Denver Post Blames Everyone, Mostly Parents, for Alleged Epidemic
rebelle has been keeping her eyes on the Denver Post, which has been offering up a quiet but steady number of anti-fat articles over the past year. This time, they want to "fight obesity where it starts" - the home.
It seems like the editors grabbed a dartboard (or perhaps Fat Hate Bingo) and threw darts in order to come up with an op-ed. Is it due to genetics? Maybe! Is it due to food? Maybe! Is it due to parents? Maybe! Well, who cares - just print the same old same old.
This is one situation where one size definitely does not fit all.
But later:
There's no doubt that the conditions that have combined to create a generation of severely overweight kids have had devastating consequences and are not going to be easy to change. While we're glad to see food producers making less-junky snacks and cereals, it's clear the real changes need to take place at dinner tables and playgrounds around the country.
Note "severely overweight" kids. That's the first time I've heard that. "Devastating consequences"... and yet... nothing firm in the article. Sure, sure, they note the 200% increase in diabetes in kids... and that sounds bad. But, you know, changing your methodology and definition of diabetes helps throw a big question mark over said results.
We also get a healthy dose of "But you're crippling the healthcare system" - what a treat. Bonus points for the comment thread on the article with one lone comment equating fat people with pigs. AWESOME.
When you're digging in the mud trying to come up with an article to scare people, I suppose evoking pig imagery isn't too much of a stretch. Too bad it's misplaced here; the op-ed's authors are the pigheaded ones here.
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Posted by paul on July 2, 2007
"Obesity" is not just the result of two other conditions: excess caloric intake, and insufficient exercise. If that were true, there would be no fat people who eat moderately and exercise, and thin people who eat large amounts of food and are sedentary wouldn't remain thin. There is something more, a group of factors more complex than just option a and option b, which contribute to the state of fatness, in the same way thinness is not always attributable just to one or two causal factors.
But since we don't know what all these other causal factors are, it's much easier to oversimplify and say, all fat people are so because they eat too much and don't exercise. It's an oversimplification and it's just wrong.
Jennifer Portnick
Personal Trainer (who is fat)
San Francisco, CA
Where is this "generation of severly overweight kids?" Seriously, it sounds like all kids these days are fat, but really that's not the case.
Indeed. I know a lot of people would expect my kid to be big, since I am, but my daughter is at a healthy weight for her age. And it's not like she doesn't eat- she's the least picky kid I've ever seen, and loves a wide variety of food.
In their print edition, they printed my letter. Yay! (But I haven't read any online comments, because I am not interested in seeing how many haters have flamed me for it).
Ok, I did my duty and posted a reply. I'll post it here, in case ya'll don't want to click to get to it:
First off, some common misconceptions: Pigs, like most animals as a rule, have an appetite shutoff. Basically, they stop eating when they are full. Now, pigs do eat alot because they happen to have an extremely fast growth rate from birth to adulthood. Some other mammals do too, such as whales, chickens, etc. Humans have a slower maturity rate, so we generally eat less, yes even the fat ones.
Appetite shutoff is controlled genetically, in a pretty strong way. We know this, because disorders such as Prader-Willi syndrome exist. In cases of these disorders, sufferers never feel full, even if their stomachs are full to the point of bursting. Clearly, this is not at all environmental, and, it is not eating like pigs, and it is not the fault of poor parenting.
All in all, appetite, though, has only a small part in the obesity complex. How do some people stay thin all their lives, eating the worst junk, while others eat decent, and end up obese? It's not all self control. Scientists know now that obesity is a complex genetic issue, including genetic traits, and environmental triggers. From Discover Magazine (http://discovermagazine.com/2007/may/mendel2019s-mouse):Recently Churchill and his Jackson Laboratory colleagues decided to go after some big genetic game, the gene network that controls body weight. "With 300 million people now suffering from obesity worldwide, fat has become a global epidemic.. . .The map they came up with looks like a flowchart from hell. Churchill’s group identified a dozen sites in the mouse genome where genes are influencing the body weight of mice. But the genes have different effects. Some make mice large-bodied, and being big makes mice more likely to get fat. But they also found genes that had separate effects on both body size and fat levels. In some cases, the same gene could make a mouse both big and lean. Other genes influenced only how fat the mice were, with no effect on their body size. Still other genes determined the size of different fat pads. One region of mouse DNA appears to make mice fat overall while actually making the fat pads on their haunches smaller."
This research shows that obesity is indeed very complex. And that while environmental interaction plays a role, its role is tightly bound to genetics. One could argue, the best thing a person can do to ensure reasonable weight, is to choose the right parents.
Further research is presented in the book "Rethinking Thin", By Gina Kolata(link)
This book presented peer reviewed research linking obesity to exposure to cigarette smoking during gestation, and also presented large government funded research interventions which show massive expensive efforts at dietary change in communities has no effect whatsoever on obesity within a community.
So, while the diet industry doesn't like people to know this, the truth is, obesity is not a simple formula in any way. It is a complex interaction based strongly in genetics. And, No, it doesn't begin in a child's home. By that point, much of the genetics are decided, and a large amount of the environmental triggers have already happened (in the womb).
This article also cites CDC figures on obesity, which the CDC has admitted to flawed research practices. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8902-2004Nov23.html)
Furthermore, there is little evidence about exact costs to the healthcare system. At best, there is speculation and extrapolation. To profess this as fact if fallible.
From all of this, we can conclude that this article is uninformed, at least. It is also highly possible the author of this article is biased, since society considers fat to be evil. This bias will continue to hold back any fruitful research and reduction in obesity for anyone. It is a shame good reporting on this is not possible.