Other things being equal, you’d think the strongest influence on expanding midriffs might be fizzy drinks or fried food.
But a study out yesterday reinforces the growing idea that poverty is a bigger factor. It found socio-economic status offered the best explanation for greater weight gain when comparing people in the UK with the same genetic vulnerability to obesity ().
Mounting evidence of poverty’s role in this health crisis makes even more repulsive the rise in vile and deeply offensive prejudice based solely on a failure to fit with the physical ideals of privileged society.
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This is no longer just about . It is everywhere. These views were aired without challenge at a large food and health conference recently. I heard open expression of the idea that obese people should be banned from working in the public sector or that food prices should be increased to force poorer people to eat less.
Unacceptable prejudice
This is the respectable face of prejudice and it has crept into just about every walk of life, stoked by . It risks creating bigger divides within already fragmented societies.
In countries battling obesity, such vitriol extends to repeated talk of . It seems this prejudice is OK if its intention is to help people lose weight and often portrays them as slovenly, lazy, lacking self-control, a drain on our health system and morally weak.
Not only is this wrong, it is deeply misguided: fat shaming .
It is becoming clearer that fat shaming is increasingly linked to social class. As rates of obesity in lower socio-economic groups have risen faster than in other groups – as charted by another UK study this week () – so such attitudes have become an outward symbol of socio-economic divides, a sneer from the privileged middle-class.
A society that shames only deepens division, pushing away those it is trying to help. A more realistic approach would be to treat this like any other form of prejudice.
Obesity is a complex problem and little progress has been made. Perhaps with more understanding, we might actually start to get somewhere.
Anthony Warner works as a food industry development chef by day, blogs about pseudoscience as by night and tweets at @One_Angry_Chef
