Obesity and the Two Cultures

The two cultures are alive and kicking, when you can read an essay about fat written by an academic, without a word about the health consequences. Laura Kipnis’s essay on fat, femininity and feminism made the point that

“[w]omen here may pant, ‘I'm doing it for myself’ while strapped to their treadmills, but the fact is that the beauty culture is a heterosexual institution, and to the extent that women participate in its rituals, they, too, are propping up a heterosexual society and its norms.”

However, at a time when the words “obesity” and “epidemic” can be found in the same sentence, it is specious to attribute all efforts by women to improve their fitness and nutrition as enslavement to the beauty culture. Some may understand that a certain amount of lean body mass is better for you than fat.

In the documentary “Supersize Me”, Morgan Spurlock subsists on meals entirely from McDonalds for a month. Amidst the substantial gain in weight, skyrocketing cholesterol level, and neurobehavioral symptoms including headaches, mood swings, symptoms of addiction, and depressed libido, his doctors begin to observe clinically detectable adverse effects to his liver function. Food (not just food contaminants) as toxic exposure. Ick.

Obesity is becoming recognized as an environmental health problem with long-term consequences. The increasing incidence of type II diabetes in children parallels the rising prevalence of obesity. Other disorders associated with obesity include hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, heart disease, asthma, emotional health concerns (such as depression and low self-esteem), and orthopedic disorders. The environmental determinants of obesity include the built environment which does not encourage physical activity (urban bike paths really suck where I live), and an abundance of more readily available poor nutritional choices; socioeconomic factors result in the environmental causes of obesity disproportionately affecting minority and low-income families.

I’m not quite as ready as Michael Jacobson to conclude that advertising, pricing, packaging, and availability all encourage Americans to eat more food. But it makes sense that selling more food, and particularly selling more processed food, makes for better shareholder value for the food industry. It is in that light that you need to interpret messages such as this one, “snack foods don’t fatten kids”, a news report by Steven Milloy, citing a recent Harvard University study. The study says that, too. . . actually, what it really says is this:

Our results suggest that although snack foods may have low nutritional value, they were not an important independent determinant of weight gain among children and adolescents.

So, snack foods aren’t bad for your kid, if he or she is also getting their five to nine servings of fruits and vegetables along with their 30 minutes of exercise per day. However, the causes of obesity are multifactorial (those words “independent determinant” in the conclusion speak volumes). In other words, if they eat snack foods along with poor diet and inactivity, your kids are going to get fat; the Harvard study suggests that overweight parents may be associated with overweight kids.

Aside from Steven Milloy citing one study, why are government diet and exercise guidelines encouraging people to eat less highly processed foods with unhealthful fat, added sugar and too much salt, if snack foods are so benign?

I’ve wandered a bit off topic, but at a time when lifestyle related disorders and illnesses are helping to bankrupt people, maybe our focus on obesity needs to be on the health rather than beauty aspects.