Posts by Rebecca Gray
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Gotta say, I tend to read rather than participate in internet-based debates (I'm not keen to start tweeting, partly because I'd rather do my snarking privately where it's less likely to be misconstrued or cause drama for others).
So this may be a bit new to me, but I didn't entirely expect that this post would veer off into people accusing each other of name-calling or of inventing accusations of name calling or of making everything into a talky dude-fest.
Thing is, people HAVE actually been making some very worthwhile points among the rest of that noise. And some of those points only seem to be at cross-purposes because the commentators are concentrating on different sides to the issue or different terminology for similar issues.
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Speaker: Talking past each other:…, in reply to Rebecca Gray,
Oh I should just note before anyone points it out to me - the comparison with weight and diabetes/ smoking and lung cancer is obviously not a perfect fit. Smoking is a modifiable risk factor (you can stop smoking though it is often difficult). In some cases weight is not so modifiable, as those links posted earlier about The Biggest Loser etc indicate. So saying "just lose weight" to someone whose body is determinedly remaining large is probably not helpful. Dealing with any health risks posed by the weight, so the person can be as healthy as possible regardless, may be the better way to go. Robyn Toomath actually states this in her book.
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Kia ora tatou,
Thanks for your comments - I hadn't decided til now whether to weigh in.I think a lot of the discussion here is from people who are way more "on the same side" than the two groups I described in my post, AND YET it's still really hard to agree about the most appropriate response to the issues raised. I've seen some people disagreeing and thought they both made perfectly valid points, which probably illustrates how complex, and also how emotive, some of these issues are.
Perhaps we can agree that:
* the amount of sugar in our diet currently causes nasty, somewhat preventable health issues on a population level.
* genetic predisposition + environment + other social factors such as poverty mean some people are more at risk of these problems. The first factor here is not modifiable but the other two are. Both the environment AND poverty need to be addressed. Doing one does not exclude doing the other. It's the extent to which they should be addressed which people can't agree on. Prioritisation issue, I guess, which we will get with any policy-related discussion.
* shaming people for being overweight is awful, not just missing the point but actually creating more harm. I totally agree that a health framing rather than a weight framing is more helpful, but we can surely still acknowledge that there's a link. From what I can tell, obesity (sorry, I am using a clinical term and I recognise it may not transfer well in all contexts) is to diabetes what smoking is to lung cancer: no, not all smokers get lung cancer and some non-smokers get it too, but smoking is the one most clearly proven modifiable risk factor. Being defined as clinically obese does not mean being unhealthy, it's just a risk factor for some health problems. Some of the issues that lead to diabetes etc also contribute to weight gain. So it's somewhat understandable (if unfortunate) that these get lumped in together when discussing policy measures. It is a real challenge, from what I can tell, for any sort of health promotion targeting diet to avoid implicitly saying "we think you're living your life wrong if you are overweight". It is really important not to make individual people and their bodies the target here.
* the processed food industry is unlikely to make changes of their own accord, if the status quo is working for them. So as Russell noted, regulatory changes may be needed before the industry starts modifying products.
* a lot of the anti-intervention arguments about freedom and choice etc echo the ones the tobacco industry and its like have used. These arguments are ideology-based and it seems reasonable to be wary of them. What does freedom even mean?
Freedom to choose soft drink whenever?
Freedom for kids to not grow up around implicit messages that these products are everyday items?
Freedom to not have your body shamed?
Freedom to make sustainable changes to your lifestyle to be healthier?