Annals of Personal Responsibility, Cathy Seipp Edition

I followed the links to reviews of Christer’s book, and it turns out that it’s apparently the fault of Japanese scientists.

I wonder what Godzilla would make of that.

Obesity. I bet millions of men think their pot bellies didn’t have some connection with beer drinking.

Bet they were brainwashed by feminists into thinking they were all pregnant.

Gack. Why did you send us to Volokh? I even excerpted a comment:

As for Medicare: Can someone explain to me again why the government is in the health insurance business?

Like democracy, it’s the worst known system, except for the alternatives.

For reasons which are not entirely clear, people started gaining weight surprisingly quickly in the 1980’s. It used to be that people thickened around the middle in middle age; it also used to be that they died in fairly short order, so that the only surviving elders were skinny. That’s no longer the case, perhaps because antibiotics attenuate some heart diseases. Nowadays, the older you are, the fatter you are, at about a kilogram a year.

See also Morgan Spurlock’s “Super Size Me”.

See also the Dutch being the tallest population, and competing with the English-speaking peoples for the fatness quotient.

I worked at a cattle feed lot one time, and this guy that ran the auger that filled the feed trucks with the milled grain and ground-up alfalfa and molasses and liquid tallow would periodically as part of his job rip open a 40 pound sack of tetracycline and walk along the auger trough and dump it in until it was empty.
That was a lot of years back. A more innocent time, in some ways.
The likelihood that massive amounts if growth-hormones and a multitude of other weight-gain accelerators are being dumped indiscriminately into the fantastically less-regulated, higher profit-margin, far more cynical meat industry in America, and that the least-regulated and most-likely-to-be-adulterated meat is going to the poor seems almost a given.

Shorter version: The poor began to gain weight with bizarre rapidity right around the same time growth-accelerating pharmaceuticals hit the meat industry.

The poor began to gain weight with bizarre rapidity right around the same time growth-accelerating pharmaceuticals hit the meat industry.

Well, yeah. High-calorie food got a lot cheaper at that point. It’s no longer cost-efficient to feed yourself and your children healthy food as opposed to McDonald’s.

Bovine growth hormone reduces fat levels in cows. It’s a little strange to suggest it would increase fat levels in humans, especially given the recent information that human growth hormones can be used to redistribute human fat in beneficial ways.

“If someone said that about AIDS, people would be rightly horrified.”

Unless I’ve missed out on a way to overcome most cases of AIDS through self-discipline and exercise, obesity isn’t analogous to AIDS.

Re who’s to blame, that’s a tricky one, isn’t it? On the one (Big Mac-clenching) hand, are there really that many people in the US who don’t realise that eating too much and moving too little is a ticket to Sansabelt City? The US is full of fat people who know they shouldn’t supersize it, but don’t have the discipline or foresight or desire to resist. And hey, if you want to be fat, plump it up, baby – but society will have to address the ways in which resentful healthier people subsidise the healthcare of their rotund neighbours.

I heard a good analogy once: At one end of the food chain, you have sea cucumbers, which exist in such a nutrient-rich environment, with food literally washing over them, that they have no need to store fat for times of deprivation. At the other end, you have the polar bear. At this point in history, humans (in developed nations, that is) have a physigonomy more like polar bears, but live in a calorie environment more akin to that of the sea cucumber. So we get fat.

But then why aren’t the French and Italians a bunch of lardos too? The trick is that on the whole, they eat tastier food, but consume less calories by – surprise! – not gorging themselves.

Could America make the switch to that sort of diet? Don’t know. American food culture is predicated on business principles first and foremost, with taste, quality and health taking distant back seats. Just as network television’s prime purpose is not to create great tv shows but to sell ad space, so the American food culture’s primary aim is to move product, rather than to feed us well. And it’s this culture in which we are raised.

And then of course there’s the fact that most Americans regard walking as an affront to their personal dignity. (Though frankly, who can blame them? If town planners can’t be bothered with sidewalks, forcing you to walk in a ditch – well, it kind of puts you in your place, doesn’t it?)

Do we have the capacity for a culture shift? Re food, I have no clue. Re walking more and driving less, I don’t think it’s going to happen.

But here’s the rub. Even if it’s culture’s fault, obesity (unlike, say, race), allows for a sure-fire personal solution to one’s problem, and almost all of us know what it is: eat less, move more. Like it or not, fat people who want to lose weight in the America of 2004 will have to get their freaks on and do something for themselves. They didn’t create the system, but they do live in it, and most of them are familiar with its rules. If you don’t want to be fat, be disciplined. Easier said than done, but all challenges are.

And maybe at the same time we can agitate for a better food culture, one that will mean that the next generation won’t have to fight this battle. Seems unlikely though.

“If someone said that about AIDS, people would be rightly horrified.”

Unless I’ve missed out on a way to overcome most cases of AIDS through self-discipline and exercise, obesity isn’t analogous to AIDS.

I agree that fat people shouldn’t be discriminated against for being fat, but re who’s to blame for their roundness, that’s a tricky one, isn’t it? On the one (Big Mac-clenching) hand, are there really that many people in the US who don’t realise that eating too much and moving too little is a ticket to Sansabelt City? The US is full of fat people who know they shouldn’t supersize it, but don’t have the discipline or foresight or desire to resist. And hey, if you want to be fat, plump it up, baby – but society will have to address the ways in which resentful healthier people subsidise the healthcare of their rotund neighbours.

I heard a good analogy once: At one end of the food chain, you have sea cucumbers, which exist in such a nutrient-rich environment, with food literally washing over them, that they have no need to store fat for times of deprivation. At the other end, you have the polar bear. At this point in history, humans (in developed nations, that is) have a physigonomy more like polar bears, but live in a calorie environment more akin to that of the sea cucumber. So we get fat.

But then why aren’t the French and Italians a bunch of lardos too? The trick is that on the whole, they eat tastier food, but consume less calories by – surprise! – not gorging themselves.

Could America make the switch to that sort of diet? Don’t know. American food culture is predicated on business principles first and foremost, with taste, quality and health taking distant back seats. Just as network television’s prime purpose is not to create great tv shows but to sell ad space, so the American food culture’s primary aim is to move product, rather than to feed us well. And this is the culture in which we’re raised.

And then of course there’s the fact that most Americans regard walking as an affront to their personal dignity. (Though frankly, who can blame them? If town planners can’t be bothered with sidewalks, forcing you to walk in a ditch – well, it kind of puts you in your place, doesn’t it?)

Do we have the capacity for a culture shift? Re food, I have no clue. Re walking more and driving less, I don’t think it’s going to happen.

But here’s the rub. Even if it’s culture’s fault, with obesity (unlike, say, race), there is a sure-fire personal solution to overcoming one’s problems, and almost all of us know what that is: eat less, move more. Like it or not, fat people who want to lose weight in the America of 2004 will have to get their freaks on and do something for themselves. They didn’t create the system, but they do live in it, and most of them are familiar with its rules. If you don’t want to be fat, be disciplined. Easier said then done, but then all challenges are.

And maybe at the same time we can agitate for a better food culture, one that will mean that the next generation won’t have to fight this battle. Seems unlikely though.

reuben: “But then why aren’t the French and Italians a bunch of lardos too?”

Just you wait, we’re getting there…

No, ok, it’s not like in the US but there is a growing problem also in those countries. Because of the higher availability of junk food, processed stuff, fast food, etc. I don’t think that is the only factor in increasing obesity trends but it surely seems the most influential one at a general level.

I generally agree with your views and suggestions, but I still think the social and industry responsibility comes _before_ the individual one in this case. Both approaches are necessary, but if you put the main emphasis on the individual solution then you are skipping one important extra question, not just about the culture, but the food industry, advertising, etc. all that does affect shopping and hence eating habits and so, food culture.

In Italy and France they may make even too much of a fuss about typical national and local produce that tend to be healthier, but those products, in spite of the heavy competition of overprocessed food, also happen to be still accessible and cheap enough (outside of the big cities, at least) to be affordable, and they happen to be heavily advertised too, so there’s not such a poor/rich divide there. Aside from ingrained habits, there is also a lot of emphasis on education about healthy eating at government level, ministries, local health authorities, schools, etc. (not to mention the national food industry associations and the like, with their own campaigning against junk food and related multinational corporations, so there’s a level of national economic interest there too).

Food is indeed part of culture, but culture doesn’t develop in a vacuum so individual lifestyles and choices are not the primary issue here.

Also, taking the example of Italy, the most famous “foodie” regions (Emilia Romagna primarily) happen to be the same ones that have been governed for decades by the left wing. They obviously favoured lots of direct intervention in everything and so, mainly from an economic point of view rather than health-related, initially, they created lots of associations for the safeguard of local produce. And when the fitness and health craze came in the eighties (Emiliar Romagna also happens to host the main fitness events and festivals), the industry and associations latched on to that too so the emphasis today is not just on local & typical as values, but also healthy, non-fattening, vitaminic, cancer prevention, etc. Local industry interests basically worked largely in favour of a “better food culture”. Similarly in France.

Italians or French people don’t have some kind of innate higher resistance to junk food, they’re not cleverer or stronger-willed by nature, they don’t necessarily lead more active lives overall, and they’re as subject to the lure of advertising and stacked supermarket shelves as Americans. And they tend to spoil their kids even more, probably. But it’s what’s _around_ the individual that makes the difference in consumer habits at the widest level.

What about relative prices? Does food cost proportionately more in places like France or Italy?

Beloml

I think that we have to be careful not to equate “quality food” with “food that most people in our culture really, really enjoy eating”. Whatever the many weaknesses of junk food, lots of people absolutely love the way it tastes, and presumably the experience of eating it. And yes, I know me and my food snob friends would disagree with them, as you presumably would too, but our opinions don’t change theirs, and their opinions are central to developing a workable public policy regarding food, exercise and obesity.

I imagine that to most of the Whopper-loving populace, a whole grain sandwich and a couple of oranges just doesn’t cut it from a gustatory standpoint. People aren’t just paying for cheap food when they go to Mickey D’s; they’re paying for the whole experience: not having to cook, not having to clean, keeping the kids happy, that yummy special sauce, some truly kickin’ fries, toys in the happy meal, etc. By those criteria, McDonald’s really is pretty cheap, and really does deliver a lot of the things that most Americans are looking for.

As MC has noted, Italy and France aren’t nirvanas, but in those cultures, people tend to be looking for something different from their dining experiences. The focus is on getting super fresh, super high quality local products onto their plates. In the US, the focus is on convenience; also, our palates seem to have fallen in love with a more artificial range of flavours and tastes.

So I don’t think it’s as simple as telling people that they can get bags of oranges and loaves of whole grain bread for what they would normally spend in the McD’s drive through – that would leave most people thinking, “So what? I don’t want a bag of oranges and loaves of grain bread.”

What needs to happen, I think, is a change in culture, so that people are still looking for pleasure, but are looking for it not through quickness, convenience, and simple tastes that keep kids happy, but through something more along the Italian model of great food that just happens to be part of a healthy food culture.

And whatever we do (and I don’t think this is what you’re implying), we shouldn’t try to convince people that they have to choose between great-tasting food and a diet that’s good for them. Because we are fragile creatures with a high desire for things we enjoy. And thank god for the latter.

Reuben,

I think you’re right.

But my point is, don’t whine to me about the relative cost of nutrition versus junk.

And to those who say, “So what? I don’t want a bag of oranges and loaves of grain bread,” I say, “Fine. But don’t expect me to pay for any of your medical treatment when you develop diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and joint and back problems.”

Fat people generally spend more on food, and contribute more to the tax payer.

hi Dorothy

Don’t have time right now to grab a lot of citations, but according to the International Association for the Study of Obesity (http://www.iotf.org/):

The direct cost of diagnosis, treatment and management of obesity within national health systems has only been assessed in a few countries to date. Although the methodology varied considerably between studies, making it difficult to compare costs across countries and to extrapolate the results from one country to another, these estimates suggest that between 2-8% of the total sick care costs in Western countries are attributable to obesity. This represents a major fraction of national health care budgets comparable with for example, the total cost of cancer therapy. The potential impact on health care resources in the less developed health care systems of developing countries is likely to be even more severe.

(Emphasis added)

According to a recent UK government health select committee report, the cost of obesity in the UK may now have risen to £4.9bn a year.

And according to the CDC:

According to a study of national costs attributed to both overweight (BMI 25–29.9) and obesity (BMI greater than 30), medical expenses accounted for 9.1 percent of total U.S. medical expenditures in 1998 and may have reached as high as $78.5 billion ($92.6 billion in 2002 dollars) (Finkelstein, Fiebelkorn, and Wang, 2003). Approximately half of these costs were paid by Medicaid and Medicare.

Somebody’s paying those extra costs.

(Could someone tell me how to put hyperlinks into comments, please? Thanks.)

“It’s fascinating to me that just about the most personal and intimate thing one can do — determine what goes in one’s mouth — is not essentially a matter of individual choice.”

For the left, the only truly personal choice is abortion. Everything else is the fault or virtue of society.

Please, Sebastian, you’re a bright person. Do you have something to add to this discussion besides an attack on the left, particularly one that can easily be disproven just by glancing at this current discussion?

Everyone on the right is bright, or so they tell me.

Exactly, like Reuben said… no one’s talking of forcing people to “eat healthier” or get thinner just because it’s a must to be fitness freaks. The problem is not about bit of nice-looking chubbiness and love handles and beer bellies, I mean, thank god for some variety in body shapes. But when you’re seriously and severely obese, usually you do have some related health problems so, it is primarily in one’s self interests, for wellbeing, to not be obese. Not just “fat”. Obese. There’s a difference.

Re: prices and quality of food, it really doesn’t have to be junk=cheap, healthy=expensive. It’s not like the only alternative is between Mc Donalds on the one hand or super-elite and costly gourmet stuff on the other.

Tom T: no, the prices in Italy are not proportionately higher at all, in fact, often cheaper than in UK for instance. Especially if we’re talking central and southern Italy. I can’t speak for France as I don’t have enough experience of living there but as far as I know it’s a rather similar context.

It really is more a matter of different habits and industries rather than costs on the consumer.

Personally I love the concept of fast food actually, but it depends on the kinds of food. I don’t have anything against McDonalds and the like per se, also for instance here in Italy they have adapted the menus to the local habits, they have tons of fresh salads, pasta salads, rice salads, not just burgers and fries. All the stuff is from local producers. And most people would eat there only once in a while, certainly not daily and not even every week. So in itself it doesn’t really have a huge impact, so far. But I don’t understand _why_ would people want to eat there at all with any regularity when there’s a much more varied and interesting selection of sandwiches and snacks you get in ordinary bars, or street vendors, or smaller cafes, and for cheap too – actually even for free, during happy hour (praise be to the aperitivi…). McDonalds food is so boring compared to all the alternatives. But it’s a massive brand, so even if it doesn’t make any sense in places like Italy or France or Spain or Greece, that already had their own better _and tastier_ versions of “fast food”, it’s a success even there, especially among kids. Behold the power of advertising.

Cathy’s on a roll. She’s ruining one of my favorite conservative blogs by her “NR’s Corner” inspired thoughtless posts. If I wanted vaguely racist, unintelligent drivel presented with fairly good grammar, I have the NR brit-twins. Who I don’t read. Because they’re boring.

Oh, I just noticed now, Catherine Seipp _does_ write for the National Review… doh…

Belle always has the best stuff. Lots of what I think about this has been said, but I would like to reiterate the issues of time and exercise. One of the things I noticed when I lived in Germany was that people were not quite as “on the go” as we are in the US. This meant that there were actual lunch breaks which allowed time to eat, and work hours that were still fairly conducive to buying groceries and preparing them. Not only that, but most of the people I knew took public transport and/or rode bikes and walked. We lived in a pretty big town — about 250k people. It was a couple of blocks to the local grocery and the tram stop, and most of the trams and buses ran every 5-10 minutes between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. The result was that it was much faster and more efficient to take public transport than it was to drive, even if it meant walking a block or two on either end. The blocks add up. Also, junk food was relatively more expensive than real food. Regarding fast food, for the same price as a McDonald’s meal, you could get a nice tasty bowl of soup and bread, or Dampfnudel or other yummy stuff at the Stadtmarkt.

Here, on the other hand, I can’t take public transport unless I want to give up 2 more hours of my day. My commute is a little over an hour each way. If I want to go to the gym, that’s even more time. We’re lucky, because we can almost afford (as in, we have the cash flow, but the trade-off is not paying off the mortgage, etc. more quickly) to buy lunch a lot of the time. We try to limit the caloric intake by just having a salad or something at dinner. That isn’t true for a lot of people. When time is at a premium, people go for what’s easy, not what’s good. Add to that the fact that we’re now into at least a second generation of people living this way (long commutes, multiple jobs, fewer parents or grandparents at home full-time) AND many school systems are cutting home ec classes (where people could be taught how to buy fresh food and prepare it and do the math that shows it’s better in all kinds of ways). Is it any surprise that the country is going the way it is, and that the leisured class tends to be also the thinner?

I apologise for the multiple comments but I need to add that the idea that dinner plate size has increased is positively ludicrous – I collect plates and have some in my collection estimated to be over 110 years old. Dinner plate size has been standardized for at least the last century at 10 to 10.5 inches. Salad plate size is 7-8. It is a sad day when this is what the anti-fat camp has resorted to to villianize American diet habits. There’s plenty of valid criticism to make without hyperbole about the ever mentioned “portion size” problem.

From Frank Zappa’s Lumpy Gravy album:

There will come a time when everybody
Who is lonely will be free . . .
TO SING & DANCE & LOVE
There will come a time when every evil
That we know will be an evil . . .
THAT WE CAN RISE ABOVE
…

(there will come a time when you won’t even be ashamed if you are fat!)

A fun twist on the facts is exactly what makes a joke fun.

“Inside Sebastian there is a caring, loving and generous left-winger just fighting to get out. That’s why he likes CT – his unconcious is telling him it is good for him.”

You might be right. Everyone who knows me is shocked to find out I vote for Republicans. “But you’re so nice!” “But you care about people” Seriously, people have said that to me.

Blaming obesity on feminists is truly stupid. Blaming it on ‘society’ is very close to a tautology. The question is, which influence of society is dominant in this issue–the fact that our society de-emphasizes personal responsibility, or the fact that our society has lots of really good marketing techniques. The answer isn’t at all clear on either side. I tend to think it is the former because many people resist marketing, but far fewer pass up a chance to abdicate responsibility if such a chance is given.

And you are right, my joke was slightly unfair in the context of this thread. The fairer observation would be that the left acknowledges personal choice with respect to abortion, and pays lip service to it as a factor which is then promptly ignored in most other areas.

Societal pressure might be best brought to bear by influencing people to make better personal choices. You can’t outlaw all bad foods, but you won’t have to if you can convince people to be careful about what they eat.

another damned medievalist, you must be kidding.

Shopping for food in Germany is crazy given their incredibly restricted store opening hours.

When I lived in Berlin 10 years ago, there were TWO places in the entire city where you could buy fresh milk on Sunday.

A friend told me that one of the reasons it was so hard for German women with kids to work was because it was next to impossible to get to the grocery store if you had a job.

Yes, I agree, Americans are unnecessarily frenetic, but my Gawd, the Germans are no example for anyone. either in terms of weight or cuisine.

For that I say, Vive La France!
(But only for food)

ok maybe fashion too.

Sebastian’s “fairer observation” is apt, succinct, and all-round on the money.
Its converse is, of course, just as apt.
Conservatives refuse to acknowledge personal choice with respect to abortion, or even insemination for that matter; then insist we stand or fall, here and in the hereafter, entirely on the merits of our personal choices.
Libertarians seem to occupy a kind of limbo between the two.
–
Nick Simmonds exposes my almost total ignorance of the chemistry of pharmaceutical growth stimulation in domestic meat production. The question lingers. And the concurrence seems at least possibly linked. The use of pesticides is well-documented, their misuse as well. The egregious and socially heedless application of poisons in an environment that was once communal and is now a no-man’s land of toxicity continues.
The fields of agriculture are an inhuman landscape. This is beyond argument. Send your kids out to play in them.
They weren’t a hundred years ago. The mentality responsible for that inhuman change permeates the meat industry as well.
The idea that there may be adulterants that cause rapid growth in meat animals and have consequent metabolic effects in human consumers seems reasonable, as a question. The problem is that, as with the wholesale application of deadly poisons to crops and landscapes, the research is almost exclusively in the hands of the perpetrators.
Quoting scientific studies that were purchased by the industries being investigated may be a comfort, but it’s not very convincing to someone who’s seen the smirking morons who run agribusiness in action and seen the damage they cause, to people and land. The fields of America are practically birdless now, what birds there are mostly generalists, scavengers whose strategies mimic the human; songbirds are vanishing, the damage extends to coral reefs beneath the sea.
What I said was the condition – sudden, bizarrely rapid increase in dysfunctional obesity in the lower classes of America; and the event – the introduction into the food supply of meat produced with chemical stimulants, were simultaneous. I’m sure there’s a Latin phrase for that kind of logical jump. But the track record of the agencies involved, the immorality and swinish greed of the end users of those chemicals, means I have no faith in either the industry or its spokesmen, or the toadying scientific mainstream.
I’m sure there are perfectly harmless ways of ballooning cattle overnight. I’m also sure there are thousands of chemistry majors who’ve never been near the decimated riverine communities that are the result of decades of irresponsible pesticide application.
Bottom line – paranoia trumps industry p.r.

Since no one here seems to be obese and poor, let me speak of the “links” of obesity to heart disease, etc. If a fat person exercises, they will live as long a thin person who exercises. If they don’t, they won’t. The solution to “obesity” is not medical treatment at all, especially for the poor. What they need is to have a living wage so they aren’t working 2-3 jobs that don’t give them a chance to exercise. I have contended that my Medicaid could do more for my health by paying for a YMCA membership than by many other interventions. I have severe osteoarthritis in my knees, and am not a good candidate for a knee replacement. However, my orthopedic surgeon offered to send me for gastric bypass. Both surgeries cost about $32,000 each. I would have less depression and more energy if I could do water walking. However, the “discounted” membership for people on welfare or SSDI is a $50 joining fee, and $26 a month. That is difficult to come up with on my $339 the state gives me for my disability. It is also difficult to “eat right” on the $5/day I have for food on food stamps.
Before you castigate me for wearing out my knees by being obese, it is a genetic problem where the cartilage breaks down before it should. My normal weight father had a knee replacement at age 63, I was diagnosed at 53, and my normal weight brother is already bitching about his knees at age 43. As for my sleep apnea, the other obese disease I have, I have had symptoms of it since I was in my teens. People used to remark on how tired I looked at the beginning of my shift. Recently they have been discovering more cases of sleep apnea in teens and small children. Is it not at least possible that I am obese because I was always exhausted and my knees hurt, rather than that I am a “bad person, and can’t control what I put in my mouth?” My greatest fear with Medicare treating obesity as a disease, it will spread to Medicaid, and a lot of poor people will be coerced into gastric bypass surgery. This cuts off the part of the intestine that absorbs nutients, so you are not only deficient in calories, you are deficient in nutrients. What a healthy way to lose weight!

Sebastian, maybe we could add another complementary joke: the right is averse to acknowledging any influence of society, except when that influence comes from feminists. (Or gays. But no one would even try blaming obesity trends on gays. I think.)

I don’t know where you get the “banning all bad foods” idea but I don’t remember it being suggested in this discussion.

The question is, which influence of society is dominant in this issue—the fact that our society de-emphasizes personal responsibility, or the fact that our society has lots of really good marketing techniques. The answer isn’t at all clear on either side.

Could it be… both?

Could it be that, where there is a trend to de-emphasize personal responsibility, it also tends to be accompanied by a trend to self-righteousness that ends up confusing it with guilt and absolving anyone but the individual sinner. It also ends up confusing any talk of “influences” with “ah you’re blaming it on society how convenient”.

I don’t know exactly what you mean by “many people resist marketing”, but it doesn’t seem to stop huge sums being invested in it, so perhaps it has to be effective at some level, otherwise no industry would be so stupid as to waste so much money on something that so many people are immune to.

I am totally convinced everything is ultimately down to individuals and individual choices. But individuals don’t live each in their own caves. There are influences that can make it easier or harder to take up (or abandon) certain habits. I don’t see why acknowledging this has to mean you deny the ultimate power of personal choice (or the inalienable right to total personal freedom even to get ill and self-destruct), unless you’re setting up straw men to switch the whole debate on to a left vs right level where suddenly all the “repressive” actions are from the left and all the “libertarian” approaches are from the right. Is that so? Can we hear again about the meme that smoking bans are a left-wing invention? And where does all this lead us anyway? Whatever the multiple causes of something, when it is proven it is becoming a problem for public health at large, and an economic issue too, then the only choice is either completely ignore the problem, or try and do something about it. At both individual and social level (which indeed includes “convincing people etc.”, not forcing them) because unless you live on your own desert island they both interact. What a shocking leftist proposition that is.

vernaculo: you seem to have misunderstood me completely, my “everything is ultimately down to individuals” was not the by all and end all, or a religious belief or patronising cruelty or anything else you took it to mean.

It was just an obvious observation that goes side by side with the observation on the power and effects of factors like mentalities, knowledge, cultural and national differences, industry interests, business trends, advertising, access to a more diversified market, etc. etc. etc. in influencing different lifestyles overall, including eating habits.

It is an obvious fact, that in any situation except the extremes where there’s deprivation of freedom, individuals ultimately always have a choice over their own lives, even when there’s lot of pressures from the outside. No one’s forcing anyone directly, but at the same time social and economic pressures must be taken into account when there is an established larger trend.

From my very pragmatic point of view this discussion has nothing to do with ‘morality’ and in fact I don’t really like any kind of moralism or patronising being brough into it, like Seipp does. Also I never got into wider discussions about wealth and class and who and how can make it out of poverty and disadvantaged situations or not. I couldn’t start preaching about that even if I wanted to. I just don’t think that way. You must have confused my posts with somebody else’s.

1. Current antiobesity surgery limits intake but allows continued normal absorption of the full spectrum of nutrients. It does, however, cause major complications, even death, in 1-3% of patients. Applied across millions, the procedures would condemn tens of thousands to these poor results. Not a good thing, unless there’s no alternative, and the costs of doing nothing are demonstrably greater. I would suggest that a society which considers obesity surgery a reasonable approach to the problem is in very deep trouble indeed.
2. By now, it should be obvious to any thinking human being that the hand you’re dealt, the skill with which you play it, and the rules that define your options are all relevant to outcome, and that solutions proposed for one limb of the triad don’t of necessity preclude or contradict another line of attack on the problem.

I would take the “personal responsibility” advocates more seriously if the political movements and news organizations that many of those advocates identify with are also the ones that:

–rail most vociferously against public transportation

–contribute to the climate of fear that keeps kids inside playing Nintendo by showing little abducted white girls over and over and over, to the point where Dear Abby agrees that leaving your kid out to play alone in the yard is tantamount to child abuse (much less sending them to the park).

Ms Hoffmann:
I don’t deny that morbid obesity surgery should be available. I don’t revile fat people. I do submit that dealing with a society’s problem with obesity, as opposed to an individual’s, shouldn’t be done by having laparoscopic gastric bypass becoming a routine procedure in every community hospital in the country. It is a personal solution for some, just as IVF is. I’d guess you wouldn’t want IVF to become the most common route to conception either.
It’s hard to define disease in a vacuum, and easy to set up disturbing hypotheticals. Should, say, an obese smoker whose father died of a heart attack at 45 receive a publicly funded pension after he retires with heart trouble at 50 frm the police force? How is this allocation of public funds different from that used to pay for the retroviral cocktails of HIV-positive people who had unprotected sex? My guess is that most, as you suggest, gore others’ oxen with relish while guarding their own.

I love love love Big Fat Blog – notice they were linked here. It’s run by an FA (Fat Admirer), who, by the way, isn’t obese himself.

So, you have a man who’s sexually attracted to fat women running a site that caters (overwhelmingly) to fat women, telling them that it’s unhealthy and unnatural to lose weight. And they respond as if he actually has their best interests at heart!

What a world.

Devon: It’s run by an FA (Fat Admirer), who, by the way, isn’t obese himself.

What is this, MetaFilter?

First of all, I will speak my piece on this and then move on. But Devon has constructed a justified reason for BFB to exist: clearly, it’s just a guy trying to get in a woman’s pants.

Anyone who knows me and knows what I believe about fat acceptance can laugh that one right out of the water. Devon, curious, where did you read that I’m a “fat admirer?” It’s clearly not on BFB, my other sites, or anywhere else. I suspect you decided to do some basic research on the entire movement, found the term “fat admirer,” and used it. Clever, but entirely baseless.

And second, insofar as my fat goes, I’m within a BMI point or two of being labeled “obese.” Your conclusion that I’m “not even obese” comes from one (count ’em!) photograph on the BFB site: a headshot. That’s it. I’m curious, though, as to how my fat actually plays into your little theory. Is it that someone who isn’t “fat enough” can’t be interested in fat acceptance?

You’ve made entirely baseless assumptions and come up with conclusions that aren’t just incorrect, but are libelous. To suggest that I’m running BFB out of my own sexual interests is insulting, pig-headed, dispicable and deplorable.

I demand a public apology.

Devon: can you divulge your sexual fetishes and preferences here, as well? It sounds to me that if you want Paul to divulge his, you need to divulge yours.

So, are you straight? Gay? Are you into bondage? As you can see this is extremely relevant to your conversation.

This discussion makes me sick.

And regarding the question of “objectivity”, does it matter to Devon that the “obesity researchers” most often quoted in the media promoting weight loss for the sake of health are getting their research funding from weight loss and pharmaceutical companies? Or actually sit on the boards of Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers and are paid fees by those companies?

I never said *all* of the doctors and researchers in the world. Nice hyperbole, there. You seem do be adept at strawman arguments, so I’ll leave you to them. Have fun.

You’re not Michael Fumento are you? You sound kind of like him.

I have no idea who this “Conrad” is you’re referring to, so I’m at a disadvantage. And no one dictates my “agenda”, thanks all the same. As a feminist like you, I’m capable of looking at all sides of an argument and drawing my own conclusions, only some of which I’ve actually voiced in this thread. Maybe you’ve mistaken me for someone else, just as I confused your bombastic rhetorical style for Fumento’s?

I’m afraid my “fat activism” has been limited to reading and occasionally posting on a few blogs and boards over the last year, so I’m a bit ignorant of the history you’re referring to. I seem to have inadvertently stepped into the middle of a personal beef, and as I have “no dog in this fight”, I’m going to disengage from the discussion.