When it comes down to it, most teenagers will have unexpected weight gain at times, and will be very upset at the way their bodies are changing. In fact, while I appreciate your comment about my teenage years, I literally do not know one single woman in my age group who did not have similar issues — often manifested differently, but none the less it came down to the very act of eating having some sort of moral quality to it. “I was good today” or “I was bad today” based on every food experience. What I'd like to see is this idea of moral failing or success tied to food to go away. Making good choices as to what we put into our bodies has to come from a different place — it makes us feel better, it makes our daily lives better by giving us energy instead of weighing us down, etc. I think that tying good health decisions to health instead of weight can go a long way to solving the problem without giving any implicit or explicit fat shaming messages, which are harmful to both fat people and to thin people.

Hi CStanley — I appreciate what you said, and I want to make it clear that I do understand your concerns, and I'm concerned about the same things. The problem I have with the way this thread was going is exactly what you said: “people's behavior does seem to be more motivated on appearance than on long term health concerns”. I find this to be one of the roots of the problem to begin with. We put far too much emphasis on appearance in our culture, and as I've said (too many now) times on this thread, this is not only not helping to cure the obesity problem, it's almost certainly having the opposite effect. I know that it's easier to just to, as tidbits suggests, do a big fat-shaming guerilla campaign maligning fat people, than it is to try and change the narrative away from the ever-present skinny=healthy meme that is so prevalent (and not particularly accurate either) and that tries to justify unattainable beauty standards with science.

“Paying attention” to the messaging means I'm a parent who's focused on the world she's interacting with (as much as I can be). It means I'm listening, mostly, to her and her friends, as well as the marketing and public service messaging. It also means I'm fighting back nearly non-stop (feels like!) against daily runs to Sonic or MickieD's, or regular Dunkin' Donut breakfasts. They're totally surrounded by lures to put garbage into their systems — and to be honest, I think I'd be failing in my duty as a parent if I weren't trying to off-set all that.

Oh for goodness' sake, tidbits, you said many “inartful” things, things that were quite offensive, with a pretty dang clear message, and I called you out on it. A lot of people say rude things without malintent, but those things can still hurt. I don't purport to know what's in your soul, but when you say what you said, it's hard to come to any other conclusion that you think ridicule is an acceptable way to get people to be thin. What that says about your soul is anybody's guess.

“That I am not as politically correct as some would have me be…Guilty.”

I'm very tired of hearing people say say “Oh I'm just not PC” after saying something offensive. It's very reminiscent of “I'm not a racist, it's just that [insert racist comment]“, only the “PC” term can be used for anything offensive or discriminatory.

“a guerilla PR campaign”

I've tried to explain through many comments that shaming fat people is something that is done all the time, by so very many aspects of our culture, and it doesn't work. In fact, it is counterproductive if what you're going for is a drop in obesity. It does, however, do an excellent job of making thin people feel superior and special. This is what makes me dubious of your request to “Please respond to ideas” — I did. It's a bad idea.

“PETA like approach,”

Ah, PETA is a great example of highly offensive advertising that does darn near nothing to affect the causes they purport to be working for. They always get the press with their constant use of naked women though, don't they?

Also, I don't believe I called you any names. I was offended by the fat hating memes you trotted out, and said so.

Just to give you a bit of my background: I'm the daughter of 2 extremely attractive, ridiculously in-shape parents, who were just about perfect parents in every way, but were not afraid to tell me exactly what I should and shouldn't eat, and that exercise was an important part of every day. Statements like “honey, how do feel about starting a sit-up program together? We *both* could use it” were in easy supply. The result? Teenage eating disorder, and a body complex that it took years and much therapy to overcome. Yay fun! In my early twenties I was finally able to confront my parents, and tell them that they were under no circumstances allowed to comment on my weight or my body — even if I had lost weight and was looking great. It just hurt too much to have their approval and disapproval hinge on something like body size. After some crying and “you don't appreciate anything I do for you!”, they agreed not to make any comments on my weight, and my relationship with them improved immediately. Incidently, so did my ability to lead a healthy lifestyle at a healthy weight. When your weight is not a condition of others' love for you (whether this is real or perceived), when weight is something you can separate from your inherent goodness, when weight and food are not moral decisions, it's a lot easier to be rational about keeping at a healthy weight.

To the issue. Obesity is a serious health problem. I have attendedd too many funerals of overweight friends to believe otherwise and worked in an advisory capacity in one of the first weight based discrimination lawsuits in the country…the subject of late night talk show humor. Btw, it was dismissed because obesity is not a “protected class”.

What I tried to suggest, through perhaps inarful humor, was a guerilla PR campaign to grab people's attention as opposed to politely telling folks they might get diabetes someday or die of an early heart attack someday. The subtle, politically correct, nudging IMHO doesn't have the desired effect. So, I suggest we push the envelope…not in a discriminatory manner, but in an in-your-face, PETA like approach, to get the issue out front.

To those who were offended by my choice of language, my apologies.

No. It's not ok. But how to fight back against that without sounding like a jerk? Education isn't gonna do it. And eating well is *not* more expensive than buying junk food. Processed / junk food is, however, MUCH much easier to deal with at mealtime (as was noted downthread). I really think that's more key than anything else, actually.

Yes, Polimom, I do think talking about it in realistic terms does have the potential to be productive. I don't think that it is realistic to think that shaming fat people is going to help, as that is what we are already doing, every day, as a culture. And it most certainly has not helped. If we look at obesity trends and compare them to trends in the diet market, and to trends in the population seeing being fat as a *moral* failure, and to trends of severely underweight women appearing as ideal in popular culture, we do NOT see that these things cause the obesity rate to go down. In fact, we see exactly the opposite. I'm not at all denying the issues you bring up — I understand very well that obesity rates are going up, that obesity often causes health problems, and that those health problems cost a lot of money. I am saying that refusing to be “civil” about the conversation is causing the problem to be worse, not better.

Saying to a smoker that their breath stinks and they won't be able to find a date doesn't make them want to quit smoking, it makes them think you are a jerk. And they're right. In the same way, cow calling (the fat version of cat calling) does not make a fat person go out and lose weight, it just clues them into the fact that there are jerks out there.

Look, I'm not averse to having a conversation about how to bring down obesity rates, but I am very much offended at seeing fat people scapegoated for America's health care crisis, and I am also quite ashamed that these memes about fat people being stupid and lazy and ugly get passed off as “realistic” or constructive conversation, when they are neither.

In the current health care debate (which is actually why I thought this was worth talking about in the first place), we're talking about making sure health care is available to all — a goal worth striving for. Directly related to that… subsidizing premiums for people who cannot afford them is a logical outcome of reform. Of course, such subsidies will come in the form of taxes. Public money.

When you combine that with projections of up obesity rates of 40% (in TX by 2040), this is a very real social issue coming down the pipe.

Down the line (not very far), when nearly 1/2 the population is radically affecting health care costs that are rippling through the system, the conversation is likely to be far less civil. Don't you think talking about it in realistic terms right now has the potential to be more productive?

And I just want to repeat again: there are no fat people who don't understand that being thin is considered attractive in our culture. If you think that, you must also think that fat people are braindead (of course we already know tidbits thinks that only “stupid” people are fat). There is a legitimate concern that there are a huge number of people who are not educated on what a good diet is, and there are also a lot of people who do not have the access or means for a good diet, but let's not equate the sort of education etc needed to change these problems with some idea that all the thin people need to make sure that the fat people understand that they're ugly. Thin people have been *extremely* clear on this point, and somehow that hasn't caused all the big fatties to run out and lose weight.

And as far as shaming- I guess it was initially brought up in a negative manner a bit like that, and PM explained some of the reasons that that's not a good approach. But there's also the positive framing of the issue by helping people make choices that lead to health and attractiveness- and I don't think it's really disputable that the latter tends to be a stronger motivator.

I don't really know what the answer is here (probably education and doing away with farm subsidies and getting good grocery stores into low-income neighborhoods all are good steps), but blaming the fatty-fat-fats for our national health care crisis is not only falling flat in effectivity, but it's also a really *sshole way to look at things.

FT – My use of the phrase “God bless you” was meant as a simple courtesy, not as a religious statement. If I offended you, please accept my apology. I will remember in the future not to make such references when responding to your comments.

CS – Thanks for the real life example of using “attractiveness” as a marketing tool to achieve a greater benefit.

We have, however, been running a somewhat schizophrenic campaign regarding weight. On the one hand, we don't want to over-focus on it, because then (some) people swing too far the other direction into anorexia (or bulemia). And we've heard and read a lot about how heavy people are discriminated against, subtly, in society and the economy.

There's been a not-so-subtle PC movement toward normalizing heaviness. The whole, “You're okay if you're overweight; love your body; love yourself as you are” campaign has had great effect in this arena.

An excellent example of this is Dr. Andre Agatston and the South Beach Diet. He's a serious cardiologist who focuses on prevention and has pioneered some work on cardiac imaging (calcium scoring, which is far better at measuring real risk of heart attack than any of the methods used by traditional cardiologists.)He created what is now known as the South Beach Diet as a means of improving his patients' cardiovascular health. When a lot of his patients started losing weight, and their friends were asking how they had done it, he realized that more people were motivated by the vanity aspect than the health one- and he figured he might as well promote it on that basis too since it works as a powerful motivator.

Sorry no. The road to bankruptcy has already arrived. It's caused by massive over charging by the medical industry. Cost is the problem not fat people. Capitalist medicine cannot work because it is based on supply and demand. Supply will always be in greater and greater demand with more and more people. There is no competition, no incentive to reduce cost. Only a National Healthcare system with strict government control will serve the American people. What we have now is just a rip off. And lets not have God blessing me. I'm not sure your God is my God.