Greta Christina's fat positive manifesto

[ciphergoth]

I froze the discussion here because I thought it deserved a top-level post of its own, rather than being under a general discussion of Greta Christina. A few weeks ago she posted a very interesting series of articles on the fat-positive movement and her own beliefs; I'd be very interested to read more about what people think of them.

"I was frankly shocked at how callous most of the fat-positive advocates were about my bad knee. I was shocked at how quick they were to ignore or dismiss it. They were passionately concerned about the quality of life I might lose if I counted calories or stopped eating chocolate bars every day. But when it came to the quality of life I might lose if I could no longer dance, climb hills, climb stairs, take long walks, walk at all? Eh. Whatever. I should try exercise or physical therapy or something. Oh, I'd tried those things already? Well, whatever."

• The Fat-Positive Diet
• The Fat-Positive Skeptic
• An Open Letter to the Fat-Positive Movement

Comments

[lizw.livejournal.com]

Yes, I don't trust her on issues other than fat and nutrition; she has some odd political views which skew her judgment outside her immediate area, and of course once you've arrived at the suspicion that Western science has failed colossally in one area, it becomes more tempting to think that it might do so in others. I've followed back enough links from her articles to studies on obesity and read enough around the subject generally to trust her quite a lot on that, though. She's hardly the only person to show good judgment on issues in her field and bad judgment on issues outside it. (And yes, I'm commenting on issues outside my field here myself, and I fully expect you to give my comments less weight on this than I hope you would on, say, refugee law.)

On the one part in your second link where they are actually discussing her reporting of a recent study, I don't see that their commentary really contradicts her. Fat people do better in later life because they can better afford the weight loss that comes with many illnesses of longevity, and when it comes to mortality, that outweighs any adverse health effect of obesity. For whether there are any such adverse health effects that fall short of a net effect on mortality, you need different studies, and I don't think she argues otherwise.

I can't find any discussion on her blog of the New England Journal of Medicine study mentioned in your first link either, but I'd certainly heard of the study. Paul Campos has criticised it here. The paper itself is here.