Warning: Offsite links are not always Fat Acceptance friendly.  Articles and comments in the links may contain offensive language and/or opinions.  Opinions expressed in the articles may not reflect my own stance on the issue.   I try to provide trigger warnings for extreme content but  your personal triggers may vary, so please read with caution.

Why One Size Doesn’t Fit All

Olivia Burton asks some pertinent questions:

Being fat – overweight or obese ­- is not a bad thing. Many of us were born this way, just as you were born short or with blonde hair. Are we to change our DNA? Are we expected to curse our genes, our parents, or grandparents? I am fat. I do not ask for your hatred. I do not ask for your rude remarks. I do not ask for your judgment. I do not ask for your outrageous demands, nor for your attempts to make me skinny. Yet I receive them anyway. Why? Why is the world seemingly thin-obsessed?

A Few Words For Non-Fat People

Nudiemuse gives some excellent advice to non-fatties:

All too often there is a prevailing thought process in people who are not fat when they speak of or to fat people. Or even about fat people. For the record I’d like to give my home skillets who are not of the fat ass sort a few words of wisdom from the fat side of the force.

Extremist View – Eugenics

Elizebeth explores a motive for, and outcome of, fat hatred:

In this post I’m going to explore an idea that some could consider an extremist view. That is this – anti-fat policy pushes forward a eugenics agenda. Wiki says, “Eugenics is the study and practice of selective breeding applied to humans, with the aim of improving the species. “

The time to expose the dangers of the popular weight loss show The Biggest Loser is overdue. We need to look beyond the show’s manipulative emotionalism at exactly what messages it promotes about health and dealing with weight-related issues.

So Maccas and WW have jumped into bed together, their clandestine relationship now public knowledge. They certainly aren’t a match made in heaven, not in my mind anyway but it seems that the powers to be think this could be a life long relationship. WW has about as much personal integrity as… well… someone without much personal integrity and McDonalds isn’t far behind despite all the charity work they use to cover up the not-so-charitable activities undertaken by their company, so maybe they aren’t such a strange couple after all.

I have to admit though, I wouldn’t have thought of promoting McNuggets as ‘ideal for dieters’. We all know that WW promotes its diet as being ‘not a diet’ rather as being ‘a lifestyle change’. Yeah right. Their premise that you can eat ‘whatever you want’ as long as you stay within your allocated points is really just a fancy way of restricting calories. There are so many flaws in the WW approach that you could write a book about it (has anyone done that? An expose on WW?) but you all know the general issues that accompany programs like WW. Most of you probably have horror stories of your own WW experiences, I know I do!

But later this year (and already in New Zealand) three meals marked with the WW logo will go on sale in McDonalds outlets as ‘part of a six-year push by the fast-food giant to change its image’. Honey, I think it is going to take a hell of a lot longer than 6 years (not to mention a hell of a lot more than 3 meals bearing the golden WW) to change Mickey Dee’s image. I don’t think there is a makeover known to humankind that can help McDonalds at this point. McDonalds needs to accept who it is and get on with it.

Maccas in Australia is already courting the Heart Foundation. Three years ago over 1/4 of a million dollars was paid to put the ‘tick of approval’ from the Heart Foundation on seven meals served at McDonalds restaurants. I tried their salads etc when they came out. They were disgusting. Not that the burgers are really all that much better but still… a cheeseburger has been known to hit the spot on occasion!

If McDonalds New Zealand Chief Executive really expects us to believe that McDonalds is ‘making every best effort to generate a change in behaviour, to create an awareness in consumers about making healthy choices’, well the man is deluded. McDonalds don’t care about whether their customers are healthy or not. They don’t care if we are fat or thin, young or old or anything else about us. All they care about is that we spend our money under the shadow of the Golden Arches. And this, this alone, is why they are jumping on the ‘health’ bandwagon. They aren’t stupid, they have seen the way society is totally preoccupied with the idea of health and that the concept of health is (erroneously) equated with weight which is (erroneously) equated with food intake.  McDonalds has everything to gain and little to lose in this sordid menage a trois with WW and the Heart Foundation, whereas the partners in this little dalliance lose any credibility they did have – which despite probably not being much in the first place, was better than looking as stupid as they do now.

Warning: Offsite links are not always Fat Acceptance friendly.  Articles and comments in the links may contain offensive language and/or opinions.  Opinions expressed in the articles may not reflect my own stance on the issue.   I try to provide trigger warnings for extreme content but  your personal triggers may vary, so please read with caution.

The Leaders Of Fat Acceptance

Marianne over at The Rotund writes:

…you as an individual, you as a person with unique context and experience, are a leader in the Fat Acceptance community

You Know It’s True

Spilt Milk writes:

When you talk about Teh Obesity Crisis, Halp! or Fat People On Planes or Fat Mothers or Fatties Eating Fast Food, you are talking about me. This is my life: I live in this body…

Now FAT Is The New ‘N’ Word

Renee at Womanist Musings writes:

Nothing like White people telling us that a racial slur which is dehumanizing and demeaning, is no longer in existence. Right, no one says the “N” word anymore because it was been declared un-pc and if you believe that little bit of nonsense, I have swamp land that I would dearly love to interest you in. What better way to start off another round of oppression Olympics than to set Blacks against fat people, like we don’t belong to BOTH categories.

Excuse Me, Is This Seat Taken?

The Practical Traveler in the New York Times writes:

Flying in coach is never comfortable, but it’s getting downright awkward for bigger passengers as airlines increasingly single out customers they deem too fat to fly.

Yet another study about the HUMUNGOUS costs associated with healthcare for fatties. You can guess where this one is going…

The objective of the study was apparently to ‘assess and compare health care costs for normal-weight, overweight and obese Australians’ and it involved analysis of 5-year follow up data from the Australian Diabetes, Obesity and Lifestyle study, collected 2004-2005. Data was available for 6140 participants aged over 25 years at baseline.  The main outcome measures were ‘direct health care cost, direct non-health care cost and government subsidies associated with overweight and obesity…’.

The ‘results’ apparently show that the annual total direct cost (health care and non-health care) per  ‘obese’ person increased to $2788. This is in comparison to the increase for the ‘normal’ weight person of $1472 . So they are saying the fatties cost almost double in associated health care and non health care costs and that in 2005, the total direct cost for Australians over 30 years of age was $6.5 billion for overweight and $14.5 billion for obese individuals – apparently some $10.7 billion more than ‘normal’ weight individuals. Fatties also apparently received $35.6 billion in government subsidies. So the total annual direct cost of overweight and obesity in Australia in 2005 was $21 billion.

Naturally, I find the outcomes of this study to be highly debateable. For a start, the participants were aged over 25 at baseline. They have been being studies since 1999, that’s 11 years. How old were the majority of the participants? People gain weight as they age (and this has been shown by other studies not to be a bad a thing, in fact it has been shown that extra weight as you age can help you live longer!). The weight status of participants was assigned according to BMI alone (in their own words) and we all know the flaws of the BMI. These researchers started with a faulty premise (that the BMI is remotely useful) so how can they be expected to come up with some meaningful results?

And what about these direct health care and non direct health care costs? What exactly does this study count as direct and non direct? Well, the sorts of things they included in direct health care costs are ambulance services, (most) prescription medication and hospitalisation. The non direct costs were things like transport to hospitals, purchase of ’special food’ and in home services. And these government subsidies? This laughably included the aged pension, the disability person, the veteran person, sickness allowance, mobility allowance and the dole (unemployment benefits).

You have got to be kidding.

Someone please tell me how many thin people are on all those Centrelink benefits. Someone please tell me how much thin people rack up in prescription medication and ambulance services. My personal prescription medication consists of the contraceptive pill and antidepressants, both of which I also took when I was THIN. I have been in an ambulance twice in my life and neither time was related to anything remotely to do with my weight. None of my hospital admissions have been due to my weight – birthing my children happened simply because I am fat? I needed my tonsils out because I am fat? Riiiight…  And then to think that someone is on a veteran’s pension or the aged pension simply because they are fat?

You have got to be kidding.

Unfortunately they aren’t and we are going to see the usual media spin and fatties are going to cop it left, right and centre (as usual).  No-one is going to stop and read the small print that says that less than 50% of the participants in the 1999-2000 study were also participating in the 2004-2005 follow up study and that the mean age was 56.5 years. No-one is going to consider that of the 41.3% in the ‘overweight’ BMI category, that many of them may have been only one or two kilograms ‘over weight’.  No-one is going to notice that at the start of the study it says the direct cost of obesity in Australia in 2005 was $21 billion (based on both BMI and weight circumference) and but that BMI ‘obesity’ incurs just $8.3 billion.

Naturally I would also take issue with their massive assumptions regarding the number of fat people who need carers simply because they are fat, the number of people who take early retirement because they are fat, the so called loss of productivity brought about by fat employees etc. These things are called CORRELATIONS people and correlation does not equal causation. Someone should teach these researchers something about that…

Now just wait for the social outrage…