Keep Yer Flab On
By Lakshmi Chaudhry, AlterNet. Posted July 15, 2004.
We're at war and the enemy is obesity – or so warn the doctors. U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona has declared obesity "the terror within because it is every bit as devastating as terrorism." It allegedly affects nine million children and two out of three adults, and claims the lives of 400,000 Americans every year.
It takes a brave man to speak out in favor of flab today – and that man is Paul Campos.
The Obesity Wars are nothing but a big lie about fat, says the author of a provocative new book titled "The Obesity Myth: Why America's Obsession With Health is Hazardous to Your Health." Campos argues that Americans are in fact only a mere 15 pounds heavier than we were 20 years ago. What have become more stringent in that duration are public health standards for ideal weight, which now define the vast majority of us as "overweight" or "obese" – and that includes Hollywood icons like Brad Pitt and George Clooney.
What's more, according to Campos, there is no documented relationship between weight loss and health. He claims that medical studies that link obesity to wide range of diseases, including heart disease and cancer, are misleading and often self-serving. The result is a cultural hysteria that uses a dangerous and pervasive myth to demonize all – especially poor people of color – who do not fit the shrinking standards of the ideal body weight.
Campos talked to AlterNet from his office at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
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By Lakshmi Chaudhry, AlterNet. Posted July 15, 2004.
We're at war and the enemy is obesity – or so warn the doctors. U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona has declared obesity "the terror within because it is every bit as devastating as terrorism." It allegedly affects nine million children and two out of three adults, and claims the lives of 400,000 Americans every year.
It takes a brave man to speak out in favor of flab today – and that man is Paul Campos.
The Obesity Wars are nothing but a big lie about fat, says the author of a provocative new book titled "The Obesity Myth: Why America's Obsession With Health is Hazardous to Your Health." Campos argues that Americans are in fact only a mere 15 pounds heavier than we were 20 years ago. What have become more stringent in that duration are public health standards for ideal weight, which now define the vast majority of us as "overweight" or "obese" – and that includes Hollywood icons like Brad Pitt and George Clooney.
What's more, according to Campos, there is no documented relationship between weight loss and health. He claims that medical studies that link obesity to wide range of diseases, including heart disease and cancer, are misleading and often self-serving. The result is a cultural hysteria that uses a dangerous and pervasive myth to demonize all – especially poor people of color – who do not fit the shrinking standards of the ideal body weight.
Campos talked to AlterNet from his office at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
-snip-
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