Hype

by Joseph Whalen

Created on: December 09, 2008

The "obesity epidemic" is a product of today's established standards for physical fitness and socially acceptable appearances. While there are a great many people in the country that maintain an unhealthy weight by any standards, there are many people who are considered clinically obese who ten years ago would have been considered in good physical condition. The standards for what is and is not considered obese are a moving target that is controlled more by popular opinion and less by scientific data.

Throughout history people of large stature were considered the epitome of vitality and physical prowess. In renaissance Europe it was fashionable and even desirable to have a few extra pounds on your frame. Even though much of the 20th century this was seen by many European countries as a sign of influence and power, resulting in the likes of Luciano Pavarotti being seen as a sex symbol not just for us angelic voice but also his apparent vitality.

Today's obsession with what people think is a healthy appearance is anything but healthy. Movie stars, musicians and other celebrities that represent the role models of today's generation are constantly plagued with eating disorders. It is these damaged, often emaciated role models who dictate what society deems acceptable from a personal appearance standpoint. Society then takes this distorted standards and factors them into our medical diagnostic methods and the result is an utterly impossible standard which people are expected to live up to.

The disconnect between societies belief of what is accept and reality then leads to even more problems with people who cannot live up to the ridiculously misguided standards. Thus driving the process even further past the limit of realism with various studies, white papers and medical journals espousing the virtues of starving yourself on diet fads that are sure to reduce your body weight but at great risk to your overall health. Societies demand for blind compliance to its self imposed standards results in people embarking on dangerous weight loss programs without the proper medical guidance necessary.

For hundreds of years people have lived perfectly happy lives being overweight. This was the case into the 80's and even early 90's before the craze for slim and trim hit the mainstream. Certainly there were popular fitness programs and diet regimens for decades but the push by the medical community only became strong in the recent decade. Strangely enough this was also around the same time that the medical insurance companies revolutionized their policies and began finding new and creative ways to limit their liability to pay out claims. Would it be overly cynical to draw a link between these two events?

Wieght loss is a multi-billion dollar industry in this company. Between the obvious medical costs with dieticians, weight-loss surgery, personal trainers and miracle pills there is over 20 billion dollars in sales. Add to this the clothing industry with specialized lines for "big and tall" individuals, the auto-industries push for larger sized vehicles and the food services catering to the health conscious on one side and the morbidly obese fast food consumers on the opposite side. The industry itself is simply too large to objectively address obesity from an impartial view, hence why it has been declared an epidemic. Declaring it an epidemic forces people to feel that they have to do something about it, much to the delight of the business profiting from the craze.

People aren't any more worse off today than they were thirty years ago as far as obesity. Studies and experts and twist the numbers however they want to make it look like western civilization is on the verge of collapse as a result of excessive weight gain. The reality is life goes on, people will be obese, some people will not. We have allowed ourselves to be manipulated by the weight loss industry into thinking there is something wrong with us and only they have the cure for it. It's really ingenious marketing on the industries part, but there isn't anything wrong with us the way we are. Once we realize that, we'll be able to solve a lot of other more important problems society is facing today.

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