Testing Testing —

So, I'm digging.

I had poked around Junkfood Science, but now I'm digging in and digesting the info out there.

A brief bit of background: I haven't read any of the prerequisite FA books and haven't read much about the meat and potatoes of why the obesity epidemic is BS. I understand why BMI is a false indicator of health and how doctors tend to address obesity as the sole cause of any ailments a fat patient might have (rather than address the ailment first and then decide whether weight is the major culprit).

I definitely understand the public's bias against fat people and how popular culture perpetuates all the stereotypes about fat people, whether personality (all fat people are lazy) or health (all fat people have one foot in the grave).

I understand how the government has grouped Obese and Overweight into one megagroup (the Fats), typically represented in the news by a headless fatties who act as stand-in for society's contempt.

I get it. It's why I'm here.

But, what I'm just now starting to look into is how we got to this point at all. I mean, I know the broader cultural context that whittled our waists down over the decades to the contemporary (unattainable) ideal. Why did this century kick off with a healthcare witchhunt, of which the long-term psychological impact on society we have yet to fully realize?

So, I started looking into it and I've been hooked. It must be the latent journalist in me.

Fair warning, as I write about these topics, many of you are going to say, "Der-hay, this is 101 stuff." Yeah, you're right. That's the point. Maybe there's some 101-level post out there that says what I'm going to say, but says it much better. If there is, share the link and we'll all be a little wiser. But I'm working through this knowledge for myself and I want to give anyone who is interested an opportunity to correct me if I'm wrong.

Again, you don't know what you don't know. I could misread things or misinterpret them or place too much value on one study and not another... I'm grotesquely underqualified to comment on scientific studies and rely heavily on the work of others to translate. I'm simply translating the translation for my own benefit and, should anyone else be so inclined, your benefit as well.

First, I have to give a big shoutout to Sandy Szwarc, the guru behind JFS. I'm astonished by her clarity of voice and her ability to boil down these incredibly complicated issues into easy-to-digest morsels of information that are no less mentally nutritious for their breviloquence.

I do, however, wish to note that part of me remains skeptical of JFS, not because I doubt her facts, but because I'm not knowledgable enough in her field to know whether she is knowledgable enough in her field. I assume she is, but I remain a skeptic of hers, as I do of any expert.

So, the first thing I learned from JFS was about null studies, which led me to look into publication bias. From what I understand, publication bias is the "the tendency for researchers, editors, and pharmaceutical companies to handle the reporting of experimental results that are positive (i.e., they show a significant finding) differently from results that are negative (i.e., supported the null hypothesis) or inconclusive."

The reasons for publication bias range from the unassuming (researchers who think a negative or inconclusive result has little or no value) to the sinister (pretty much all the pharmaceutical and weight loss entities).

Publication bias matters because when someone sets out to perform meta-analysis (typically, feeding all known studies into a computer model and searching for correlations, which is the primary tool of anti-obesity research), there may be null studies that would temper the results.

For example, let's say there are four studies on the effects of Twinkies on lab rats. Two studies say there are minor health consequences from rats on a Twinkie-only diet. One study says the consequences are dire. And one study says there are no consequences.

Due to a phenemenon known the file drawer effect, the researcher who found no consequences may consider his research a fluke or not worth publishing, so she tucks it away. Therefore, when Researcher X comes in and performs meta-analysis, he only has three studies to draw from and the results will be significantly different than if he had all four to pull from.

To combat publication bias, many journals are asking researchers apply for publication prior to beginning their study and requiring the results to be submitted regardless of the outcome. The hope is that this will prevent researchers from only reporting research which supports their hypothesis.

Understanding that studies (especially meta-analysis studies) released to the media aren't Facts handed down by God. They should all be viewed with a skeptical eye until you know how the study was performed and who stands to benefit from the results.

I wish there was an easy way to find that out, so when the next Obesity Doom!!! story comes out, we could just say, "This one was paid for by Pfizer." Hell, it seems like that information should be toward the top of the article, so any potential bias can be act as Grain of Salt.

After reading all this, I moved on to some articles from the CDC's 2004 Inaugural Obesity Epidemic Orgy.

How anyone can read the timeline of this and not smell something fishy is beyond me?

But you know who was on it like a hornet from about a month after the CDC announced 400,000 dead fatties a year?

Sandy Szwarc.

One of the points she makes in her article on the overblown epidemic was that "they excluded from their search many factors known to increase death risks such as aging, low socioeconomic status and medical treatment errors. They did this despite the fact that aging is the single greatest risk factor for death."

In 1990, a Department of Health and Human Services study found that, annually, 300,000 deaths were attributable to "diet and activity pattern." The 2000 CDC study found that 400,000 deaths were due to "diet and activity pattern."

Put this through the CDC spin machine and it comes out in the media as "CDC: Obesity approaching tobacco as top preventable cause of death" and "Extreme Obesity: A New Medical Crisis in the United States" and voilà! an epidemic is born.

Despite a challenge from the original 1990 study authors, despite the fact that a later study called the 2000 study's methods into question and found the rate to be closer to 111,909 (and that's not counting the 80,000 or so you can subtract out due to the health benefits of being Overweight), the meme was created and the truth distorted: fat = death.

You can argue over whether being Obese is unhealthy, but clearly being in the Overweight BMI category is okay. Yet, that hasn't stopped the media from preaching the opposite message: "Overweight Woman Face Health Issues and Shorter Life Span."

The article I've read about the health risks of being "overweight" (not just obese, mind you, but overweight), they typically put a caveat of "there may be benefits, BUT" and proceed to ignore all evidence to the contrary of the conclusion they are pedaling after.

First they substituted "obesity" for "diet and activity pattern," then they substituted "overweight and obese" for "obese." And that is the message getting through to the average American. Overweight, Obese, doesn't matter. If you aren't in the Normal category, then you are going to die.

This gross oversimplification has given healthcare a wrestler's mentality (I'm referring to real wrestling, not WWF). I wrestled (poorly) in high school and as the day of a meet approached, we would all begin spitting and wearing trashbags under our sweatsuits and taking diuretics to drop below the magic number of our weight class. If you got under that number, then you could compete. If not, you were disqualified.

That's what our healthcare system has become: take whatever drastic measures you can to get that magic number so you can qualify to be an accepted member of our society (nevermind the health implications or individual physiology).

Veronica and I talk about this last night. Her concern about Fat Acceptance is that it is having a chilling effect on many doctors, such as her OB/GYN who didn't once mention the fact that she was 400 pounds. Being that heavy can have an impact on one's quality of life and, depending on all the factors involved, such as genetics, your mortality.

My family has a strong history of heart disease, therefore I should not eat the way I do and I should exercise. Because I eat the way I do and do not exercise, I am fat.

The fact that my doctor won't mention my weight out of fear of offending me or making me uncomfortable. In my opinion, he should ask why I am so fat. If it is due to poor diet and lack of exercise, then that is the issue to be addressed (rather than strictly weight).

But if we make weight a taboo topic for doctors, then they may neglect this aspect of our health and stop encouraging us to strive for better health through better lifestyle choices.

I'm trying to read up on HAES and learn more about how I can improve my health. We all should. I'm trying to eat a little more fruit, a couple more vegetables. Exercise is difficult because time is an issue. But I'm trying. What I'm not worried about, though, is how fat my ass is.

I'm just fine with that.

*UPDATE*
Just to be clear, I'm not saying that people who aren't concerned about their health are bad. I'm just saying that I think all of us want to be healthy, but sometimes we neglect the steps it takes to achieve health. I've been in that category a long, long time, but with kids I feel more and more inclined to take my health more seriously than I have in the past.

I understand why people slip comfortably into poor diet and exercise choices. I've been resting comfortably there nearly my whole life. In reading up on HAES, though, I've been more and more encouraged to strive to improve my health rather than my physical attributes, which which is what I thought "real" health was about.