End Obesity in America? Not Likely Any Time Soon! - Page 3
Do Americans need to be reminded that they are fat and getting fatter? Do kids need to be further stigmatized by their obesity now that it is becoming an official national pastime to campaign against their banned overweight and obese bodies? Aren't they being bashed everywhere they look in interactive media? In film fat men and women are comic figures: Kevin Smith, Zack Galifianakis (The Hangover), Roseanne Barr, Melissa McCarthy (Bridesmaids); could this explain their popularity as the everyman and every woman with whom most Americans identify? Culturally girls are bombarded by thin images; photoshopped celebrities remind them that they don't measure up to those #thinspo bodies that many young men have been brainwashed to believe are the ultimate in sexual objects to possess, have and hold.The average American never catches a break from such hype; it is ever-present 24/7. And now there is going to be a blitzkrieg stepping up the "war on fat."
Don't get me wrong! If I appear to be a fat apologist, arguing that the obese and overweight must be protected from the big, bad media, and anti-obesity campaigners, I am not. Being overweight and obese is horrific; I know this because of my vast experience weighing 240 pounds (women lie about their weight) and trying every diet created since Rubens (painter of heavy women 300 years ago) and yo-yoing 12 times with baby yo-yos in between. I speak from knowing fat ridicule, knowing fat censure and feeling the pain and judgment of fat crime.
Because of my experience, I know that this current "alarm sounding" is disingenuous and unrealistic. And this wonderful "cutting edge" initiative? It is a whitewash of the "same old, same old," as Gary Taubes suggests in his Newsweek article. The anti-obesity campaign will fail in the long term. Indeed, I would go so far as to suggest after reading the basis of the campaign protocol which posits that 1)the overweight and obese need to exercise more to burn up more calories and 2)they need to eat less, obesity will continue to augment for the next two decades with its attendant side effects and diseases, and obesity will continue to rise globally.
Here is why I think this. The campaign does not approach nor excavate the roots of the problem: America's industrialized food supply, with its emphasis on processed and refined sugars and GM (genetically modified) grains, cereals, pastas, wheat and processed-chemicalized foods with additives, food colorings and preservatives. The scientific panel behind the initiative according to Taubes ignores the impact of refined sugars on the body and treats all calories the same.
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