To think Prejudice against fat people is NOT as bad as racism.

[goodnessgracious]

To think the article in the Times today claiming that prejudice against fat people is as bad as racism and that it is one of the last socially acceptable forms of prejudice is ridiculous.

Firstly, obesity is normally caused by an addiction and has health implications for the obese person and further implications on society as whole. How can this be compared to racism in any way?

Also, it is not the last socially acceptable form of prejudice because I believe society is just as (if not more) prejudiced against smokers, alcoholics and gamblers and all people with addictions which have costs toward society.

AIBU to think that although it is not right to be prejudice against obese people it is ridiculous to compare it to racism.

Copied article extract below...

"Prejudice against fat people as bad as racism, say scientists "Dr Jackson said that prejudice against overweight people pervaded society and needed to be challenged. “People think it’s one of the last socially acceptable forms of prejudice. You just have to look at the comments section on media reports on obesity to see that obese people are subjected to labelling and even abuse and attack.”

Errr Yes you did Greengrow

Greengrow Sun 14-Sep-14 12:57:28
I think we are talking at cross purposes. We all know what healthy weights are. If people are a few stones over it's not worth getting a state over but it is wise if most people can get down to a healthy weight. I think we all agree on that.

For an average height woman whether you go back BMI, NHS health charts or waist measurement 11 stone is over what MOST UK DOCTORS would want for you. If you don't believe that you're kidding yourself. If someone has got down to 11 stone from say 20 they should be delighted however and aim to stay the same as most people actively diet put on more than they lose so you're better at 11 than back up to 20 or more

Gaslight much?

I have no idea, Greengrow, but you're right.
The average height of a woman in the UK is 5ft 4ins. For which a healthy weight, according to a BMI calculator, is between 116 and 145lb - ie 8st 4lb to 10st 5lb.

To be fair, Darkest, she said "for an average height woman." As you quote yourself.

I'm average height and no way could I carry 11 stone around

I feel sluggish if my weight goes past 8st 7lbs, so I start to reign it in and step up the exercise.

It cannot be the same as racism, it is riduculous.

The overweight are in a majority, 60% abd their numbers are growing.

A suppressed minority they are not!

I have some more weight to lose but i am already a 34 back size in bras and i always lose hardly anything off my breasts so i have to accomodate them which isnt going to happen if i end up a 28 back size because then.....YOU CANT GET THE BRAS

As a teetotaller i wonder how many people being sanctimonious about weight i can spot on the "sober" threads.

OP, I agree with you. Anybody can end up fat. It's not specific to a gender or class or race or income bracket. Fatness is equal opportunity!

To stick with the OP's point, I'm not sure that there's an objective standard against which you can measure the harm caused by a particular prejudice. However, if it causes harm both to society and individuals, then we need to take Dr Jackson's point seriously.

Individuals are harmed because we have to deal with the snideness disguised as concern from non-obese people. I see it on here all the time: "WIBU to point out to my friend that she is fat? I'm only concerned about her health..." Um, I'm sure your friend has noticed her weight, and do you point out to your other friend, who puts away 3 bottles of wine every weekend that she's damaging her health? Or your thin friend who gets breathless walking to the front door? Not fucking likely. I strongly suspect the reasons for "concern" about your fat friend have more to do with how she offends your aesthetic sensibilities and hurts your eyes watching her bulge out the top of her jeans.

God , the smug superiority really grinds my gears. "It's so easy to lose weight. Just eat less and exercise more." It's like telling someone who's depressed to cheer up. If it was that fucking simple, would I be paying Evan £20 for a dishrag-quality t-shirt. What should be happening is that we offer all obese people treatment for their eating disorders.

And that brings me to the negative effect fat-prejudice has on society. We care more about drug addicts than fat people. You'd give a quid to someone rattling a bucket for your local heroin addicts' treatment charity but you'd laugh at a collector for funding into obesity research. A quick google showed lots of research into obesity as linked to cancer, but nothing on obesity as a medical issue in itself. And that's because as a society, we assume fat people are lazy and obesity can be cured by telling people to eat less. Doctors seem to hold obese patients in contempt and don't take the issue seriously. This guy has some interesting insights

bravepotato you might want to look up the definition of prejudice, as a pp pointed out, it needn't have anything to do with being in a minority of any kind.

Why do people keep having a to at greengrow - she said for an average woman (so 5ft4?) 11 stone is too heavy. And she is correct.

So why the friff do people keep coming on saying 'well I'm 5ft8,9,10 etc and I weigh 11 stone and I can assure you I'm not overweight'.

Weird.

NeverFinish...............and the contempt carries on AFTER we/they have lost the weight. Take a look at the gallstones thread.

8 to 10 stone is what the bmi charts say, so greengrow is spot on. (Average height is 5' 4" as MrsJoss says.

I, personally, pay scant regard to the chart as do most doctors, but it is still a useful guide as to what is far too much or far too little re weight.

Bmi chart, waist size, body fat percentage etc should all be used together to give an overall picture rather than a narrow snapshot.

Everybody is different, so to produce something that covers all eventualities is ridiculous.

At 11.5 stone and 5'2" I was very overweight bordering on obese for the bmi chart, 81cm waist so just over 'ideal for health', but my body fat % was around 25 to 27 which is perfectly within average, I could get to level 7 on the beep test which is good.

I am a short hourglass with a large frame, who lays down muscle easily and is very fit (when I am at my usual 11.5 stone 'happy weight' that is - unfortunately at the moment I am just under 16 stone following illness etc, but am getting back to fitness again now).

Darkest - its not that hard to get good bras in small back sizes. Certainly not as hard as it was even five years ago.

I'm a 30FF and can get good basic t shirt bras from John Lewis at a fraction of the price of Bravissimo.

If you're a 34 back size now then you'd have to lose an awful lot before you'd be in a position where you couldn't buy bras.

So why the friff do people keep coming on saying 'well I'm 5ft8,9,10 etc and I weigh 11 stone and I can assure you I'm not overweight'.

Because people have a distorted view of what is a normal weight. Normal weight people are outnumbered by overweight people. The average uk woman is a size 16 so an average height woman who takes a 14 possibly thinks she isn't that big. I'm average height and if my weight went up to 11 stone I would be fat.
A very few people do have lots of lean muscle but you would have to have a body builder level of muscle to be 5'4" and not overweight at 11 stone.
Obviously a woman who is 5'11" can be 11 stone and not be overweight.

Exactly, Miss. The "muscle" argument is one that is trotted out time and time again, but doesn't follow logically.

Take Jess Ennis. She's 5ft 5ins, so a little above average height. While competing, she weighs 9st - and she is almost all muscle. You can SEE her six pack.

At 9st, she is well within the "healthy" weight range - indeed towards the lower end of it for a 5ft 5ins woman. And she is pure muscle.

I also believe that its easy to have a distorted view of a normal weight. I'm 5ft 6ins and was 10st 12lb for a couple of years. I fit in size 12 clothes and didn't think I was that fat. My BMI put me at the very top of "normal."

But now i'm almost a stone lighter I can see how chubby my face was then, how my boobs weren't meant to be THAT big, how jeans and tight fitting clothes look so much better now.

Being chubby has been normalised so much that we don't even realise when we ourselves are in that bracket - until suddenly you can see collarbones and cheekbones, and realise that 9st something isn't an unattainable weight, its in fact what I should have been all along.

I had fell into the trap of not feeling big until I went on a beach holiday abroad. I always book the least tourist spot, whilst there I suddenly thought how thin all the locals where instead of thinking how come the British where all big.

As mrsj says I said "average height". Any average height woman over the safe weights is kidding herself if she thinks that is fine.
It's a kind of non deliberate self delusion in terms of reading of my posts on this thread and I am someone who has massive sympathy with those who find it hard to lose weight. I think a lot problems are addiction to sugar and no one takes it seriously and they just laugh and force cakes on you thinking it's some big joke, whereas if it were a man who could not keep off the whisky we'd hide it and make sure he was not tempted.

The main issue is the world has a huge obesity problem which no one seems to find easy to solve and it is killing us off. I think sugar is partly to blame for what I call ODDD - it is linked to them all - obesity, diabetes, depression and dementia. I doubt it's a great product to indulge in in relation to cancers either.

So the challenge is how to move how people eat from a diet with a lot of sugar and carbs to natural healthy wholefoods. We could start by banning all food machines from school and NHS premises and at stations. If the only food you can easily buy is a bag of nuts or veg when you're out and about and only water to drink we'd make a big step forward.

Greengrow didn't define average height. She made sweeping statements without defining her terms.

Doctors and public health specialists are moving away from BMI - it's just not that useful as a tool because the crucial determinant of health risk now appears to be abdominal fat. You can be a size 10 but still have fat cloaking your abdominal organs. The preference now is for waist measurement.

Prejudice against fat people is just that. The prejudiced are not concerned about anyone else's health, they have no idea how healthy anyone else is and it's none of their damn business anyway.

Unless you go around handing out questionnaires asking everyone about exercise/balanced diet/drinking/sexual health/drug use/medical conditions and you are qualified to understand health risk you really do not have a clue.

I don't think that the obesity probably is solvable, the system that creates it is non linear and entrenched in modern life.

Greengrow didn't define average height. She made sweeping statements without defining her terms.

The word 'average' is definitive enough. Anybody can work out the average woman is not 4'8" and neither is she 6'2". If you couldn't work out roughly what average height is a quick google would have told you that it is approximately 5'4".

what's more research suggests people who are mildly overweight are fine. In some studies health outcomes for mildly overweight are better than for normal weight. Being below normal weight is considerably more harmful than being mildly overweight.

But don't let the facts get in the way of prejudice...

As I've said upthread, there is increasing evidence to show that 'safe' weight as you call it Greengrow, is an arbitrary banding and those who fall into the 'overweight' or even 'obese' categories appear to be living longer than those in the bands below. So average height and 11 stone could very easily be perfectly healthy. Beyond those bands it is of course, likely to be a different situation.

I think you are right Suzanne, it's an issue that isn't going to be solved anytime soon. I think Greengrow is probably spot on with some of the changes to needed as a start (never going to happen though, food companies and big retailers are too powerful). The target population has to be children at this point. Maybe making fizzy drinks the same as alcohol (taxed and only for 18+) would be another - sounds ridiculous/extreme but it might make people slowly realise how damaging regular/heavy consumption of such sugar laden/artificially sweetened stuff can be. I think a sugar tax is inevitable. It seems punitive and no overweight individuals should be blamed or derided for the cost to the NHS of obesity related disease, but it is a societal and cultural problem that needs tackling .

"The muscle argument is trotted out" Jessica Ennis when competing has very, very low body fat.

If you added on a (healthy for a woman) layer of body fat - taking her from an elite athlete's circa 14%, to a normal healthy circa 30% body fat, she would weigh a darn sight more than 9 stone. (And you wouldn't see her 6 pack).

It does not require a "body builder level of muscle" to not be fat at 11 stone as an average height woman - it takes a lot of muscle, but not as much as you suggest.

Agreed Scarlett - the fact that you can see JE's abs would indicate a body fat level of less than even 14% compared to an average (fit) woman in her 30's of 25-30%.