We normalized and encouraged obesity to the point where even the acknowledgement of one's state of obesity can be labeled as inappropriate speech. There's a growing sentiment that the term 'obese' is a slur [1] and should be removed from our lexicon.
Imagine if the same thing happened in the 60s as we started to understand the risks of smoking - all the smokers got together and decided that the science was hateful and they were being discriminated against. To rephrase a line from the article, using that silly hypothetical:
"In the end, says Flegal, defining smoking by number of cigarettes/day promotes anti-nicotine attitudes and tobacco stigma."
One can't navigate conversations about obesity without topics like "attitudes" and "stigma" being part of the conversation, but I don't think the hard biology of the results of excess fat tissue really cares.
I'm aware this is a bit of a goofy tangent, but hopefully it highlights the silliness of the current obesity discourse.
Imagine if the same thing happened in the 60s as we started to understand the risks of smoking - all the smokers got together and decided that the science was hateful and they were being discriminated against. To rephrase a line from the article, using that silly hypothetical:
"In the end, says Flegal, defining smoking by number of cigarettes/day promotes anti-nicotine attitudes and tobacco stigma."
One can't navigate conversations about obesity without topics like "attitudes" and "stigma" being part of the conversation, but I don't think the hard biology of the results of excess fat tissue really cares.
I'm aware this is a bit of a goofy tangent, but hopefully it highlights the silliness of the current obesity discourse.
[1] https://conscienhealth.org/2022/04/obesity-how-does-a-diagno...