Posts Tagged ‘weight bias’

“We must support people living with obesity by educating them about healthy lifestyles.” This is #4 in a series of well-meant statements that promote weight bias and discrimination. Such a statement purports to mean well. But there are so many problems with comments like this that it’s difficult to summarize them all in a short […]

Today, we are putting a bow on Obesity Care Week by coming back to a root problem that gets in the way of reducing the harm of obesity – stigma. It causes psychological distress for the people living with this disease and leads them to avoid medical care. Explicit weight bias has become less acceptable […]

On this, the second day of Obesity Care Week, let’s step back from all the complexity of obesity and focus on five simple principles that hold great promise for improving the way we care for people with this disease. It really doesn’t have to be so hard. 1. It Is Undeniable That Obesity Is a […]

We are in the midst of a great leap forward in pediatric obesity – from knowing to doing what we should in caring for the young persons with this chronic disease. ATPO 2024 at the University of Minnesota Center for Pediatric Obesity Medicine (CPOM) last week made this clear. We know much more about how […]

Scholars have noted that in lower income countries, obesity can be taken as a signal of wealth. This observation in turn fuels a presumption that weight stigma might not be a problem in countries of the Global South. But a new scoping review in Obesity Facts suggests this presumption is likely false. Laura Eggerichs, Oliver […]

We confess to a significant amount of fatigue with a social agenda related to size and weight getting overlaid on the medical concern of obesity. The bickering of people who want to make believe that obesity is a purely social issue can be too much to bear. This has been one of those weeks. Moral […]

Yesterday, the National Consumers League and the National Council on Aging introduced the Bill of Rights for People with Obesity. At the heart of eight simple points in this document is a demand of respect for the dignity and autonomy of people living with obesity. 1. The Right to Accurate, Clear, Trusted, and Accessible Information […]

Scientific American published an entertaining parody last week. It was a bit extreme and too early for April Fools’ Day, but entertaining nonetheless. This essay wove together a litany of absurd rationalizations we hear all the time to tell the tale of a medical breakthrough in obesity taking us down a road to ruin. Hilarious […]

The calls are growing louder and more frequent to include people living with obesity in clinical trials and drug labels. Of course trials and labels for drugs that treat obesity include these patients. But the huge problem is that for everything else, more often than not, drug studies and labels exclude them. Now, the American […]

E.B. White is long gone from this life and Block That Metaphor! is dormant at The New Yorker. But we need them back. The Washington Post has a new and twisted metaphor about obesity treatment, casting Ozempic as something like orthodontia. Kate Cohen writes: “I always thought I’d be thin if I were rich. “I’d […]