Woke Police Defend the Weight Challenged! By John Steele
I am in my late 70s, but train everyday out here in the scrub where I live with my tent and Cold Steel Wild West Bowie knife, eating mainly bush foods. I learnt from a full-blood Aboriginal, “Owen” back in the early 1960s, and the lessons stayed with me. I have never smoked or drunk alcohol, which I regard as racial poisons, toxins which my friend “Owen,” now an old man, says are part of a deliberate genocide of his people, something that the present woke Labor government will not touch with a ten foot woke pole, and I trust his judgement here. Anyway, that is a topic for another day.
Inner city elites generally do not get adequate physical exercise, but eat high fat, high carbohydrate processed food, with minimal fruit and vegetables. They like their chardonnay, and during the day, coffee loaded with sugar. Also, sugar coated grains. No wonder they get fat, and we should use that word with no regret, not to name or shame any individual struggling with weight issues (they need all the support they can get), but to treat obesity as the health risk that it is. We do not help people by lying to them. Fat is really not fab, but dangerous.
Yet, the politically correct seek to hide the health issues associated with excessive weight, wanting to ban use of the terms and instead substitute descriptions like, “large person.” Well, one can be muscular and large, as I still am. No, it will not do, and it is not helping when people who are lulled into complacency end up with heart attacks and strokes. Hard love is needed instead, and the epidemic of obesity should not be defined away. After all, more people die basically from diseases caused by refined food (sugar), than Covid.
https://nypost.com/2022/05/18/university-of-illinois-chicago-wants-to-cancel-racist-word-obesity/
“The woke police are coming for the term “obesity.”
The University of Illinois Chicago’s school of public health published an article by a dietitian claiming the medical term is “racist” and should be replaced with the wordy term “people with larger bodies.”
Author Amanda Montgomery, RN, argued that race scientists used “fatness and differing body characteristics” to classify black people as “less civilized” and “as a way to justify slavery, racism and classism, and control women,” according to her health brief, entitled “Addressing weight stigma and fatphobia in public health.”
Montgomery also contends that losing weight “has detrimental effects on our physiology” and many people can’t become thinner because of “uncontrollable genetic or environmental factors.”
Obesity is defined by the World Health Organization as having a body mass index over 30. The organization says the condition is “preventable” by eating healthy food and engaging in regular exercise.
A person’s BMI is calculated by dividing their body weight in kilograms by their height in meters squared. The medical community considers a “healthy” BMI to be between 20 and 25.
Montgomery argues that the BMI is a flawed measurement that is “not representative of the entire human population,” because it does not consider health behaviors or body composition.
More than two out of five Americans — including half of the black population — are obese, which leads to an increased risk of heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, certain types of cancer and early death, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The US is now considered the most obese country in the western world.
In 1960, only 13 percent of the country’s population was classified as obese, statistics show.
Experts blame the massive increase on a societal trend toward processed foods, larger meal servings and sedentary lifestyles.”
“By Amanda Montgomery, RD, LDN | Collaboratory for Health Justice
Public Health’s focus on “obesity” prevention has increased exponentially within the last few decades, and with it an increase in weight stigma and negative attitudes towards people in larger bodies. In the past decade, weight discrimination has increased by 66 percent, and is one of the only forms of discrimination actively condoned by society (1,2). Decades of research have shown that experiencing weight stigma increases one’s risk for diabetes, heart disease, discrimination, bullying, eating disorders, sedentariness, lifelong discomfort in one’s body and even early death 2,3,18,25,26.
Additionally, “obesity” related public health approaches can be harmful because they are based on limited or poor quality evidence, they focus on preventing one outcome at the expense of another outcome, they lack community engagement and they ignore the root cause of problems4. However, the public health field has not taken a critical look at this research, focusing on the narrative that weight is controllable and a personal responsibility. If the goal is to find the most ethical and effective strategies to achieve optimal public health, there needs to be an alternative to “obesity” and weight-focused approaches and a shift in understanding of weight stigma as a social justice issue.”
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