But you can take heart from new research by CBU professors Scott Stewart and Sue Korol, who offer a fresh perspective on obesity and its effect on health. 

The statistics surrounding fat are numerous and alarming. Obesity is blamed for a wide range of chronic conditions — most notably heart disease and diabetes. In 1999 the U.S. Government attributed 280,000 deaths to obesity; by 2004 that figure had risen to 400,000.

But philosophy professor Stewart and psychologist Korol say that the way we tackle obesity needs rethinking. Far from being the root of modern society’s ills, they say there is little evidence to show that obesity itself is the cause of the problem: “We’re being misled,” says Korol. “Obesity is not the enemy; but inactivity, poor diet, and stress.”

In a wide-ranging paper entitled Designing Fat: The Construction of a Global Obesity Epidemic, the pair argue that obesity’s link with disease is often oversimplified and overstated. Research suggests, for instance, that fat is not the cause of chronic illnesses like hypertension. 

“Only in 15 percent of cases are hypertension and fat related,” says Korol. “And when you look at atherosclerosis [hardening of the arteries], even morbidly obese people are no more likely to have it than thin people. We’re led to believe that if you’re fat, your arteries are likely to be clogged and you’re going to be hypertensive — but this is just not the case.”

Dr. Korol also cites large studies demonstrating that even Type 2 diabetes can be prevented through exercise and diet, irrespective of weight loss. She suggests that much of the time, it’s not overweight that does the damage, but bad lifestyle and bad food choices. 

In fact, slightly fatter fit people tend to be healthier than thin fit people: “One of the major studies looking at fitness and fatness showed that a 138-pound, 5ft 10in man is twice as likely to die [before his next birthday] as a 175-pound man of the same height. A middle-aged 5ft 5in woman has half the risk of death at 146 pounds than at 115 pounds.”

Korol argues that the tendency to view obesity as a disease has given added credence to pharmaceutical and weight-loss companies, who use its distorted, ‘medicalized’ definition to their benefit — hardly surprising, given that the industry is worth around $40 billion per year in the U.S. alone. At any given time, 55 percent of the American population claim they are on a diet. 

But, she says, it is next to impossible to achieve sustainable weight loss through dieting — a fact that may be explained by the Set Point Theory: “Any individual’s weight remains stable only within a 20-pound range, so if you’re under that range you’re never, ever going to stay at that weight because your body isn’t designed to do it. This means good and bad news for the dieting industry: on the one hand, they can’t actually deliver what they promise; but the good news is that customers are constantly returning…”

Society today has us believe that to be thin is not only healthy and aesthetically pleasing; it is the norm. One study cited by Stewart and Korol amply and chillingly demonstrates the cultural pressure to be thin: “Ninety percent of formerly obese people would rather be blind or have a leg amputated than be fat again.”

This pressure to stick to one’s ‘ideal weight’ comes from many sources: the media, fashion, Big Pharma, the diet and fitness industries — even concerned friends and family. Yet the concept of ‘ideal weight’ is far from being a scientific constant. Its origins lie not in medical research, but in the mortality tables used by insurance companies to calculate the probability of a person dying before his or her next birthday.

Back in 1912, American insurers drew up average height/weight tables based on a person’s age. Back then, a typical 5ft 4in woman in her twenties would have weighed 126 pounds. As she grew older and her metabolism slowed, that figure increased to 132 pounds in her thirties, and 140 pounds in her forties. By her fifties, the average American woman weighed 145 pounds. 

Then the goalposts shifted. In 1943, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company introduced its own standard height/weight tables, where average weight was repackaged as ideal weight — with all reference to age removed. By 1959, ideal weight had been further rebranded as desirable weight, and a slightly built 5ft 4in woman of any age was now being told she should weigh between 108 and 116 pounds. And the legacy of that astonishing, ever-diminishing target still exists, says Korol: “The body mass index (BMI) that everybody’s talking about is just another height/weight table.”

Stewart and Korol not only looked at issues of weight down the years; they also made cross-cultural comparisons of fat and chronic disease around the globe. In the United States, around eight percent of the population suffers from diabetes, whilst obesity rates can run as high as 32 percent. When they looked at worldwide rates of diabetes, they realised that the Western tendency to blame the disease on obesity — whilst plausible — may well be fallacious. “We looked at India, which has the highest rate of diabetes in the world: 12 percent in the general population. However, if you picture the average person from India, you’re not looking at a morbidly obese person. Their rate of obesity is two percent of the population. And then you look at a place like Samoa, where the rate of obesity is incredibly high — 75 percent, and upward of 80 percent among women — but the prevalence of diabetes is nine percent.”

So if obesity is not the root cause of such illnesses, where can we look to fix them? 

The underlying triggers for diabetes and other chronic diseases are complex, says Korol, but the main culprits are poor diet, and a stressful lifestyle. As a psychologist, she is especially interested in how we can reduce the trends in today’s society that promote such factors. Elevated stress and anxiety levels lead to physical health problems like hypertension and diabetes, which are especially prevalent in modern, urban environments. 

“What we need to do is refocus on non-weight factors: to look at the unhealthy effects of urbanization, social isolation, the individualized nature of our culture, stress, lack of exercise, bad food choices…”

Korol describes the healthy diet and age-old traditions of the remote Japanese island of Okinawa, whose inhabitants are famed for their longevity. Peoples who observe long-standing rituals and traditions enjoy lower stress levels, she says, because they do not suffer the fatigue and anxiety that modern, industrialized cultures face as they fight to reinvent practices such as child-rearing, religion, and diet.

She also praises the Slow Food movement, which seeks to counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat. “One of the things we talk about in the concluding section of the paper is that we should be looking at redefining and enjoying our relationship with food ... getting rid of this obsession with dieting.

“We need to make it more about quality, about good food choices and also enjoyment, connecting and sharing. We’ve been so quick to abandon traditions and family time. The whole concept of the TV dinner, this unidentifiable slop in a package: what is that? What does that do to our general health, our physical health, our psychological health?”

The questions Korol poses are, of course, rhetorical. The implication is quite clear: the food industry is about as likely to bail us out of our unhealthy lifestyles as the diet and pharmaceutical companies are. It’s up to us, individual consumers, to make those healthier choices. 

The really good news that comes from this research is that you can lose any guilt and stress you once might have felt about your weight, and start enjoying a tasty, healthy, balanced diet once more. 

And even the bad news is good news — since it makes for a long, happy and active life. 

The bad news? 

— You still have an appointment with that treadmill. 

Further information
Scott Stewart: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address); (902) 563-1252
Sue Korol: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address); (902) 563-1297