Discrimination Against Fat People

This morning on BBC there were two ladies talking about a really interesting and controversial topic … discrimination against fat people.

Legislation already exists protecting people from abuse and hate crimes connected with their religious views, sexual orientation and race.

These are overt markers of difference that share one common denominator … they are considered “beyond choice”.

Being fat is considered by many as different in that it is assumed that being fat is a result of lifestyle choices.

And this creates some more interesting cultural preconceptions.

You see, the two ladies that were being interviewed were obviously hurt by the constant barrage of disparraging comments that is such a significant part of the daily lives of morbidly obese people.

Their view was that they should enjoy similar protection to those categories already enjoying protection from hate crimes … no problem there. Abuse and violence should not be tolerated by any reasonable society, I agree.

But when questioned as to whether they believed that their condition was the result of free choice, their immediate and instinctive response was that it was a genetic condition that involved too much discipline and deprivation to be tolerable for any sustained period.

Certainly for long enough to be considered effective to lose sufficient weight to fall below the abuse radar.

Two perfectly rational, reasonable people completely mired in the destructive mentality of dieting. To these ladies, the only way to maintain a “normal” figure, was to deprive oneself of food.

The possibility that morbid obesity has anything to do with the type of food they choose to eat, did not begin to compute.

And neither of the two presenters raised the issue.

Quite clearly, fat people eat too much … and should eat less to become lighter, or smaller. So the paradigm is entrenched … with the “fat” ladies, with the presenters and with the general public who e-mailed in their comments to the show.

Not one person talked about what to eat, only how many (translation: how many calories) was eaten.

So we get back to this crude strategy of the calorie equation. You put on weight when you eat more calories than you burn. If you can create a deficit by exercise, the opposite happens. It’s all about the math.

And it is … but what no-one tells the general public is that calorie deprivation (dieting) can not be sutained on a non-nutritious diet! And that’s what most people eat.

Calorie-dense rather than nutrient-dense food.

Commercial refined grains, plus excessive meat, cooked foods, salt, sugar, flour and dairy. The stuff the ads, our doctors and all the nutrition professionals tell us we should be eating in moderation.

And we can’t tell people the truth, because those that are qualified to dispense the truth are trained within systems funded by the companies that profit from sales of calorie-dense “foods” … the refined food, meat and dairy industries. So, actually, it occurs to me they may not even know the truth themselves, so brainwashed they have become in order to keep their licenses!

And the politicians sanction all this because of … politics (tax revenues, etc). And saddest of all is that everyone keeps perpetuating the myth. All under this guise of acceptability.

That is, you can only dispense nutrition advice if you have an acceptable qualification like nutritionist or dietician.

Yet these people are the same people telling everyone to eat in moderation, eat variety, eat meat, eat cooked whole grains and consume dairy … oh and 5-a-day. Folks, that’s no where near enough. Especially if your cooking it to death or eating it out of a can!

It’s legalized insanity … and it’s why so many people are fat and screwed up.

And when they get sick as a result, they can then plug in to an even more formidable economic machine. And that is the medical machine.

Doctors trained by schools that are funded by medical companies and pharmaceutical companies to continue perpetuating the myth that people get sick because they have bad genes, habits they can’t help and because declining health is inevitable with advancing years!

And people like me who say “hold on, this is hog wash” aren’t even able to speak our minds without multiple disclaimers in place just in case people think what we have to say is anything more than “information”.

Yes, you can go to a doctor for a gastric bypass … that’s acceptable. And all men over 50 should be put on statins … we’ll take that proposal seriously!

But if some clown like me suggests eating more fresh fruit and vegetables, drinking more water, getting daily exercise, sunlight and fresh air and taking steps to reduce stress and take responsibility for your own happiness … this is now sacriligious and I must be muzzled at all costs, just in case people find out the unprofitable truth.

So people will continue to think that their health is outside their control and that they are fat because of some genetic predisposition.

And yes, my qualified and smug friends, that can indeed be the case.

But if you are really honest you’ll accept that for the vast majority of morbidly obese people, it’s mindset and choices, not genes. And while we’re being honest, won’t any of you also accept that the system currently in place is not working.

That’s why kids are getting diabetes. And why middle-aged people are showing signs of neurological damage.

Not because the gene pool has crashed in the last 20 years, but because the advice being dispensed out of professional channels is misleading and agenda-based.

Only when we can face the truth, can we begin to fix the problem. The fish stinks from the head!

We don’t need more legislation preventing people from acting like animals. (OK, maybe we do). We need a system that reinforces an unpopular truth … recovering and maintaining your health is possible if you learn to do the right things.

You can’t even find the truth easily through the search engines … because the key words people type in are rooted in the very misconceptions I am talking about.

So when you Google “healthy nutrition” you get sites with page rank that tell us to follow the food pyramid, eat more grains, meat and dairy. And show us a host of medical resources, when we should be learning about health, not patholgy management.

This stuff is killing people and they don’t know any better!

Until it stops, our precious NHS is going to get progressively less viable and people will continue to think that they must go on diet to be viewed as socially acceptable.

We have created a nation of addicts … a captive market for food manufacturers, drug manufacturers and medical equipment manufacturers.

And we grease the wheels with a team of impressively trained drones all spouting the same nonsense. All part of a politically sanctioned chain of health care robots.

And we might also need access to medical care if we have an acute condition. So fear will continue to rule the roost on every level.