Obesity

There isn’t a lot for a kid in Montana to do in summer. School’s out and the heat is relentless – so stifling that the only real escape is the cool embrace of the fruit and vegetable aisle at Albertsons. By July, my hometown’s lone waterpark was overrun with feral, overweight preteens, their bellies jiggling as they stampeded across the scorching cement. After an overpriced afternoon at the waterpark, many of these kids would head to McDonald’s for dinner. The more upmarket option was to try to exploit a family with a country club membership. The fast food there is classy; quick but not greasy – think mini tacos and peppery chicken strips served with a petite white cup of ranch on the side. But down the highway are the real fast-food joints.

Imagine a movement of alcoholics wanting to glorify alcoholism. They’ll claim alcoholism is normal, even healthy. They’ll charge anyone who says otherwise as infected by a societally instilled form of methyphobia, the abject fear of alcohol. The movement will be sponsored by the alcohol industry, eager to gin up sales with the advent of “alcoholic positivity” promoting their addictive beverages. There will even be conferences around the country featuring activist alcoholics selling alcoholism as beautiful. The same movement is happening today with food.  TLC’s My 600-Lb Life returns with season twelve on Wednesday. Each episode offers a painful illustration of the consequences of extreme food addiction glorified today by activists for “body positivity.

The American Medical Association just announced its adoption of a head-scratching new policy that seems to be aimed not so much at improving people’s health, but at appearing sensitive and “woke.” The new policy is “aimed at clarifying how body mass index can be used as a measure in medicine.” BMI, apparently, has a “problematic history” because it “does not account for differences across race/ethnic groups, sexes, genders and age-span.” “BMI,” explains the Centers for Disease Control site (for now — they may not be up to “woke” speed just yet), “is a simple, inexpensive and noninvasive surrogate measure of body fat.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has released new guidelines on childhood obesity, advocating that children receive medication and even surgery as early as twelve years old to avoid long-term health consequences. The authors of the new guidelines argue against the historical belief that obesity can be overcome exclusively by lifestyle changes. They say that doesn’t adequately address “socioecological, environmental and genetic influences” that affect children. Childhood obesity rates, however, are higher than they’ve been in fifty years — and genetics didn’t cause the concerning rise. The most obvious changes in the Western lifestyle since then have included a massive increase in processed foods and the integration of the internet into everyday life.

Americans are fat and getting fatter. “More than two-thirds of adults in the United States are overweight or have obesity,” reports Heathline.com. The CDC (I actually trust them on this one) says that between 1999 and 2020, “obesity prevalence increased from 30.5 percent to 41.9 percent,” and severe obesity “increased from 4.7 percent to 9.2 percent.” And so, in the wake of woke, Old Navy and other clothing companies are (trying to) cash-in on our widening waistlines by disguising their latest capitalistic campaign as “inclusive sizing.” I gave up shopping for Lent. I made my return recently by perusing a Lands’ End catalog with my mother.