What's the Future Hold for Obese People?

Back in August I wrote a comment to my post of August 3rd, which said in part:

" One problem with obesity is that I do not directly harm the person standing next to me. But one day, the cost to society as a whole will be recognized, and then I think there will be a different environment - but I have no idea what that will look like."

Since that time I have posted a number of articles that address the question of what the future will be for the obese. Some are positive, some less so.

Now we have an article from the New York Times (Oct 29) entitled "For a World Of Woes, We Blame Cookie Monsters" [also available here].

The article begins with a humorous undertone, but ends on a rather discouraging note:

"Fat people are more reviled than ever, researchers find, even as more people become fat. When smokers and heavy drinkers turned pariah, rates of smoking and drinking went down. Won’t fat people, in time, follow suit?

Research suggests that the stigma of being fat leads to more eating, not less. And if reducing the stigma suggests a solution, that’s not working either.

“One hypothesis about getting rid of stigma is having more contact with the stigmatized group,” Dr. Brownell says. But with obesity, the stigma seems to be growing along with the national girth.

He cites a famous study in the 1960’s in which children were shown drawings of children with and without disabilities, as well as a drawing of a fat child. Who, they were asked, would you want for your friend? The fat child was picked last.

Now, three researchers have repeated the study, this time with college students. Once again, almost no one, not even fat people, liked the fat person."

The article continues:

"One problem with blaming people for being fat, obesity researchers say, is that getting thin is not like quitting smoking. People struggle to stop smoking, but many, in the end, succeed. Obesity is different. It’s not that the obese don’t care. Instead, as science has shown over and over, they have limited personal control over their weight. Genes play a significant role, the science says.

... [T]he notion that anyone can be thin with a little effort has consequences. “Once weight is due to a personal failing, a lot of things follow,” he said. There’s the attitude that if you are fat, you deserve to be stigmatized. Maybe it will motivate you to lose weight. The opposite happens." As it turns out, the studies show that fat people respond to stigmatization and discriminatin by, what else, eating more.

So basically, what you can conclude from this article is that people [including fat people] are getting increasingly annoyed with fat people. Where exactly will this lead? Who knows? - but today, the future is not that rosy.