”
This is a hugely important point. In my past life as a Sociology student it was constantly beaten into our impressionable heads that statistics are averages and generalizations, and that they can’t be applied to individuals. That variation WITHIN a group was always greater than variation BETWEEN groups. It’s a fairly simple concept, but I don’t find it’s nearly well enough understood, even IN the social sciences.
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