Obesity

Posted on January 25, 2010 by Michael

In my recent post where I show how Suzanne Franks wants to find sexism where it doesn’t exist, I skipped one important point because I didn’t want to derail the specific topic at hand. The truth is that my concern over her post stems in part from a disdain for active obesity. But that term needs explaining because it just begs to be misinterpreted.

By “active” I mean obesity which is still receiving contributions, if you will. People who are obese and do nothing about it are immoral. Here’s the way I get to that conclusion.

If it is agreed that one ought to treat humans with respect and a certain level of care, then that principle should be extended to one’s self (henceforth referred to as “the self”). No convincing reason exists for why the self should be excluded from generalizations of how one ought to treat humans. Afterall, a human is a human is a human.

This then means that if overeating can be considered a mistreatment of a human being (and I think it can), active obesity is thus immoral. But just to be sure there are no misunderstandings, this is not to say that merely being overweight or obese is inherently immoral. Plenty of such unhealthy people do things to improve their health. No one expects them to be perfect at it; it’s a struggle. But the fact that they have put forth a reasonable effort brings them into morality.

Now, there are a huge number of caveats to this and I won’t be able to address them all. Are obese kids immoral? On the whole, no, because blame can generally be placed upon the parents (not to mention the inherent short-sightedness of being a child). Those with disorders or disabilities? Presuming a reasonable effort is being put forth (which may be well less than what an average person can do), then of course not. Should one expect a perfect exercise and diet regiment in order to call a person moral? Here I would appeal to a utilitarian perspective where it is necessary to maximize pleasure. Whereas overeating inherently undermines pleasure for most (because it increases the likelihood of death, not to mention all the other displeasing things that come with obesity), living an anal retentive life of absolute health will probably also not make one very happy. I don’t think an exact point of balance can be drawn for anyone, but it is possible to find a reasonable balance of a healthy lifestyle and still having fun. And the caveats go on and on.

So when I see that picture on CNN (see my post on Franks), I see a somewhat justified objectification. Active obesity is a bad thing and should not be respected. Now, there’s no way to know if the obese people in the image are trying to correct their behavior or not (hence the phrase “somewhat justified”), but it is obvious that most overweight and obese people do not put forth an honest effort. (In fact, even thin people don’t put forth much of an effort.) We should roundly denounce that and actively tell them to take care of their bodies. And, again because misinterpretation is begging to happen here, that doesn’t mean we ought to mock and belittle the overweight and obese. Personally, I favor doing what I can to help. In my own life, I will often discourage others from eating crappy food (provided they do it as a routine, not a rare treat). I don’t go too far, however, because I am careful not to tread on their personal choices. Unlike the bigots who have so often made marriage a privilege for heterosexuals, I do not believe my ideas of morality should be imposed upon others.

Finally on an aside, all this philosophy originally comes from a consideration of why suicide might be wrong. I always had a fascination with the laws many places have which make suicide illegal, so that naturally raised the question of why it ought to be illegal. Ultimately, I concluded it was equivalent to homicide based upon the principle embodied in “a human is a human is a human”.

Filed under: Atheism/Humanism | Tagged: , , , , | 7 Comments »

Expanding on sexism

Posted on January 24, 2010 by Michael

I recently wrote about this awful post from Thus Spake Zuska (“Zuska” is Suzanne E. Franks, an engineer and scientist). It’s centered on this image from a CNN story about problems obese women face while trying to get medical care.

[The above image is shown] just so you can be sure to remember that the world is staring at and judging you when you are overweight, young lady! No, we don’t need to see your head or even your whole body. Just the boobs and crotch – the pieces that define women’s worth. White women only need apply for our decapitated torso shot, please, even though the problems of access to adequate medical care and weight-related health issue are just as critical and maybe even more so for brown women.

There are some inherent problems in this post, ones Franks refuses to address because her feminism, which has obvious value, has taken her off the deep end. First, the image doesn’t focus on “boobs and crotch”. It focuses on the most obese areas of two obese women. The mid-section is often the focus in these sort of images, but sometimes butt shots are used to show the fatness of people. But does anyone believe Franks wouldn’t have objected to those sort of images?

And has Franks not seen the average TV news report on obesity? When it’s about men, these same sort of areas become the focus. When it’s about Americans, the focus is again the same but with both sexes shown.

What is being muddled by Franks’ deep-end philosophy is that this is not an objectification of women: it’s an objectification of fat people. She has no standing to raise concerns here based upon her sex. As a human she has standing because it can be argued that objectification is always bad, but that goes beyond being male or female.

And then, of course, there’s the fact that Franks is inanely trying to bring race into the equation by calling both of the above women white. The one on the right clearly is not white; she has the skin tone of Obama. Even in the comment section of her post, Franks won’t acknowledge this error (which was noted by both myself and another person).

CNN is basically re-reporting a story from Health.com, which is primarily aimed at women. That may explain why the story focuses on the problems being overweight causes for women, as if overweight men didn’t experience any issues with obtaining adequate health care.

The story does not suggest overweight men don’t experience difficulty in obtaining health care. It specifically talks about studies on women’s health care. Those can probably be generalized to overweight men, but that would be going beyond the source material. This is just an instance of Franks trying to find sexism where it doesn’t exist (what with her deep-end mentality).

But what I find really interesting is comparing the photo that Health.com chose to illustrate their story, as compared to CNN. It’s this:

First of all, the photo takes up a lot less real estate on the page than CNN’s photo does. It sits beside the story, instead of blaring across the top of the page as something you have to scroll past before you can get to the story. And finally, CNN’s photo says to the female reader “this is how the world sees all you fat bitches” whereas Health.com’s photo says something more like “you are taking control of your health”.

Okay, so here’s what Franks has told us: 1) Her opinion about website aesthetics not only matters but is somehow relevant. 2) Health.com’s picture is far more acceptable even though it says “accept” and “reject” based upon weight.

To be fair, Franks later goes on in the comment section to point out that she did not actually read the scale. But let’s just pretend it was a normal scale with straight forward numbers. Is that really better? In that it does not objectify obese people, maybe. But that isn’t Franks’ ‘point’. She believes it’s better because it doesn’t objectify women. Of course, that was never the point of the image, and I’ve already shown that female-ness isn’t the concern but rather obesity (as can be seen all the time in news reports; coverage of obese people is equally objectifying towards men and women – Franks just wants to see sexism where it does not exist; it’s pathetic).

But the most interesting thing of all this comes from the comment section. I responded there but again and again I get accused of “mansplaining” and only making my points from a male perspective. I guess it is inherently male-y to point out where the fattest part of humans tends to be. It’s male-y to point out that people are being objectified, not a particular sex. And most of all, it’s male-y to ever disagree with a deep-end feminist about sexism. But I’m the one being sexist, right? I’m the one making accusations based upon sex, right? I’m the one who is stereotyping a person because of his/her chromosomes, right?

Finally, of interesting note is that Franks’ comment section had been completely open until just today. Comments yesterday did not require her approval. Now they do. It will be interesting to see if my latest comment shows up at all now.

Update: Franks has since made a new post on another topic, indicating that she has logged in. My comment has not appeared. I take this as evidence that she is unable to defend her position.

Also, on a final note, I defended myself against criticisms of “mansplaining” and other non-sense by pointing out my assumption that I was reading a post from a man (I can’t “mansplain” to another man, I presume). It’s true that I often assume I’m reading writing from men on the Internet, but that’s simply a product of the fact that the main blogs I read are by men, not to mention the fact that most blogs are by men anyway. This is an explanatory claim, not a normative one, and should be understood as such. But that isn’t the whole truth. I said I hadn’t noticed Franks’ picture on her front page while reading her post. I actually did see it, but I still thought I was reading a post by a man – just one with long hair. That isn’t to say that Franks’ appearance takes away the value of anything she has to say; it doesn’t. I knew I was in hostile, deep-end territory, so any comment on the appearance of anyone* was likely to be taken drastically out of context. But to repeat the point I was making, I thought I was reading a post by a man. This effectively defeats the silly claim of “mansplaining”.

*And by “anyone” I mean only women since these people are sexist in that way.

Double Update: My post finally has shown up – well after this post.

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Obese sex is unnatural

Posted on June 24, 2009 by Michael

Sex with obese individuals is unnatural, not intended by God, and thus wrong and immoral.

People are naturally attracted to healthy individuals. The obese are definitively not healthy. It follows, plainly and clearly, that any attraction to these people is a sexual perversion. Furthermore, those who are obese are gluttonous and thus sinners.

As a result of these facts, I propose a ban on all marriage to the obese. They harm society through their added burden to the healthcare system. They encourage children to think that obesity is acceptable, even though the Bible clearly bans it. Obesity is a scourge on the world which must be destroyed.

Only things deemed ‘natural’ and ‘intended by God’ can be considered normal, good, even moral. All else must go. It makes me go “Yuck!”

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Your kid is a reflection of you

Posted on April 7, 2009 by Michael

It looks like Huntington, Virginia may be losing its title of most disgusting place in America. The new title holder will be…the rest of America.

A striking new study says almost 1 in 5 American 4-year-olds is obese, and the rate is alarmingly higher among American Indian children, with nearly a third of them obese. Researchers were surprised to see differences by race at so early an age.

Overall, more than half a million 4-year-olds are obese, the study suggests. Obesity is more common in Hispanic and black youngsters, too, but the disparity is most startling in American Indians, whose rate is almost double that of whites.

The lead author said that rate is worrisome among children so young, even in a population at higher risk for obesity because of other health problems and economic disadvantages.

“Economic disadvantages” is the biggest cop-out. It is wholly possible to eat healthy without spending a load of money on food. Beside that, it’s really quite easy for most people to go for a fucking walk, even if they do decide to have that diarrhea-inducing chalupa from Taco Bell.

Dr. Glenn Flores, a pediatrics and public health professor at University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, said the research is an important contribution to studies documenting racial and ethnic disparities in children’s weight.

“The cumulative evidence is alarming because within just a few decades, America will become a ‘minority majority’ nation,” he said. Without interventions, the next generation “will be at very high risk” for heart disease, high blood pressure, cancers, joint diseases and other problems connected with obesity, said Flores, who was not involved in the new research.

The thing is, the numbers released are alarming no matter the ethnicity or race. They are all absurd. No 4 year old should be obese. In fact, no person without an uncontrollable medical condition should be remotely close to obese.

Willingly fat and obese people are immoral monsters. They are willfully throwing away a human life due to laziness. This is hardly any different from being able to prevent a person from being shot in the face but deciding that the re-run of Seinfeld is just too good to pass up. Both instances are wastes of human lives due to being a lazy fuck-up. Overweight people who do not put forth any effort to become healthy and thus save a human life (their own) deserve absolutely no respect. These people should be helped as much as possible until it becomes clear they have no desire to be good individuals. At that point, they deserve all the scorn we would give an attempted murderer. If they die due to their obesity – without ever having attempted a healthy lifestyle – they deserve to be remembered as killers.

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Six Gene Mutations Linked to Obesity

Posted on December 15, 2008 by Michael

Six new gene mutations linked to obesity

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – At least six new gene mutations linked to obesity that point to ways the brain and nervous system control eating and metabolism have been identified, researchers reported Sunday.

Joel Hirschhorn at Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston led a team called Genetic Investigation of Anthropometric Traits, or GIANT, to screen 15 different studies of the entire human genetic map and pinpoint the six new genetic variations.

“Today’s findings are a major step forward in understanding how the human body regulates weight,” Dr. Alan Guttmacher, Acting director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, said in a statement.

“This study essentially doubles in one fell swoop the number of known and replicated genetic factors contributing to obesity as a public health problem,” added Dr. Kari Stefansson, Chief Executive Officer of DeCODE Genetics of Iceland, who led a team that made similar findings in a separate study.

The GIANT team found variations in six genes — TMEM18, KCTD15, GNPDA2, SH2B1, MTCH2 and NEGR1 — were strongly associated with the height-to-weight ratio known as body mass index (BMI).

“One of the most notable aspects of these discoveries is that most of these new risk factors are near genes that regulate processes in the brain,” added Stefansson, whose company hopes to sell genetic tests based on such discoveries.

“This suggests that as we work to develop better means of combating obesity, including using these discoveries as the first step in developing new drugs, we need to focus on the regulation of appetite at least as much as on the metabolic factors of how the body uses and stores energy,” Stefansson said.

“These new variants may point to valuable new drug targets,” he added.

Nearly one third of U.S. adults are considered obese, with a BMI of 30 or higher. Obesity is associated with more than 100,000 deaths each year in the U.S. population and trends are similar in many other countries.

“We know that environmental factors, such as diet, play a role in obesity, but this research further provides evidence that genetic variation plays a significant role in an individual’s predisposition to obesity,” said the genome institute’s Dr. Eric Green.

If there weren’t such a strong genetic factor, I would propse substituting obese with “unconcerned for my personal welfare, the welfare of those around me, living a life of quality, and frankly, life as a whole”.

These six newly discovered alleles strongly suggest predispositions to obesity. Of course, that was already known long, long, long ago. What wasn’t known was just how strong the genetic link was. In this case, 6 associated alleles is a surprisingly large number.

What’s tremendously important to note, however, is that we are not our genes. In very few cases is it overwhelmingly difficult to combat obesity – and in the majority of that minority, the cases are due to other, more serious diseases and genetic conditions. For most people, a healthy diet and regular excercise will combat the hell out of obesity.

Here’s something few obese people see in person.

Mount Katahdin

Mount Katahdin

Filed under: Misc | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments »

Vermont rated healthiest state; Maine 9th

Posted on December 4, 2008 by Michael

Vermont tops states in health, Louisiana ranks last.

It was the second straight year that Vermont topped the rankings. It was followed by Hawaii, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Utah, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Idaho and Maine.

Louisiana fell from 49th to 50th, replacing Mississippi. Rounding out the bottom 10 were South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Florida, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Nevada and Georgia.

California, the most populous state, ranked 24th and New York 25th.

Vermont, with the second smallest population of any state, had the third-highest public health spending and an obesity rate of 22 percent, four points below the national average.

It also had low child poverty and violent crime, a large number of doctors per capita and good high school graduation rates.

Hawaii had similarly low obesity, the highest public health spending, little air pollution, low rates of uninsured people, a low rate of preventable hospitalizations and low rates of death from cancer and cardiovascular disease.

Mississippi led the nation in obesity at 33 percent of the population, while Colorado was lowest at 19 percent.

22% is the obesity rate in the healthiest state. That’s absolutely absurd. But let’s keep outspending every nation combined on our military. Health certainly isn’t relevant or important to life.

By the way, is it any surprise the South makes up the whole of the bottom 10?

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