Disease

[liv]

So apparently the American Medical Association decided to classify obesity as a disease.

The fatosphere has lots of opinions about this, as you'd expect. Michelle, the Fat Nutritionist, is not impressed. Living ~400lbs has a comprehensive link roundup of evidence against trying to cure obesity through diet, exercise and surgery.

I also enjoyed this piece by David Berreby at Aeon who takes a balanced yet skeptical view. He takes as read that obesity is a medical problem (so he wouldn't be popular with committed fat activists like those in the first couple of links) but he challenges the discourse of obesity being caused by bad lifestyle choices, viz eating too much and moving too little. Really thought-provoking.

On the other side, pw201 linked to a piece by Karen Hitchcock, an Australian obesity doctor who absolutely does believe, based on her medical training and experience, that being fat is caused by eating too much. The thing that's interesting about this piece is that, unlike a lot of the stuff that uncritically repeats the dogma of overeating-makes-you-fat and fatness-makes-you-die, Hitchcock displays empathy rather than disgust for her fat patients.

Comments

[liv]

Thank you, that's a pretty nice introduction to the orthodoxy of medical sociology. I'm slowly getting used to constructionist jargon but it still kind of grates on me too.