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]

For anyone who accepts that there is a correlation strong enough to warrant investigation of possible causation, presumably the next step would be to try to design studies to demonstrate the mechanism by which causation occurs. Perhaps not literally the same people, since the specialisms would probably be different, but funding bodies, say. I think one of the problems with this debate is that public health bodies actually jump directly from epidemiological studies that suggest correlation to health recommendations that assume causation, without making it clear that the mechanism is not understood, and therefore the recommendations are provisional at best (I would argue often premature, given that they are often also associated with serious risks.)