Paul Campos Blows the Whistle on AmericaÂ’s Unhealthy Obsession with Weight in a New Book - "The Obesity Myth"
Is your weight hazardous to your health? According to America’s public health authorities there’s an 80% chance that it is. From the Surgeon General’s office to the Centers for Disease Control, the National Institutes of Health, and our leading medical schools, America’s anti-fat warriors bombard us with dire warnings. According to such sources no less than four out of every five Americans maintain a medically dangerous body mass – nearly two-thirds of us are said to be overweight, while almost half the rest of us are categorized as too thin. Tune in to the "Size Matters, Too" On-line Radio Show with the Velvet Voice of Size Diversity, Veronica Cook-Euell (www. sizematterstoo. com) as she interviews Paul Campos and discovers "The Obesity Myth" (the week of March 6 and March 13, 2005). It's Free! The Euell Consulting Group LLC provides programing, workshops and training for your company or organization focusing on Size Diversity and Related Issues.
(PRWEB) March 3, 2005
In his new book, The Obesity Myth, Paul Campos addresses "Why America’s Obsession With Weight is Hazardous to Your Health," and asks "Is your weight hazardous to your health?" According to America’s public health authorities there’s an 80% chance that it is. From the Surgeon General’s office to the Centers for Disease Control, the National Institutes of Health, and our leading medical schools, America’s anti-fat warriors bombard us with dire warnings. According to such sources no less than four out of every five Americans maintain a medically dangerous body mass – nearly two-thirds of us are said to be overweight, while almost half the rest of us are categorized as too thin. Now a new book shows that medical studies have proven that dieting is actually among one of the worst things a person could do to their health. In fact, several decades’ worth of grim prophecies regarding the devastating health consequences of higher than average weight have turned out to be spectacularly inaccurate. These shocking and potentially explosive findings are just a few that will be found in The Obesity Myth: Why America’s Obsession with Weight is Hazardous to Your Health by Paul Campos (Gotham Books; May 3, 2004).
A professor of law at the University of Colorado, Paul Campos is a nationally recognized expert on the legal, medical, and political aspects of America’s war on fat. Campos’s work is grounded in years of extensive research as well as hundreds of interviews with leading doctors, scientists, eating disorder specialists, and psychologists, as well as ordinary people who have battled with their weight. Through his exploration of the science, culture, and politics behind America’s weight neurosis, Campos proves that claims about the supposedly devastating medical and economic consequences of “excess” weight are not scientific fact, but rather a product of greed, junk science supported by the weight loss industry, and, in some cases, outright bigotry. Sure to be controversial, The Obesity Myth will blow the whistle on this witch-hunt masquerading as a public health initiative that has been encouraging Americans to hate our bodies if they fail to conform to an arbitrary and unrealistic ideal.
Both alarming and highly thought-provoking, The Obesity Myth shows that: According to numerous recent studies from the authoritative Cooper Institute that were published in prestigious medical journals, a moderately active fat person is likely to be far healthier – and to live longer – than someone who is thin but inactive.
There is no good evidence that significant long-term weight loss is beneficial to health, and a great deal of evidence that short-term weight loss followed by weight regain is medically harmful.
Approximately 70 million adults are dieting to lose weight, and another 45 million are dieting to maintain their current weight. These percentages triple over the course of the last generation. Yet, Americans actually weigh on average 15 pounds more than they did 20 years ago.
“Fat” and “overweight” are cultural constructs, not scientific fact. According to the public health establishment’s current BMI definitions, Brad Pitt, Michael Jordan, and Mel Gibson are “overweight;” Russell Crowe, George Clooney, Tom Cruise and Sammy Sosa are all “obese.”
Several studies have suggested that African American and Hispanic girls tend to have much more positive body images than white girls. For example, one University of Arizona study found that, while only 10% of the white teenage girls surveyed were happy with their bodies, 70% of the black teenage girls were happy with theirs (the black girls weighed more, on average, than the white girls). Is it a coincidence that black women are both far less obsessed with weight than white women, and seem to suffer no significant ill health effects from even extreme levels of fatness? Researchers have been unable to find a relationship between increased mortality and body mass even among African American women who are classified as “morbidly obese.”
Despite a $50 million weight loss industry, we still have no idea how to make fat people thin. Instead with the entrepreneurs who hawk health club memberships, workout equipment, Botox, Viagra, and dozens of similar drugs as well as a seemingly unlimited parade of diets which all promise the illusion of perpetual youth in the guise of slenderness, we have come to ensure that relatively few people will ever be at peace with their bodies.
Medical studies of obesity often come to irrational conclusions that contract their own data. This is due to the fact that, as a practical matter, most obesity research must be funded either by the weight loss industry, or by government grants. Yet, grant money is scarce, and the process for securing it extremely competitive, thus leading to exaggerated claims by researchers in hopes of procuring the needed money.
According to University of Virginia professor Glenn Gaesser, “as of 2002 there has not been a single study that has truly evaluated the effects of weight alone on health, which means that ‘thinner is healthier’ is not a fact, but an unsubstantiated hypothesis for which there is a wealth of evidence that suggests the reverse.”
A recent report from the Seven Countries Study, which tracked thousands of men from seven different nations, found that thin men (those with a Body Mass Index or BMI of less than 18.5) had roughly twice the mortality rate of either normal weight or “overweight” men. Being “overweight” (BMI 25 to 29.9) had no impact on mortality.
Being just a few pounds over the government’s scientifically baseless definition of what constitutes an “ideal weight” can often cost a professional woman thousands of dollars per year in salary.
“Overweight” and “obesity” are not primarily medical issues, but rather issues ingrained in the culture and politics of our society. Today thinness has been associated with virtue; fat is linked with vice, and this ideology drives both the science and culture of national obsession with weight and weight control.
While women bear the brunt of the emotional, financial, and physiological toll exacted by societyÂ’s message to hate our bodies for not conforming to thinness, our cultural obsession regarding this subject is becoming so intense that men are increasingly beginning to show signs of the damage that is done to people when they are constantly told that something is fundamentally wrong with their bodies.
The Obesity Myth does not argue that there is no relationship between weight and health. Rather, it argues that the health risks associated with higher than average weight have been greatly exaggerated, while all sorts of related but far graver risks to health have been ignored. In particular, Campos emphasizes that poverty, poor nutrition, and a culture that makes it easy for Americans to be sedentary are important public health issues in America. Campos contends that we should be encouraging Americans to be physically active, to eat well, and to provide reasonable access to medical care for those who lack it. What we should not be doing is telling Americans that they will improve their health by losing weight, given that, as Campos demonstrates, there really is no evidence for this belief. Paul Campos shows in The Obesity Myth, “the war on fat is an outrage to values – of equality, of tolerance, of fairness, and indeed of fundamental decency toward those who are different. And in the end, nothing could be easier than to win this war: All we need to do is stop fighting it.”
Tune in to the "Size Matters, Too" On-Line Radio Show www. sizematterstoo. com beginning the week of March 6, 2005 for this thought provoking discussion with your host, the Velvet Voice, Veronica Cook-Euell. Also, during the week of March 13, 2005, Campos returns to the Size Matters Show to discuss the impact of the Obesity Myth across Cultures.
# # #
