Obesity Is Killing US
Monday, July 16th, 2007
“Losing weight would improve your health” - I was telling my patient last week during a consultation. His light-hearted response concerned me: “I am not obese, doctor, you’re too skinny. Everybody in my neighborhood is this size. And I like being big.”
Everyone in his neighborhood is indeed getting bigger. As the average size of the typical American grows each year, so does the tolerance for being big. I am concerned that our mass media “experts” have taken the social stigma out of fatness and made people blissfully ignorant of its health risks. Advertising, television programs, and movies that promote obesity as normal directly ignore its threat to health and well being. (more…)
