To ask why it is that it is accepted that people can be naturally thin, but not naturally fat?

[MrsShawnHatosy]

Just that really. It seems to me that if one can be true so can the other. But fat is seen as something blameworthy, always.

I'm not sure anyone has said being thin was protective. What is being said is that being fat raises the risks. For every thin person you know with colorectal cancer there will be more fat people with it. Here's one study. Note also that it's believed that the link is stronger than studies suggest because of the number of people who lose weight before diagnosis.

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12181496/

What is going on is that you aren't reading the right research papers.

The link between overweight and various cancers is absolutely proven, just as the link with lung cancer and smoking is.

I'm someone who.is 'naturally slim'. I suspect I have my parents to thank, I was breast fed and then fed a diet high in vegetables and very low in processed foods, weekends were spent on outdoor pursuits- hiking, climbing, kayaking, etc. So I have carried on those habits into adulthood.

People hugely underestimate how many calories they are eating. In controlled studies people always lose weight on low calorie diets.

I’m like you @TheSnootiestFox. Always struggled to get my BMI anywhere near where’s it’s officially meant to be due to lipoedema. Even at my ‘thinnest’ wearing a size 8 top (size 12 bottom) my BMI was a stone and a half too high.
Refreshingly, a consultant recently confirmed my lipoedema and said that BMI is misleading. He preferred to use waist height ratio and funnily enough, mine was nearly where it should be.
I’ve struggled all my life with weight issues. ExH ate twice as much as me but remained as thin as a whistle, as are all his family. So much hatred for those of us who are naturally bigger built.
As an aside, I love Alexander McCall-Smith’s description of fat ladies as ‘traditionally built’ in his Ladies Detective Agency books.

Yep, the hatred is getting wearing after 40 odd years. Even my own father hated me and practically his dying words to me were 'don't get all blubbery like your mum.' Like you, when I realised what was going on I had one of those boditrax scans and my visceral fat was spot on but the fat in my legs and tops of my arms was off the scale!

Willendorf Venus, age 30,000 years, would beg to differ.

I'm not sure how relevant it is to compare today with previous civilisations and other cultures where being fat was a sign of having power and control over food and other resources, and where being fat meant you would survive the next famine, and therefore venerated. And where life expectancy was/is almost certainly much, much shorter than ours.

We are a very visual society and thin is in. It has become a symbol of wealth, of being middle to upper class or higher. Thin suggests control, other people who cater for you, the ability to buy expensive healthy food. To have the time to exercise and the ability to do so.
In times past, thin was not in. And a bit of plumpness on women in particular was valued. Viewed as indicative of good childbearing potential.

So you are right to suggest thin is always viewed well in the UK at least, and in most westernised capitalist countries.

But you can certainly be predisposed to put on weight. It just isn’t fashionable to be like that. So fat people who have efficient bodies that store fat easily struggle. They can be viewed less favourably. Considered lower in class, lower in self control, less intelligent, and generally not alright to associate with, educate, employ, marry etc.

I read your post. That’s why I thought it was odd. Why compare a healthy range to being overweight? It would make more sense to compare low end of healthy BMI to upper end of healthy BMI, or overweight to underweight.

In the entire animal kingdom and for most of human history, there has never been the levels of obesity that we have witnessed in humans in the last few decades.

It’s not about blaming but recognising that obesity is a symptom that your body is metabolically struggling. Aside from rare genetic conditions, this is not something normal or indeed healthy for the body. Even mainstream docs acknowledge that a large waistline is a very good predictor of early mortality and metabolic disease.

But pharma companies love to promote obesity and fatness as a disease so they can make huge profits. It’s rarely a disease by itself but just a symptom that the body is metabolically broken.

This is not true. I eat loads, way more than anyone I know including all the men ...but I'm slim and have been all my life. I just don't eat alot of high sugar foods or processed foods and have been reasonably active all my life.

Having said that I understand studies have found that weight can be linked to gut bacteria and some people are lucky or unlucky in that regard so I don't think it's simply down to what you eat and some people are overweight due to physiology and not through their diet.

There is a link but the link is fat causes cancer, with little to no explanation of what causes the fat and no consideration that what's causing the cancer may also be causing the obesity.

The lack of understanding around what causes obesity makes the obesity/cancer link totally spurious in my view.

The risk of osteoporosis increases at a lower weight.

I mean, you were the one who wrote this:

Because being naturally thin at the lowest level of a healthy weight carries no health risks and being overweight always does.

My MIL pursued thinness her whole life. In her 70s she lost a lot of weight, this was mostly muscle from her decades of inactivity. She was thrilled though.
muscle is as important as being thin.