Social constructions
“Fat,” says Campos, “is a cultural construct, not a medical fact.” In 1985, Oliver notes, a consensus conference convened by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) recommended that men and women be considered “overweight” at BMIs of 27.8 and 27.3, respectively. In 1996 an NIH-sponsored review of the literature found that “increased mortality typically was not evident until well beyond a BMI level of 30.” Yet two years later, the NIH yielded to a World Health Organization recommendation that “overweight” be defined downward to a BMI of 25, with 30 or more qualifying as “obese.” Oliver says “the scientific ‘evidence’ to justify this change”—which made millions of Americans overweight overnight—“was nonexistent,” since “there is no uniform point on the BMI scale where all these diseases [linked to weight] become more evident.”
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“Nearly all the warnings about obesity are based on little more than loose statistical conjecture,” says Oliver, adding that there is no plausible biological explanation for most of the asserted causal links between fatness and disease. “The health risks associated with increasing weight are generally small,” says Campos, and “these risks tend to disappear altogether when factors other than weight are taken into account.” For example, “a moderately active larger person is likely to be far healthier than someone who is svelte but sedentary.” Campos cites research finding that obese people “who engage in at least moderate levels of physical activity have around one half the mortality rate of sedentary people who maintain supposedly ideal weight levels.”
I can think of a number of people (almost all women, sadly) who could benefit from reading this. I'd heard of Campos' book before, but Oliver's is new to me; interesting that they both started assuming the status quo was correct and came to roughly the same, contrarian, conclusions.
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“Nearly all the warnings about obesity are based on little more than loose statistical conjecture,” says Oliver, adding that there is no plausible biological explanation for most of the asserted causal links between fatness and disease. “The health risks associated with increasing weight are generally small,” says Campos, and “these risks tend to disappear altogether when factors other than weight are taken into account.” For example, “a moderately active larger person is likely to be far healthier than someone who is svelte but sedentary.” Campos cites research finding that obese people “who engage in at least moderate levels of physical activity have around one half the mortality rate of sedentary people who maintain supposedly ideal weight levels.”
I can think of a number of people (almost all women, sadly) who could benefit from reading this. I'd heard of Campos' book before, but Oliver's is new to me; interesting that they both started assuming the status quo was correct and came to roughly the same, contrarian, conclusions.
