Is the 'War on Obesity' Just a Massive Conspiracy to Sell Diet Pills?
LatestThere’s no doubt that the weight loss industry in America is an inconceivably massive moneymaker for corporations and pharmaceutical companies. It’s indisputable. A lot of rich people make a lot of money off the public perception that fat is wrong and that eliminating fat is a national moral mandate of apocalyptic proportions. Panic = dollars. Perhaps less obvious, but no less truthful, is the fact that the diet industry is fueled by a systematic campaign of shame, stigma, and moral superiority that trickles down from the government’s “war on obesity” straight into the brains of your friendly neighborhood concern trolls (where it evaporates back up again, and on and on). And yet, clearly, the tireless efforts of the Shame Industrial Complex have not resulted in widespread nationwide weight loss or improved health. So what can we draw from that? Is there more to the story?
One anonymous doctor (“one of the nation’s most distinguished medical researchers, employed by the federal government”) thinks so. Via Salon:
Dr. X has a theory about the government’s anti-fat crusade, which is that the public health establishment has been duped by Big Pharma into becoming unknowing participants in the following money-making venture:
Step 1: Convince Americans that not being thin is a disease that needs to be cured.
Step 2: Encourage the government to implement public health programs that, through lifestyle interventions, will purportedly make people thinner, and, by hypothesis, healthier.
Step 3: Document the complete failure of these programs in the medical literature.
Step 4: Get the government to approve a host of new diet drugs, since it’s now been demonstrated that lifestyle interventions don’t do anything to help reverse this deadly epidemic.
Step 5: Profit!
Now, look. I’m not here to jump on any conspiracy theory bandwagons, although there’s very little that I’d put past big pharma conglomerates, and weight loss drugs clearly inflame and then exploit people’s insecurities for money (while playing fast and loose with their overall health). It wouldn’t surprise me one whit if this theory were at least partially true. But, of course, it’s just one dude’s theory.
That said, that mystery doctor’s inside perspective is a valuable reminder that our nation’s battle with weight and health is much more complicated than the general public likes to think. That’s it. It’s just complicated. And refusing to address those complications, clinging to the simple “eat less/exercise more” model, is an obstructionist attitude that solves nothing. You often hear anti-fat crusaders complaining that “fat people don’t want to have an honest conversation about fat,” while refusing to acknowledge things like multi-billion-dollar industries that market candy cereal to children and then diet pills to adults. Or the ways that a lifetime of consuming hyperrich foods (deliberately saturated with high fructose corn syrup thanks to federal subsidies) can literally change people’s body chemistries and leave them largely powerless to maintain significant longterm weight loss. Or the hold that emotional eating can have over people’s lives (I read a story recently about a victim of a brutal childhood rape who says she literally can’t feel anything except for the enjoyment of food—you want to tell that woman to “put down the corndog, fatty”?). Or the fact that some people, regardless of lifestyle, are just fat.