Opinions Clash Over Food and Eating

What is commonly called “dieting” has been recognized as a health hazard for some years now. As Wired contributor and author Virginia Heffernan explains,

[F]ood restriction of almost any form — famine, elimination diets, wellness diets — routinely upsets hormonal regulation, potentially setting off serious mental and physical health problems and, paradoxically, weight gain.

In “Watching Our Weight Could Be Killing Us,” Heffernan talks about the work of Food Psych creator Christy Harrison, who is described as a “rogue dietician.” Apparently, her podcast is a bastion of fat acceptance, which some folks believe is not a philosophy that ought to be spread around.

Heffernan says that Harrison seems to “put up for grabs the self-evident connections between food, weight, and health.” In this she is not alone. She attracts followers who agree to the proposition that the effects of weight stigma might be more destructive to a person than the actual obesity.

A maverick

Harrison is regarded in some quarters as being very similar to a science denialist, just because she points out that too much concern over weight has been known to damage people. Her admirers are convinced of the possibility not only of health at any weight, but of beauty at any weight.

The discussion veers off into interesting byways, like the thought processes of diet critic Isabel Foxen Duke, who wants people to maintain awareness of their thoughts in the moment, and to be on the lookout for one particularly dangerous thought.

This is Heffernan’s interpretation:

Anytime you’re eating something while telling yourself you’re not going to do this tomorrow, she says, you’re in peril of mental poisoning. Probably you’re pumping out sickening cortisol, but at the very least you’re pumping out thoughts: What I’m doing now is shameful, horrible, “unhealthy,” and I won’t do it tomorrow. When you do, you deepen your own sense that you can’t be trusted, that your appetites are excessive, thereby interfering with the dynamics of tasting, swallowing, digesting, and even liking food.

Another digression stems from an observation that according to the World Health Organization, “fast and shelf-stable foods are unsafe at any dose.” This is bad news for survivors of apocalyptic disaster, whose existence will be miserable for many reasons but basically from nutritionally inadequate diets.

But wait— Christy Harrison does not agree:

Food is food, plain and simple, and it’s time to stop labeling with our brains and start listening to our intuition.

This bright-eyed heretic says diet culture is a form of oppression. She calls out fat phobia in the media. She rails against wellness diets that are really all about “the moralization and demonization of food” by the diet culture, which talks judgmentally about clean eating and dirty eating, and…

[…] demonizes certain ways of eating while elevating others, which means you’re forced to be hyper-vigilant about your eating, ashamed of making certain food choices, and distracted from your pleasure, your purpose, and your power.

Harrison does not even want nutrition classes to teach children that some foods are unhealthful, a viewpoint that meets with opposition.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Watching our weight could be killing us,” Wired.com, 01/21/19
Source: “What Is Diet Culture?,” ChristyHarrison.com, 08/10/18
Photo credit: Dun.can on Visualhunt/CC BY

Zipping Through Anti-Obesity Possibilities

This is a continuation of the list of posts that examine the parallels between tobacco, alcohol, and the overconsumption of food, to see what concepts might be usefully transferred from one problem to another; with the main ideas spotlighted and some new material here and there.

“Tobacco Road Continues”

In John McCrae’s iconic World War I poem, “In Flanders Fields,” we see the line, “To you from failing hands we throw the torch…” In other words, because the speaker in the poem and millions of fellow soldiers have died, it is up to the next generation to step up and take their places.

The tobacco industry carries out a sick parody of that sentiment. To maintain its current profitability, Big Tobacco needs to pull 1,300 Americans, each and every day, into the horde of nicotine-dependent zombies. The business has a name for these newly-inducted supporters, who are known as “replacement smokers.” Whom do they replace? The 1,300 people who die every day from tobacco-related disease processes.

“Two Strong Pro-Smoking Forces”

Speaking of the military, our country’s armed forces have always cooperated with the distribution of cigarettes to the troops, at home and abroad. Soldiers, sailors and especially Marines (who smoke a lot) get their fix at reduced prices, and often for free. Quite recently, the Department of Defense surveyed military smokers, and found that nearly 40 percent of them took up the habit after signing on Uncle Sam’s dotted line.

What’s in it for the industry? Glad you asked. Even if a servicemember only enlists for a four-year hitch, by the time he or she is discharged, there is a pretty good chance the person will be hooked on nicotine for life.

Just to mention one obvious parallel, the Pentagon could never encourage overeating to such an extent — especially when the military preparedness of America’s youth is already in such abysmal shape. A recent Council for a Strong America report confirmed that “nearly one-third of 17-to-24-year olds are too overweight to qualify for military service.” For the armed services to promote junk food and overeating to the same extent it promotes smoking, would be insane.

“Winning Hearts and Minds”

Agencies are tasked with creating public service campaigns to influence the young. When it comes to tobacco avoidance, their work is already half done for them, because it is not so very hard to depict smokers as pathetic losers. Smokers are unlikely to fight back against negative characterizations, because they know in their hearts that allegations against their deadly habit are not open to dispute.

People who are overweight or obese, however, tend to bristle when faced with unfavorable publicity. They resent being pointed to as bad examples, a judgment that smokers are more inclined to hang their heads and accept. And when it comes to influencing kids, the idea that “Smoking isn’t cool” is much easier to sell than “Overeating isn’t cool.”

The film industry tried valiantly to reduce the amount of onscreen smoking, with equivocal results. Imagine how hard it would be to reduce the depiction of eating. There can be a rule to ban smoking from movies or TV shows, but can there be a rule to ban visual representations of of snacking? When another film is made about King Henry VIII, will it have to leave out all the banquet hall scenes?

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “In Flanders Fields,” Poets.org
Source: “Unhealthy and Unprepared,” AmazonAWS.com, 2018
Photo credit: Earls37a on Visualhunt/ CC BY

Rubber and Road Part Company

“When the rubber meets the road” is the moment of truth, the point where things either work or go terribly wrong, where theories are proven or discarded. The trouble is, where humans are concerned, they contain so many variables that even ideas that seemed solidly entrenched for decades may be superceded.

Childhood Obesity News is in the process of extracting the kernel from each of its own posts about certain kinds of intervention. To cover the remaining items in this constellation of topics, it’s time to come up with some new images. Meanwhile…

“Smoking, Overeating, Other Bad Habits, and the Government”

This post contains a very important resource, the McKinsey Global Institute’s list of 18 general directions from which the obesity epidemic may be attacked, and this includes plenty of subcategories, making 74 “intervention levers” in all. We are looking at the extent to which many examples have succeeded in curbing other activities and habits inimical to the public good. If it made a dent in smoking, alcohol abuse, or other common vice, can it be useful to stop the obesity epidemic?

“Smoking, Obesity and Disease Culpability”

This post spotlighted a problem common to a growing number of people: lung cancer patients whose mental and emotional health is impacted by what they perceive as victim-blaming. One result is that some people are reluctant to go see a doctor, so diagnosis and treatment are delayed. Even lung cancer patients who never smoked feel oppressed by undeserved blame and guilt. Public awareness campaigns need to walk a fine line between offering help, and alienating the people who need it.

“Smoking, Obesity, Stigma, and Collateral Damage”

In some lives, shaming and stigmatization lead to suicide. There is some discussion of the psychological aspects of filling out health questionnaires, an area in which self-reporting is as unreliable as anywhere else. When children feel persecuted by doctors who want them to lose weight, they are likely to become adults who avoid doctors.

“Smoking, Obesity and Synergy”

Dr. Pretlow has said many times that information and education about nutrition are not enough. People who want to prevent or reverse their own obesity need their psychological toolbox filled with ways to divert and resist cravings. Fortunately, those skills can be taught and learned, to a very great extent.

But what they need first is motivation, and unless that is in place, probably not much progress will happen. Bureaucracies can be extraordinarily clumsy at trying to motivate people. This post also contains advice — from a man who lost 100 pounds — on how best to help someone who is engaged in an active struggle against obesity.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Photo credit: Carey Akin (cmakin) on Visualhunt/CC BY-SA

The Rubber-Meets-Road Test

Here continues the summary of posts that examine the efforts to eliminate smoking, and how they have been borrowed or might be adapted to quell the obesity epidemic.

“Smoking and Overeating — When Society Fights Back With Scorn”

Who feels more stigmatized — smokers, obese people, drug addicts, or alcoholics? What is the justification for applying social disapproval to other people’s problems? Why do the lifestyles of various kinds of addicts elicit different reactions from observers?

“Smoking, Overeating, and Stigmatization — Roots and Effectiveness”

Has the denormalization of smoking been accomplished in the USA? Yes and no.
In the last 50 years, the adult smoking rate has fallen from pretty near half of Americans to a percentage in the mid-teens. That sounds encouraging. But a percentage is a proportionate number; one segment as it relates to the whole. Expressed in raw figures, the change over the preceding half century does not sound nearly so impressive.

The number of Americans using some form of tobacco has gone from around 50 million in 1965 to around 47 million now. Because now, America has a lot more people. In 50-plus years, even though the ratio has shrunk considerably, there are only three million fewer smokers! Very close to the same number of people are exposing themselves to the risks of smoking-related illnesses now, as in 1965. And medical care has gotten a lot more expensive in those five decades.

“Smokers and the Obese — More Similarities and Differences”

Does stigmatization cause people to change? Any threat to a habit is likely to be subjected to defensive processing. Can an intervention attempt cause an equal and opposite reaction, eliciting rebellion from people who smoke or suffer from an eating disorder that results in obesity?

Again, we are reminded of the problems inherent in studies that depend on self-reporting. Other difficulties arise with trying too hard to compare smokers and overeaters. One inescapable difference is that a smoker can become a non-smoker overnight, while an obese person can adopt different habits or even a stringent weight-loss regime, and yet still remain obese for quite some time.

“The Non-Equivalency of Smoking and Overeating”

To put it another way, expecting someone to stop doing something is quite different from asking a person to stop being something. A person who focuses on smoking cessation can give himself or herself a leg up by avoiding smokers and environments where bumming a cigarette is a temptation. An overeater, unless she or he becomes a total hermit, cannot stay away from people who eat, or scenarios where food consumption is normal and expected.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Number of current adult smokers in the United States from 1965 to 2016 (in millions),” Statista.com, 2019
Photo credit: Bill Abbott (wbaiv) on Visualhunt/CC BY-SA