Why it's always worth doing your research...

http://www.newstatesman.com/…/thin-people-don-t-just-eat-di…

Oh Helen Lewis, I am so over you. For so long I thought you were a quirky, slightly geeky, rare feminist on the BBC; turns out from a quick Google that you're just yet another lazy clone soldier in the War on Fat People (TM). No, American reality TV isn't a true reflection of the real lives of actual fat people. And arguing that fat people are victims of an obesogenic environment run by Big Junk Food is every bit as patronising and harmful as claiming that they need only grow some willpower and put down the fork. How can someone be so switched on with regard to a wide range of other social justice issues and yet believe everything they're fed on this? Typical lefty blind spot when it comes to seeing fat as a matter of identity, discrimination, human rights and not just a 'health crisis' to be vanquished at any cost.

Diet pills are back - the hunt for new obesity drugs

One of the advantages of the BBC's new smart phone app is that I can set it up to provide instant notification of any news stories about 'obesity', which is now one of the specified topics under the Health section. (I first wrote to them asking for this in 2007, by the way - the Guardian has for many years listed all the fat stories under a keyword, allowing fast location of those of interest). It's immensely useful for someone interested in staying up to date on news stories around this topic, even if the quality and tone of the articles themselves often leaves a great deal to be desired.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-31794430

According to today's notification, they're once again playing around with diet pills - medication that induces weight loss through malabsorption, appetite suppression or metabolic changes without the restrictive eating associated with conventional dieting or the dangers of surgery. When anything is regarded as the 'holy grail of modern medicine', there is inevitably immense pressure on researchers and drug companies to rush it to market before all the bugs are ironed out. And in the case of Phen-fen, one of those 'bugs' was that it destroyed users' heart valves and resulted in elevated rates of often fatal pulmonary hypertension. Only after numerous deaths and a multi-million dollar lawsuit did the makers recognise that there was a problem and pull the drug.

Then there was rimonabant, which was never approved by the FDA and withdrawn in the EU in 2009 after it became clear that it was causing major depression and even suicidal ideation in many users. A year later, sibutramine (widely seen as the great hope against obesity) was pulled from sale after reports of sudden death, heart failure and renal failure. Currently the most popular 'diet pill' is Orlistat, marketed as Redux or Alli, but this is expensive, its efficacy limited, and its side-effects embarrassing (including fecal incontinence and excessive flatulence) and potentially dangerous (early studies have linked its use with liver damage, early signs of colon cancer and inability to absorb fat-soluble vitamins).

Even so-called 'natural' supplements aren't without their risks - Ephedra, a traditional Chinese preparation from the plant of the same name, has in recent years become popular as a weight-loss supplement but was banned in the US following mounting evidence of side effects ranging from the mild (rashes, itchiness, nervousness, irritability) to the deadly (heart attacks, strokes and seizures resulting in sudden death). Currently the most popular 'herbal' fat treatment is bladderwrack, a seaweed extract widely available in pound shops and suchlike in the UK, but despite being regarded as safe, again its effectiveness has been largely dismissed.

In other words, there is no safe, effective drug-based weight loss treatment, and there is unlikely to be, because the processes which influence weight gain and loss are either complex and linked to the body's basic biological mechanisms such as appetite, metabolism, absorption of nutrients, which are difficult to manipulate without countless unwanted side effects, or like genetics, outside the realms of that which can be influenced by drug treatments. Of course, none of this will stop them trying, as it has frequently been said that the man who invents a way to make fat people safely and permanently thin (and it would most likely be a man) would become an overnight billionaire. And there we have it - one of the main motivators behind the 'war on fat people'.

IDS: 'Obese' benefit claimants should be forced onto liquid diet

Well isn't this interesting.

http://www.politics.co.uk/…/liquid-diets-iain-duncan-smith-…

It seems that Minster for Workhouses (not his title, but maybe it really should be) Iain Duncan-Smith, yes he of the £39 breakfast expenses claim fame, has previous form in the fatty-bashing stakes. Late last year he not only suggested forcing 'obese' recipients of unemployment and disability benefits to undergo the ultra low-calorie Cambridge Weight Plan, but held several meetings with the director (Sir Anthony Leeds, who incidentally also frequently pops up in the media as an 'obesity expert') of the company AND applied pressure to the health secretary to consider setting up an interdepartmental group to consider the efficacy of ultra low-calorie liquid diets as a means of getting benefit claimants back to work. Never mind that these programmes (like all diets) have little proof of their long-term effectiveness, their safety has also been called into question. But if you're IDS, those concerns are irrelevant next to a strategy of making benefits conditional and kicking out, again and again, at those least able to defend themselves.

(Trigger warning: the linked article is very fatphobic, contains a Weight Loss Journey (TM) story, lots of scaremongering about the 'projected implications' of 'obesity', statistics taken at face value, conflation of weight and health, etc etc. However I wasn't able to find a version that DIDN'T incorporate these elements - itself revealing, of how the media can't even report a story about the infringement of the rights of fat people without the obligatory reminder that 'fat people are a very bad thing').

Child mental health and the 'war on obesity' - two sides of the same coin.

It never fails to make me laugh when I hear doctors and experts banging on about how we need to 'do more' to eliminate so-called childhood obesity. Especially when in the next sentence they go on to bemoan the growing mental health crisis amongst Britain's children and youngsters, who by many measures are some of the most depressed, angry, stressed and anxious in the world.

Here's a perfect example: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-31661794


Don't they realise that the obsessive focus on beating our kids around the head with the message that fat is the worst thing ever is one of the major sources of those mental health problems? And that's not only in fat children who now spend their entire childhoods being poked, prodded, weighed, pathologised, problematised and reminded a dozen times a day that their 'unacceptable' bodies reflect poorly not only on them but on their parents too.

It also affects the average-sized and thin children who are encouraged to fear fatness and the accompanying stigma - the kids who end up throwing away their lunch, who bully fat kids as a way of reinforcing their 'normal' status, whose parents become preoccupied with calories, exercise, and other things that under-10s shouldn't even have to worry about.

Look. Cookery lessons are good. It's a useful skill to have, though no panacea in a world where work demands ever more of our lives. Running about outside (provided it doesn't become a power trip for the PE teacher, and allows those who don't enjoy competitive team sports to find other ways to move) is good, as kids have far more energy than adults, and a lack of an outlet can cause behavioural problems. Providing a hot nutritious meal at lunchtime, originally motivated by the numbers of children going hungry, is good (and yet, that original goal has been undermined by reductions in portion sizes motivated by fear of 'obesity').

But for me it's all about the way it's framed. And these days, any such initiative has to be motivated by a desire to 'fight obesity'. 'We're not putting in bike lanes to provide a safer and more sustainable way of getting about. We're doing it to make the fatties thin'. What a negative motivation, and one that reminds fat and thin alike that this is about solving the 'problem' of their existence. I would much rather see the approach favoured in the 2012 'Reflections' report, which because its conclusions didn't support the obesity moral panic was ridiculed, denigrated and ultimately forgotten.

I am actually surprised that 'childhood obesity' HASN'T been a bigger election issue. But I suspect that's largely down to the cozy consensus amongst every one of the parties. None have indicated that there will be a ceasefire or even a tactical withdrawal in the war on fat people. They all take the legitimacy of its existence as a given. More worryingly, if the figures reported in the article are correct, the majority of the public have fallen for it. The Royal College of Paediatrics has very much got its own way, and it doesn't even seem to realise it.