Entries Tagged 'the media' ↓

Apparently, according to a survey by the Australian Heart Foundation. Kunoichi has a blog response here, and here’s my take. It was written as an email to send to friends who are not really into FA or sort of on the fence, so the framing is a little different to something I’d write to Advanced Fats.

The survey of 1200 people found one in four people who are considered obese using the body mass index (BMI) rate their health as being very good or excellent, and one in five believe their risk of getting heart disease is low to very low. The chief executive of the Heart Foundation, Lyn Roberts, said that despite years of public health messages, there was still an alarming lack of awareness about the cardiovascular risks of being overweight or obese.

Considering that the BMI is, frankly, a terrible indicator of one’s health, why is the Heart Foundation still using it? The man who invented it in the early 1800s, Belgian Adolphe Quetelet, never intended for it to be used as a measure of health, and a great many medical researchers agree that it is a poor way to measure overweight, obesity, and health risks, especially as epidemiological studies on the relationship between some health risks and BMI show only a correlation, not a causation, and that some health risks decrease with increasing BMI, such as osteoporosis and lung cancer. The same epidemiology continually shows that ‘overweight’ people have the highest life expectancy, ‘obese’ and ‘normal’ people the next best expectancy, ‘morbidly obese’ people rank third, and ‘underweight’ people, independent of illness which causes weight loss, have the worst life expectancy.

Thin people who are sedentary show just as much cardiovascular disease risk as fat people who are sedentary, and fat people who are active share the same reduced cardiac risk as slim people who are active. This was conclusively demonstrated by Drs Stephen Cooper and Glenn Gaesser in a comprehensive study, and has been shown further in yet more studies. How about we have a campaign encouraging healthy activity for all, not singling people out based on the flimsy BMI?

There is not one study that proves a causation between cardiovascular disease and larger amounts of adipose tissue on a body. There are, however, studies which show stress, stigma, discrimination, imposed low self-esteem, poor treatment by health professionals, low socio-economic status, repeated dieting and eating disorders are strongly correlated with and have some direct causation of obesity, all of which are known to contribute to poor cardiovascular health. There are well-known “obesity paradoxes” also, one of which is that obese people survive heart attacks far better than ‘normal weight’ people.

”As our waistlines expand, it appears that our perception of what is a healthy weight has also expanded, so many people who are overweight or obese do not actually see themselves in this way,” Dr Roberts said.

No, it’s that the BMI is rubbish and people know it. Have a look at Kate Harding’s BMI Project sometime and you can see photographs of what the various BMI categories actually look like. The vast majority of the ‘obese’ population are BMI 30-35, which, as photographs show, makes one look chubby at best. The headless fatties, unflatteringly photographed and used to illustrate obesity scare stories in the news, are of extremely fat people who represent about three percent of the Australian population. Surveys such as this one by the Heart Foundation also make no exception for people who are muscular and have solid frames. There’s no section after height and weight for people to write in their body composition and if they’re an athlete or not. A quick look at NRL player stats finds that Joel Clinton has a BMI of 29.1, Nathan Hindmarsh is BMI 28.3, and Wendell Sailor is obviously cause for concern at BMI 31, and most other players are Officially Overweight or Obese. One could claim that such people are not representative of everyone else with a BMI of more than 25, but I can’t seem to find any surveys of this kind which measure body composition and actual fitness levels as opposed to assuming that someone with a BMI of 31 is a couch potato. Assuming isn’t very scientific but it does get you good publicity! …And plenty of grant money, if I might be so cynical.

One in six who had a BMI of 30 or more believed their weight met health guidelines, compared to one in nine last year. The proportion of overweight people (those with a BMI between 25 and 29) who thought they were in the healthy range also increased,, from 51 to 57 per cent in 12 months.

Surely this should be taken as a measure of success, not despair. While “almost half of obese Australians had made no changes to their behaviour to reduce their risk of heart disease” this implies that the other half have, and have thus seen real measures of their health improve, such as decreased cholesterol and glucose levels, better mental health and exercise capacity. They may have lost a little weight (just 1%-5% of bodyweight lost is pushed by health authorities as improving health) but still remain in the ‘obese’ or ‘overweight’ BMI category, or remained the same weight but had body composition change to more muscle, less fat, or even not at all and just improved various actual health measures. There’s also some tricky wording here: believing one is in the official healthy weight ranges when you’re not and believing you’re healthy when you’re not are in fact different things.

The survey, which was jointly funded by the life insurance company Zurich,

Well, of course. Who better to fund a study proving fat people are walking time bombs, ignorant that they are about to die any moment now, than a company which has a vested interest in denying overweight and obese people insurance based on tenuous claims.

…found one in four obese people smoked, with most smoking daily, a proportion 70 per cent higher than people of ideal weight range.

Could it possibly be that they’re that desperate to lose weight that they’ll smoke to keep appetite down? Surveys have shown that young women would rather be blinded or lose two limbs than become fat. Hey, at least chemotherapy’s good for weight loss!

The tendency to judge ourselves against other people, rather than scientifically based weight guidelines, was ”normalising” obesity, said the Heart Foundation, which commissioned the survey.”

Oh yes, obesity is so normalised! Fat people can walk down the street and not have people sneer at them, small children point and stare, groups of teenagers snicker and throw things; fat kids can go to the beach and wear swimmers without their photographs being taken and exploited for anti-obesity articles; plus-size fashions are available at every designer boutique; Kyle Sandilands is telling Magda Szubanski to put those kilos right back on so she’ll be hot again; of course! Apparently Dr Roberts is living in a special magical fantasy world where fat people are not treated like a mysterious brown smear on the bottom of one’s shoe, and the BMI is a scientific measure. (Let’s remember high school maths: human bodies are three dimensional, and volume increases by the cube, not the square. BMI measured by the square: fail number one.)

What, exactly, is wrong with allowing fat people a little self-esteem? Psychiatrists and dieticians who work in the eating disorder wards know that good self-esteem and mental health is the foundation of good health. When Dr Roberts comes along and gets in a flap that even though you have taken to eating better and exercising you’re still a fatty and therefore all your positive health gains amount to nowt, and of course you must be completely ignorant of any of the anti-obesity messages which saturate our society, then it’s enough to make one feel like giving up. Perhaps that’s what they want. There are a lot of people whose entire careers depend on the moral panic that is obesity, and frankly it seems like some of these people get a sick little thrill about how they’re paid to bully fat people in public.

Non-Australians may or may not be familiar with the satire made by the ex-D Generation team of Rob Sitch, Santo Cilauro, etc – they’re probably best-known overseas for the films The Castle and The Dish.

In their latest TV offering, The Hollowmen, they skewer the policymakers at federal government level, those (unelected) people who work closely with the Prime Minister and Cabinet developing national policy. Their first episode, Fat Chance, picks apart the creation of obesity policy: how it’s not really about health, but pandering to populist ideas and lobby groups. It’s fairly neutral, wryly pointing out conflict between the fast food industry lobby groups and the health food groups and so on, and depicts the policy wrangling that goes on in a fairly accurate but dramatised way. (Trust me, I’ve seen it in action up close more than once.)

One character even gets a word in about how the UK’s anti-childhood-obesity policies are duds, and there’s a good deal of pointing out the hypocrisy and absurdity involved on all sides. I suspect that the Won’t-somebody-think-of-the-children people will be most outraged by their depiction in this episode. The fast food industry comes across not as inherently evil, but simply protecting their interests (to me, at least, but I may be tempered by my belief that deep-fried chicken and the like isn’t “bad” because it supposedly Makes Kids Fat, but more that intensive farming and fast-food labour hire practices, etc, are often questionable). But the really important point in this episode is that the anti-obesity lobby is also depicted not as really caring about anyone’s health, but about protecting their interests and getting their own ideologies put into public policy.

The Hollowmen gets it remarkably right with regards to how Australia federal politics works, however unlikely that anyone at the top would ever admit it. It’s not as comedic as Yes, Minister, or as dramatic as The West Wing, but very wry and dry in keeping with the production team’s previous endeavours.

You can watch this first episode of The Hollowmen on the ABC website. (Probably – I’m not sure if the ABC manages content based on your location like the BBC. If you’re in Australia you definitely can, otherwise look out for the episode on YouTube.)

It had to happen. Someone’s gone and compared old and new Nigella Lawson photos and turned it into a column about how enjoying eating might make you FAAAAAT.

Lawson’s a wee bit bigger than she was in 2000. This is apparently cause for alarm and allegedly she has engaged a personal trainer to help her lose weight. Because the only reason anyone, ever, could employ a trainer is to lose weight. She’s a busy woman and a celebrity, perhaps she’s feeling run down and thinks some exercise could help, and doesn’t want to do it in public with 325 cameras snapping her every move. Maybe she wants some specific tips on strength training. Maybe something else? Who knows – she’s a woman who’s turned down an OBE and keeps relatively to herself.

Of course, you can’t have an article about someone gaining weight without a snappy quote from a personal trainer who states that while he admires Lawson’s curves, ‘you can put on a kilo a year’ which ‘over 10 years is a lot’. 10kg. 22lbs. Yeah, that’ll turn you into one of those gross fat people for sure! It’s a LOT! Did you know it’s a ‘simple equation’ of calories in/calories out? Have you tried diet and exercise?

Come on, she’s forty eight years old. Which is not that old these days, but people are supposed to put on some weight as they get older, especially women around the age of menopause. Insurance against the conditions you can get as you age and all that. She’s 48, has two kids, and she looks about 32. (Who needs botox or collagen injections when your skin is naturally padded? And not being malnourished from dieting will also help your skin look pretty good. Hmm. Sounds like I’m afeared of wrinkles. I’m not – while I am pretty vain about my skin, I’ve got a few lines here and there and they don’t bother me. Oooh, now I sound defensive.)

The article does end on a positive note, thankfully. Dr Rick Kausman, touted as a ‘weight management expert’ (actually he’s pretty HAES-oriented and teaches intuitive eating as recovery from dieting) says that Lawson is a ‘good role model’ and that it’s ‘not wrong to enjoy food’.

I hate that this is even an issue. That we have to be told it’s OK to like eating. That even a TV chef shouldn’t enjoy eating too much lest they become socially unacceptable. That sub-par journalists get paid to write columns about how gorgeous, intelligent women are possibly actually just ‘fat frumps’ while pretty much everyone on the Fatosphere feed could write something much more interesting and free of insults about one’s body.

(Note: I’ve been off on holiday, so if you made a comment and it didn’t show up, I’m still sorting through the anti-spam-o-matic. Sorry!)

Did Weight Watchers not make their sales targets this year? Because this article in The Age, Overweight women ‘surrender to obesity’, reads like a lightly re-worded press release from an angry and frantic general manager.

Apparently, according to a poll conducted on behalf of Weight Watchers, 35% of women who describe themselves as ‘overweight’ have not tried to lose weight in the past 12 months. The audacity! The incredulousness! The very nerve of those women!

According to the WW Australia general manager, us fat ladies are ‘apathetic’ and ‘in denial’ about our weight problem. Somehow she also thinks it is political correctness gone mad that people might say ‘obese’ instead of ‘fat’. What-EVER. Seriously, does anyone actually know anyone who describes themselves as ‘obese’ because they can’t bring themselves to say ‘fat’? The fat women I’ve known who were not into size acceptance all seemed to use ‘fat’, ‘heavy’, ‘overweight’, ‘large’, and the three billion other euphemisms for fat including ‘fluffy’, which makes me gag on my baby-flavoured doughnuts.

People are ‘starting to think being overweight is normal and therefore acceptable and not something they need be concerned about’. Really? Really and for truly? This is news to every fat person in the damn country, assaulted daily with news reports on how fat will kill you and commercials from diet companies (results not typical), and comments from everyone from their doctor to strangers in the street on exactly what a fat bitch they are.

Ooh, and The Biggest Loser makes people ‘complacent’ because they’re not as fat as the fatties (hand-selected for low self-esteem) on the TV. But “Australia has to face up to the truth, we’re one of the fattest nations in the world”!!!!!!!OMG!!!!!

IN WHAT REALITY DOES THIS WOMAN LIVE? I suspect the one where Weight Watchers isn’t a diet, it’s a “lifestyle change” omg really it’s not a diet please please please buy our points plans and our crappy processed food! The kind of reality where fatties routinely sneak cough drops to sabotage their WW goals. The kind of reality where you can get in the national papers for having a product with a very, very high failure rate* and the “journalist” doesn’t question your blatantly obvious motives.

Sweet Zombie Jesus!

–

* There’s a study recently published in the British Journal of Nutrition, I believe, where researchers asked about 600 of WW’s most successful dieters – their star lifetime members – about their weight loss maintenance. At 5 years, only 16.2% of  these star dieters had maintained their goal weight. We’re talking those women who’ve made it their life’s work to stay thin. Only 50% of the other weight loss heroes (and heroes really is how they’re presented by WW) had managed to maintain a 5% weight loss. Also, these “successful” dieters were not the formerly very fat people often featured in the before-and-afters, the mean BMI was 27.5, with a +/- of 3.2, IIRC. (I can’t access the actual article from here, sorry.) So, while officially “overweight” to “mildly obese”, these people were what most people outside Hollywood/fashion would deem “normal” to “a bit chubby”, as illustrated by the Shapely Prose BMI Project. I think it’s Weight Watchers that’s in serious denial, myself.

The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, from Fairfax media, are supposed to be two of the most reputable and well-respected newspapers in Australia. They can have a bit of a privileged-lefty bent, but it’s generally accepted as a good paper.

The addition of blogs to their websites a couple of years ago was in some cases good – I liked reading the photojournalists’ blog, for example, but in other cases really sent the tone downhill, particularly the two blogs that seem to mostly be “OMG!!!! Men and women are like, so totally different!!!!11!!” (if you read smh.com.au or theage.com.au you know which ones I mean). And recently one of those put up a post that was about as vomit-inducingly fatphobic as you could expect. It linked to Big Fat Blog, and The F Word’s post on the new Pixar film (a link which sent her some rooly smrt trolls), snarked at the idea of fat acceptance and essentially wished fat people dead of their own ill-health. You could almost smell the fear coming out of the screen.

The post is at http://blogs.smh.com.au/lifestyle/allmenareliars/archives/2007/11/fatist_tendencies.html – I’m not going to link directly, cut and paste if you want to see.

Especially if you’re in Australia, I encourage you to contact Fairfax at readerlink@smh.com.au or feedback@theage.com.au and voice your concern and displeasure. Their blog use policy is at http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2006/07/26/1153816236184.html?page=fullpage.

I have sent off my complaint, pointing out (as The-F-Word also said) that even if you think being fat is a choice, many other things such as religion are choices yet not held up for vilification. And also pointed out that fat-hate fuels disordered eating and poor mental health among slim people too. It’s not just “for a laugh”, as the shitstain who wrote that post would likely say, it’s serious vilification.

The more people who say something, who speak up, the more effect we can have.

(Sorry.)

So, if having fat friends supposedly makes you fat, and thin friends makes you thin, and fat people are directed to make thin friends so they can catch Teh Thin and thin people are to avoid having fat friends so they won’t catch Teh Fat … how exactly is that supposed to work again?

Fatty Boombah: Hi, Slim Jim! Can I be your friend so I will become socially acceptable?
Slim Jim: No way! Oh my god, get away from me! The adiposity, the adiposity!
La di Da: My head a splode.

A recent article in the Sydney Morning Herald tells us what we already know – obesity hysteria fuels eating disorders. Dr Jenny O’Dea, another of the (sadly small) handful of nutrition/health/obesity/etc experts who aren’t all OMG TEH FAT = EVIL!!!, points out that the moral panic over fat kids is helping create increased levels of disordered eating behaviours. Sandy Szwarc has written a response to the article, but there’s something else I want to address:

The executive officer of the Australasian Society for the Study of Obesity, Tim Gill, agreed there had been “some degree” of panic but said campaigns had been very sensitive.

Dr Gill said there had not been any emphasis on weight loss, but on such things as increased physical activity.

“There is a difference between clinical eating disorders and self-reported [eating-disordered] behaviour,” he said. The level of clinical eating disorders among girls was “very, very low and has been for some time”.

“The problem of obesity is of equal if not of greater concern … so it would be wrong to stop focusing on obesity for fear that it might increase eating disorders,” Dr Gill said.

Riiiiiight.

Harriet Brown has blogged about the problems with having eating disorders (EDs) diagnosed at a clinical level – for example, girls not being diagnosed with (and getting treatment for) anorexia nervosa because her body still menstruates despite the starvation.

Other problems of course include: many of these behaviours are given either blatant or tacit approval, especially if the young person in question is considered ‘overweight’; they could well be hiding the behaviour from parents and teachers; their parents may not recognise the behaviours and symptoms or know how to help. So, these kids are not being counted in the ‘official’ ED statistics and the likes of Dr Gill can dismiss the problem. “It would be wrong to stop focusing on obesity for fear it might increase eating disorders,” he says.

Wrong? Wrong to stop focusing on a goddamed BMI category that doesn’t actually have the alarmingly inflated health risks that the campaigns are based upon? Wrong to stop focusing on weight, a number on a scale, an aesthetic, even though kids in frikkin’ kindergarten are worried about their weight? So, it’s ok that more people will suffer and die from eating disorders (whether they have an official diagnosis or not) because we have to ‘fight’ the fat? Well, it bloody well is NOT. It is not acceptable to have these ‘casualties from the fat wars’.

Now, Dr Gill also says

“[But] there has been some moralising … even the Prime Minister and the Minister for Health have both moralised this issue, saying it’s a lack of self-control and a lack of will.”

Which is true, but what’s missing is that he’s not really making the connections between fat as an artificially-created health issue and the stigma fat people face – and the fear many people have of becoming ‘like them’. Also, I’ve heard too many ‘obesity experts’ claim they really do understand fat people, they know being fat isn’t the fault of gluttony and sloth – only to have it revealed that they need this position so they can peddle diet pharmaceuticals and bariatric surgery.

Then there’s the statement on anti-obesity campaigns from the Australian Government, that there hasn’t been “any emphasis on weight loss, but on such things as increased physical activity” – well, sure, but you don’t need to say it when your audience will fill in the blanks for you. The implication from “eat healthy and exercise more” is that this should result in weight loss, or “maintaining a healthy weight”, as this is what we’ve been told for decades. The follow-on from this is that if you don’t lose weight even if you’re eating well and getting regular exercise, you’re failing at being “healthy”. If the campaigns were truly about health, they’d admit that you can get health benefits from a balanced diet and exercise no matter if you lose or gain weight or stay the same. They’d admit that being fat is not actually a death sentence. The media sure ain’t helping – all those “reality” shows about weight loss, the “lifestyle” shows, the heath shows, they just reinforce the message. How about a Government health campaign that tells people to stop hating on the fat because that’s what’s really unhealthy? Didn’t think so.

The Rotund has pointed out this great post from Rio Iriri about thin privilege.

If you’ve built upon the privilege that comes with being thin, and someone suggests that it’s equally as valid to be fat, you stand to lose the things you’ve gained from that thinness.

Also, if you are a thin person who has built status by treating fat people like they are lesser beings, you’re going to have a great deal to answer for when they become recognized as equals.

Likewise, if you’ve built your career or profession or business upon the back of fat shame and fear and hatred, no matter how much you think or say you’re actually doing it for fat people’s “health”, it’s likely that you’re not going to be terribly happy with the possibility that fat people don’t actually need your diet plans or your surgery, pills, fat-free yoghurt, or your advice. Not only do you have an emotional investment to lose, but a professional and financial one. Thin privilege-fat hatred as commodity! Hooray!

Commenter Jackie pointed out to me this recent news item on how “fat kids face widespread stigma“. It’s yet another one to add to the “No kidding!” files.

It’s full of what we already know but now it’s out in a paper that reviews all the literature on fat bias over the past 40 years, published in Psychological Bulletin. The full article isn’t general access, but the abstract states:

The authors then review stigma-reduction efforts that have been tested to improve attitudes toward obese children, and they highlight complex questions about the role of weight bias in childhood obesity prevention.

With these literatures assembled, areas of research are outlined to guide efforts on weight stigma in youths, with an emphasis on the importance of studying the effect of weight stigma on physical health outcomes …

Now that last part’s very interesting indeed and I’ll have to try to get a hold of the full article to read about it. Weight stigma and bias can kill, as Kate Harding’s guest blogger Thorn tells in Fat hatred kills – about how her mother died as a result of the negative attitudes of doctors.

And if this is what happens with adults, the effect on children is very alarming indeed – they are dependent on the adults around them for their health care, and I don’t know that there are many children who can be truly assertive in demanding proper care. Unless their parents follow the ideals of size/fat acceptance and ‘health at every size’, they’re unlikely to be able to show their doctor an introductory letter stating how their weight is just fine thanks and be able to leave if the doctor starts in on the nearly inevitable weight loss lecture.

The child’s dependence on adults for care is made more dysfunctional when, as the the study authors say, one of the biggest sources of weight stigma comes from parents. This from the parents has been around since well before the Childhood Obesity Crisis! bandwagon rolled around, but Jackie made a good point in her comment – it’s unsurprising that parents will engage in ultimately destructive practices to do anything to make their child “normal” weight when we hear stories of child protection agencies removing children from their parents because they’re “too fat”. No parent wants that, and they may ‘do what it takes’ out of sheer desperation and fear.

And look what’s just come up on the BBC site via Google News: Obese girl taken into care because of her weight. She’s apparently eight, and 5’1″ (about 156cm) and a size 16 (US size 14). That she is EIGHT and already 5’1″ should be a big fucking clue that she could well have some hormonal issues, or possibly be naturally quite big.

And people wonder why I’m perpetually cranky.

Whew, work’s finally slowed down enough for me to do something else! (And a big PHHHTHTHTHHTHBBT! to those people and diet books foisted upon me as a young ‘un that said fat people never ever get good jobs so lose weight now, fatty.)

Right. There’s an as-ever fantabulous post over at Shapely Prose on some of the more recent WTF? moments from the media on fat and diets.  The willingness of supposedly fully-grown, educated adults to engage in magical thinking and related ways never ceases to amaze.

Here’s another scientifical snacky-cake:

Heavy moms who shed pounds still have big babies.

“However, overweight women who lost weight before their second pregnancy did not eliminate their increased odds of having an oversized newborn. This, the study authors speculate, could mean that a woman’s excess pounds have a lasting effect on subsequent pregnancies, even after she’s slimmed down.”

Gee … do you think it could have anything to do with body size having a genetic component? If you’re naturally a large woman and you manage to lose some weight for a while, it doesn’t actually change your genes and therefore your chances of having a big or small baby. Unless you have doctors who live in magical fairy land, or something. I especially like that last bit. Your excess pounds could haunt you even after you’ve become slim! Zombie fat: you can never be rid of it even if you cut its head off.

As a side note, if you’re fat and pregnant or thinking about it, head on over to the wonderful Plus-size Pregnancy Website. Hell, even if you’re not planning on any kids, it’s a very informative read anyway, and has information useful for all fat people, such as how to get an accurate blood pressure reading. (It’s more than just cuff size.)

And as a special bonus, now not only do we have cats and dogs and horses and birds getting in on the obesity crisis action,  now it’s the turn of inanimate objects. Yes, the vehicle world is suffering from fat cars! Read all about it: Carmakers face obesity challenge. At first I thought it might be about car makers actually thinking about installing seat belts rated to more than 200lbs, but no. “Market forces have sparked an obesity epidemic in the car industry.”

As I’m not a fat man, I can’t authoritatively comment on what it means to be a fat man, and I’m not going to make any proclamations here, just musings. (I wish there were more male fat acceptance bloggers. Where are you?)

It seems like a man can be up to a certain size but then after that he becomes Other – possibly tempered by how much of the approved masculine behaviours in which he engages. Bigger guys can be the star of a TV sitcom with a socially-approved pretty, thin wife who graciously puts up with their bumbling. King of Queens, According to Jim, etc, and animatedly, Family Guy and The Simpsons. For example. They may not be presented as heart-throbs but they’re still allowed to have a life and family and it’s not questioned, even despite the fat jokes made at their expense. Then you get guys like the character Hurley from Lost, who’s too big for that and is the “safe” guy that you can trust isn’t going to steal your island girlfriend because sexy girls don’t want big fat guys except as a friend, right? He loves fried chicken more than chasing women. He goes in the category with the women and the queers. Other. (tick box) Perhaps that veneer of acceptance is what keeps a lot of fat men from getting weight loss surgery.

It’s still very tiresome, that’s for sure. And angry-making. I want to see interesting, boring, clever, mean, smart, silly, average, freaky, tall, short, fat, thin people in TV and in movies and ads and magazines. That people only want to see “aspirational” figures (i.e. skinny white buff young people) is a lie promoted by marketing’s evil side. It’s lazy.

…And I’m tired and starting to go off on a tangent. All rants become one!