14
Apr 10Weighing in.
Marc Ambinder has a great piece on obesity in the Atlantic, which you should read. I want to highlight one bit, which Caroline and I were talking about just a minute ago:
“[I]f you go with the flow in America today, you will end up overweight or obese,” Thomas Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
I was just back in Iowa for a few days last week, and really noticed that aspect of Midwestern/middle American life for the first time. In Cedar Rapids, a town of approximately 125,000, virtually all the restaurants I could think of that had many semi-healthy options were not-American: Japanese, [indeterminate Middle Eastern place whose name I have forgotten], Thai, Mexican–and there weren’t that many of them around. Meanwhile, the places I remember from my adolescence (most of which are still around) involved generous use of the deep-fryer and ranch dressing.
As such, I fully acknowledge that losing weight is hard to do, and I sympathize, since my weight hasn’t been consistently below 200lbs. for at least four years, and I’ve been as big as 215 (I’m currently right around two bills and attempting to drop some more). Also, as Ambinder points out, there are a lot of environmental factors that make it hard to do so. That said, it does seem like the immediate success of lap-band surgery (for Ambinder and New York Jets coach Rex Ryan, among others) means that for many, the solution is…eating less1. You could claim that this is just anti-fat sentiment manifesting itself, and it may not be as simple for lower-income people living in food deserts, but for those with the “resources to conquer obesity … with major surgery,” I see a clear path from less food (or less unhealthy food) to less weight. If you think I’m being unfair, or I’m missing something, let me hear it.
Standard “I have lots of black friends!” disclaimer: although I don’t have anything against fat people specifically, I don’t like being stuck behind people who move slowly, dislike physical contact with strangers (especially in crowded spaces, which makes airplanes and the Metro at rush hour incredibly unpleasant for me), and would rather not hear other people’s bodily functions (I’m thinking specifically of loud breathing here, although my girlfriend chews gum with her mouth open, which makes me want to go back in time to brutally murder William Wrigley). So, there’s some overlap.
Update: Ambinder has some thoughts on his blog.
- One of the nice surprises of this last visit: finding out my 63-year-old father has lost eleven pounds recently, mostly thanks to snacking less. ↩