Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Obesity Society hosting event at Democratic Convention

Ok, so I belong to a diabetes list (for fat diabetics) and one of the posts there today was about the Obesity Society hosting an event at the Democratic Convention.
According to the post, the OS forum
will feature panel roundtable discussions with key Democratic leaders at both the federal and state/local levels to discuss the policy options our Democratic leaders and lawmakers should consider. In addition, a representative of the Obama campaign will address the role of obesity in Obama's health care plan. The event will be moderated by Sally Squires, the syndicated columnist of The Lean Plate Club and confirmed panelists include Rep. John Conyers and South Carolina's Superintendent of Education, Jim Rex.

I went and did a little research on their website, http://www.obesity.org/, and these people are not the friends of fat folks. For one thing, they seem to think that people "suffer" from obesity, their "Fact or Fiction" page perpetuates a ton of mythconceptions about obesity and health (you can find it here), and last, but definitely not least, they promote WLS as a solution for obesity. Yeah, right, I have several bridges I'd love to sell them if they truly believe that one.
I really don't think I want these people talking to a presidential candidate about how to set up his health care plan to address the "role of obesity" in it. This kind of mythinformation is not going to help improve access to health care for anyone, let alone fat people.

9 comments:

  1. Well, I'm still going to support Obama, in spite of this. I mean, I originally was supporting Hillary, who also had an Obesity Task Force.

    I'm very disappointed to hear this and considering that John Conyers is on the task force and he's from my town, Detroit, is VERY disheartening to hear.

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  2. I would be very interested in knowing more about this list for fat diabetics. It's hard getting friendly advice out there. Any link would be appreciated.

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  3. teri - this is the information link, you can probably get the info on how to join there too: http://www.fa-diab.com
    DH is type 2 and it's one of the sites that's been a big help to us.

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  4. Thanks Vesta! By the way, your blog was the first FA site I found. I'm a big fan. Thanks again.

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  5. I have to say that the mental illness one was well crazy. They found most of the patients were on psychiatric medication which could more than explain the fact for any weight gain for the individuals.

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  6. I wish I could be there and provide an "alternative viewpoint."
    Thanks for bringing this to light.

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  7. The risk of becoming obese is 40% higher among children who have one obese parent. For this reason it is extremely important to educate children to eat correctly since the first years of life. All these consequences must spur parents to improve and make children’s lifestyle more healthy. http://www.phentermine-effects.com

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  8. Dr Kayal - I can see you've drunk the OMGOBESITYEPI-PANIC Kool Aid. For one thing, size is genetically inherited, just like eye color or hair color or height (70% so, if I recall the figures correctly). So unless a child is being force-fed more than s/he wants to eat, whatever size s/he ends up at as an adult isn't going to be able to be changed without putting that child through starvation and exercising them like a hamster on speed. Not something I would condone doing to any child just to try to make them thin. So you see, it's not about health, it's never been about health, it's all about aesthetics and how some people have vilified fat for no good reason. You really need to wake up and get a clue. It's not obesity that kills, it's the fat bigotry of doctors/pharmaceutical companies who are willing to butcher us or feed us drugs that can have devastating side effects, all in the name of some misguided beauty myth.

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