How we treat our obese selves

Americans are apparently not very nice to the overweight -- and many people think that's just fine.

Researchers at Yale University recently compared self-reported weight discrimination with race- and gender-based discrimination -- and found it just as appallingly common, they reported in the International Journal of Obesity. Such discrimination, they told the Yale Daily News, was even more prevalent than that based on ethnicity, sexual orientation and religious beliefs (and, as you may suspect, we wouldn't win any prizes for tolerance in those areas either).

Says one of the authors, Rebecca Puhl, on the Health Care Blog:

"Because people often assume that body weight is 'a choice,' they feel that it shouldn't be considered a legitimate form of stigma or discrimination. This is wrong."

Adds one responder:

"If we focus our attention on this by intelligent health benefit design, tax policy and public awareness of the need for physical activity, we can begin to get control over this increasingly serious public health problem."

Considering the nation's generally oversized waistline, perhaps someone should study whether we're becoming a nation of self-haters.

-- Tami Dennis

Comments

[Ken]

The amount of food you eat is a "personal" choice. The mantra that the obesity epidemic reflects genetics cannot be reconsoiled with the average weight and clothing sizes of just one or two generations ago. Evidence indicates people in the U.S. (and increasingly the world) eat significantly more now than 30 years ago. And we certainly don't exercise more. Those calories will go somewhere!

[Chuck Overmann]

Weight control most certainly is a choice. If you have zero metabolism - you adjust your lifestyle accordingly. Stuck in a bad relationship and plan to eat your way out of it - that is your personal choice. I think it is a dangerous message to tell an individual that they have no control of their life and should simply suffer with the additional weight.