No, it's not. Obesity is unhealthy and usually the result of bad habits. All the ex-fatties I know think this "fat acceptance" crusade is bad and stupid.
There are better ways to help people become healthy.
>The present research demonstrates that, in addition to poorer mental health outcomes, weight discrimination has implications for obesity. Rather than motivating individuals to lose weight, weight discrimination increases risk for obesity.
Source: http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone...
All in all, it just does not make as much intuitive sense that fat jokes (among other things) encourage people to stay fat and this little study is definitely not enough to override occams razor in my opinion.
>Participants were drawn from the Health and Retirement Study, a nationally representative longitudinal survey of community-dwelling US residents. A total of 6,157 participants (58.6% female) completed the discrimination measure and had weight and height available from the 2006 and 2010 assessments. Participants who experienced weight discrimination were approximately 2.5 times more likely to become obese by follow-up (OR = 2.54, 95% CI = 1.58–4.08) and participants who were obese at baseline were three times more likely to remain obese at follow up (OR = 3.20, 95% CI = 2.06–4.97) than those who had not experienced such discrimination. These effects held when controlling for demographic factors (age, sex, ethnicity, education) and when baseline BMI was included as a covariate.
wrong, usually poor education / bad for profit dietary advice.
Wanna sit around all day and eat while watching TV? Sure go ahead here's a bottomless bag of celery to eat. Or carrots. Or lettuce. Good luck getting fat on that. But if the .com and .gov make a lot of money promoting corn chips, it doesn't matter that corn is terrible for mammals other than fattening up livestock on the farm, there's money to be made, pork those babes up with corn chips. Ditto 2 liters of corn syrup soda, bowls of ice cream, anything with refined sugar added. Get back to me when a disgusting display of gluttony involving grilled chicken ceasars salad results in obesity.
On the other hand if its something that farmers slop their hogs with to fatten them up, like, say, corn products, well, guess what happens if you slop the chicks with corn products?
They're completely and utterly wrong about that. But to get there would involve taking a new approach to getting out of whatever circumstances got them where they are and most will never do so. The few that do will become the next generation's rags to riches stories.
> No, it's not.
Yes it is.
> Obesity is unhealthy and usually the result of bad habits.
Shaming isn't therapy for bad habits, and "usually" wouldn't justify it even if it was.
> All the ex-fatties I know think this "fat acceptance" crusade is bad and stupid.
And...so what?
Fat shaming doesn't help fat people lose weight. It just makes them feel bad about themselves. It may well make some people eat more. It polarises the debate, and pushes some people into the fat acceptance camps.
Fat shaming is harmful.
Note that fat shaming is different from being honest about body weight.
Shame is a powerful thing, one that has it's place. However, most people who deal with removing an emotional or physical crutch will tell you that lots of tough love and harsh words won't do the trick. This is why 'fat shaming' might be fine in the eyes of some, but it's not in the eyes of everyone.
Now, I'm also not for the whole idea of 'fat acceptance', since it's just the opposite extreme of shame. Neither extreme will actually help people become more healthy (in the large and general scale).
As always, the solution is in the middle: lots of love and support, but also unwavering commitment to solving a problem. The carrot and the stick.
http://www.iub.edu/~k536/images/patho/bmimortality.jpg
Edit: this also looks relevant http://protonsforbreakfast.wordpress.com/tag/mortality/
I'm having difficulty elaborating, so an analogy: letting snake venom course through your body after receiving a snakebite is not good. But that doesn't mean cutting off the affected limb is good.
I already am in a socialized medicine system where we all share the costs for everyone, its just run by private sector for profit crooks who skim a huge amount off the top, mostly. So every penny spent on fat dude's insulin so he can keep drinking corn syrup soda is a penny that can't be spent on something I directly care about, like glaucoma (yeah yeah I know just get medical weed, whatever...) or celiac disease or other topics.
If you're trying to define a new cultural norm, in this case for eating, you're probably going to roll out a group-think consensus type meme, so not shaming people for being rebels is going to be an issue. This strategy needs a (good) marketing guy. The Apple iDinner, now without love handles. Something like that.
As Mikeb85 says, the map posted by elwell starts at 13.7%, and that lowest band goes up to nearly a quarter of the population at 23.3%!
NHBLI have a nice chart here. http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/guidelines/obesity/bmi_tbl.htm
The average American man is 69 inches tall. He'd have to be 203 pounds to have a BMI of 30. The average American woman is 64 inches. She'd weigh 174 pounds.
Fat shaming is bad, and stupid, and shouldn't be tolerated. But there is a problem with people's shifting perceptions of what "fat" and "obese" mean. People who would have been called fat are now called "shapely" or "curvy".
People do not recognise obesity any more.