I would like to suggest - as I have other times, in other places, including most recently the peer-reviewed journal where I serve as editor-in-chief – that obesity may be likened to drowning.
Before making that case, let’s pause long enough to consider the implications for personal responsibility. If we are going into the water, it makes sense that we first know how to swim. It makes sense that a parent on the beach would watch their own child with great vigilance. It makes sense that families would keep watch over their backyard pools. And it makes sense that we would put on life preservers while white-water rafting. So far, this sounds like a pretty hefty dose of personal responsibility.
It also makes sense that we don’t run advertisements at the beach encouraging swimmers to try their luck with the most dangerous riptides. It makes sense that we don't goad our neighbors’ children into the deep end of a pool before making sure they can swim. It makes sense that the body politic and culture don’t conspire to make people drown.
Now to my principal argument: obesity is just like drowning. We have been told by Michael Moss, and others before him, that our food supply is willfully manipulated by smart and highly trained people to maximize the eating we all do, the calories it takes to feel full, and-of course- the money we spend along the way. As a species, we have no native defenses against caloric excess in the first place, never having needed them before. Couple that with a food supply engineered to ensure that we “can’t eat just one,” and we all are primed to drown in calories.
But nothing is wrong with a body that drowns other than staying underwater too long; normal, healthy human beings drown if they stay under water too long. Normal, healthy human beings get fat if they stay in our obesigenic culture too long, too. As we export our diet and lifestyle around the world, we see just how universal this vulnerability is.
...continue reading here.
-- David L. Katz, MD, MPH
