More Dangerous Than Smoking…

Posted by: lozzleberry on: April 12, 2010

• In: Obesity
• Leave a Comment

It hit the headlines last Friday – obesity has overtaken smoking as the leading cause of premature death and illness in Australia.  I find this article frustrating – for a number of reasons. 

Firstly, the research to say that obesity kills, is fuzzy.  Quite often, studies regarding the dangers of obesity are funded by organisations that make money from weight-loss – leading to research and results deliberately skewed to encourage a fear of obesity.  Check out www.obesitymyths.com.

Secondly, the health problems that are said to be caused by obesity, such as Type 2 Diabetes, Heart Disease, High Blood Pressure and High Cholesterol, may also be caused by yo-yo dieting. 

Think about it.  It’s possible that a person carrying excess weight may  present High Blood Pressure as a result of their yo-yo dieting – however, a doctor may not be aware of the dieting and relate the High Blood Pressure to the excess weight, therefore screwing the obesity-health-risk statistics.

Thirdly, despite all these scary articles about how the ‘Obesity Crisis’ is going to kill us all (BOOGA BOOGA BOOGA!!!), the rate of obese people is apparently increasing.  Meaning these articles are not only not leading to weight-loss, they could quite possibly be leading to an increased prevaility of obesity, by inadvertantly encouraging yo-yo dieting.

I would also like to remind people about kefuffle over the global warming debate – who’s to say the obesity crisis isn’t following a similar path?

So, here it is.  A call-out to the media and the Government.

STOP all this scaremongering.  It’s not leading to the mass weight-loss of the population and it encourages discrimination against the overweight.

Get the facts right.  Look at all angles.  Ignore the fact that there is masses of money to be made from telling people to lose weight and find out the truth.

Then, if the truth is that obesity is very dangerous and scary and going to kill us all – adopt a strategy to encourage health, instead of weight-loss.  Encouraging weight-loss encourages yo-yo dieting, leading to further weight gain. 

By encouraging health, people may make small, yet very beneficial changes to their lifestyle, leading to – you guessed it – health!

What do you think?  Any suggestions for a better anti-obesity campaign?  How do you feel about the obesity crisis?