Fat chance? 63 percent of Americans say obese airline passengers should be …
The debate over chubby plane passengers is still aloft. Should they pay more to fly, or will airlines risk a discrimination lawsuit over the matter? The average weight of an American has increased 24 pounds since 1960,” note Forbes contributor Emily Stewart, who ran the numbers on the implications:
Airlines flew 735 million passengers in 2012. Multiply that by 24 pounds and airlines are flying 17.6 billion pounds of extra weight – requiring 176.4 million gallons of fuel, at a cost of, oh, $538 million.
Should the plump passenger pay more, pay by the pound or buy another seat? One small airlines already charges a “fat tax” for heavier folks. But some say they could easily strike back. Rebecca Puhl, director of research at Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, says there’s discrimination at work here. Weight should be a protected category, like race or gender.
“Some people can diet, exercise, do everything right, and still have a tough time losing and keeping weight off,” she told Newsweek.
AirCanada, meanwhile, is investigating a new policy for heavier flyers. The airlines considers obesity a medical condition, and will offer chubby passengers a free extra seat if they produce a doctor’s note on their health status.
It’s complicated. Maybe New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, famed for his weight-conscious “soda tax,” will weigh in on the matter. Maybe.
Here’s what Americans think so far:
63 percent say heavyweight airline passengers should be required buy a second seat if they can’t fit in a standard seat.seat.
59 percent do not support passengers being charged and ticketed according to their personal weight and luggage combined; 25 percent say it’s a good idea.
42 percent would feel “humiliated” if they had to be weighed publicly in an airport; 40 percent would not mind.
25 percent of “small”-sized people would not mind being weighed publicly; 19 percent would mind.
23 percent of “large”-sized people would feel humiliated by a weigh-in; 15 percent would not.
Source: A YouGov Omnibus poll of 1,000 U.S. adults conducted April 12 to 14.
Article source: http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/watercooler/2013/apr/23/fat-chance-63-percent-americans-say-obese-airline-/
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Categories: Fat Loss Diary Tags: Emily Stewart, Food Policy, Rebecca Puhl
Prejudice Against Fat People Ignored
At a time when obesity is seen as a serious public health threat, research has found a growing prejudice against fat people.
Last week, the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University published a study suggesting that male jurors didn’t administer blind justice when it came to plus-size female defendants.
Female jurors displayed no prejudice against fat defendants but men — especially lean men — were far more likely to slap a guilty verdict on an overweight woman and were quicker to label her a repeat offender with an “awareness of her crimes.”
Another recent study by the Center for Creative Leadership found that top managers with a high body mass index were judged more harshly and seen as less effective than their slimmer colleagues by their peers, both at work and in interpersonal relationships.
Join the ABC News Tweet Chat About Obesity Prevention and Treatment Today at 1 p.m. ET
Rebecca Puhl, one of the Yale researchers who co-wrote the juror study, said these displays of fat stigma are par for the course.
“Thinness has come to symbolize important values in our society, values such as discipline, hard work, ambition and
willpower. If you’re not thin, then you don’t have them,” she said.
Previous research by Puhl and her associates found that prejudice against fat people was pervasive and translated into inequities across broad areas of life.
Some examples: Fifty percent of doctors found that fat patients were “awkward, ugly, weak-willed and unlikely to comply with treatment” and 24 percent of nurses said they were repulsed by their obese patients. Nearly 30 percent of teachers said that becoming obese was “the worst thing that can happen to someone” – and more than 70 percent of obese people said they had been ridiculed about their weight by a family member.
Heavy-Duty Stereotypes
Kenlie Tiggeman, a political consultant who lives in New Orleans, said she’s never needed a study to highlight hostility against fat people. As someone who has lost 120 pounds but has a 100 more to lose, she lives it.
Last year Tiggeman was thrown off a Southwest Airlines flight not once but twice because the carrier deemed her “too fat to fly.” According to Tiggeman and witnesses, she was stopped at the gate both times by airline employees who proceeded to quiz her loudly about her weight and dress size before denying her boarding access.
Far from being an isolated incidence, Tiggeman said the experience was symptomatic of what she encounters every day.
“Just last week I was at the swimming pool in my gym when I overheard a woman on her cell tell a friend she was whale watching,” Tiggeman said. “She was looking right at me. I know she was talking about me.”
People have no qualms aiming such overt cruelty at obese people, Puhl said, because there are few consequences. She said that fat stigma is rarely challenged and often ignored. In effect, it’s the last acceptable prejudice.
Article source: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/stigma-obese-acceptable-prejudice/story?id=18276788
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Categories: Fat Loss Diary Tags: ET, Food Policy, New Orleans, Yale University
Prejudice Against Fat People Ignored
At a time when obesity is seen as a serious public health threat, research has found a growing prejudice against fat people.
Last week, the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University published a study suggesting that male jurors didn’t administer blind justice when it came to plus-size female defendants.
Female jurors displayed no prejudice against fat defendants but men — especially lean men — were far more likely to slap a guilty verdict on an overweight woman and were quicker to label her a repeat offender with an “awareness of her crimes.”
Another recent study by the Center for Creative Leadership found that top managers with a high body mass index were judged more harshly and seen as less effective than their slimmer colleagues by their peers, both at work and in interpersonal relationships.
Join the ABC News Tweet Chat About Obesity Prevention and Treatment Today at 1 p.m. ET
Rebecca Puhl, one of the Yale researchers who co-wrote the juror study, said these displays of fat stigma are par for the course.
“Thinness has come to symbolize important values in our society, values such as discipline, hard work, ambition and
willpower. If you’re not thin, then you don’t have them,” she said.
Previous research by Puhl and her associates found that prejudice against fat people was pervasive and translated into inequities across broad areas of life.
Some examples: Fifty percent of doctors found that fat patients were “awkward, ugly, weak-willed and unlikely to comply with treatment” and 24 percent of nurses said they were repulsed by their obese patients. Nearly 30 percent of teachers said that becoming obese was “the worst thing that can happen to someone” – and more than 70 percent of obese people said they had been ridiculed about their weight by a family member.
Heavy-Duty Stereotypes
Kenlie Tiggeman, a political consultant who lives in New Orleans, said she’s never needed a study to highlight hostility against fat people. As someone who has lost 120 pounds but has a 100 more to lose, she lives it.
Last year Tiggeman was thrown off a Southwest Airlines flight not once but twice because the carrier deemed her “too fat to fly.” According to Tiggeman and witnesses, she was stopped at the gate both times by airline employees who proceeded to quiz her loudly about her weight and dress size before denying her boarding access.
Far from being an isolated incidence, Tiggeman said the experience was symptomatic of what she encounters every day.
“Just last week I was at the swimming pool in my gym when I overheard a woman on her cell tell a friend she was whale watching,” Tiggeman said. “She was looking right at me. I know she was talking about me.”
People have no qualms aiming such overt cruelty at obese people, Puhl said, because there are few consequences. She said that fat stigma is rarely challenged and often ignored. In effect, it’s the last acceptable prejudice.
“There are no federal laws on the books that make it illegal to discriminate on the basis of body weight, so on the whole it remains legal. That sends a message that it’s no big deal,” said Puhl.
Puhl suspects that public health campaigns branding obesity as a disease are sometimes perceived as criticizing individuals rather than the environmental and social factors that lead to weight gain. This, she said, gives some people license to engage in public fat-shaming.
She also believes media portrayals of heavy people as fat, lazy and gluttonous do them no favors.
“Overweight people are usually shown in stereotypical ways — engaged in out of control eating or bingeing on junk food — and they are often shown as the target of humor or ridicule,” she pointed out. “With the amount of media we all consume, it’s no wonder these stereotypes stick.”
Big Changes Needed
Puhl said because of the public’s belief that obesity is a temporary condition completely under an individual’s control, fat people didn’t get much sympathy, even from others struggling with their own weight.
“For things to change there needs to be a greater understanding of how complex the condition is and how hard it is to reverse,” she said.
Even as obesity rates continue to soar, Puhl hasn’t seen much improvement in public perception except for a few glimmers of hope in the workplace and health care environment.
Tiggeman, for one, is fighting back. She’s suing Southwest, not for monetary gain but to force the airline industry to address its policies regarding overweight passengers, she said.
“I have no problem being held to a standard, but I think that standard shouldn’t be applied arbitrarily based on how an airline employee feels about my size,” she said. “We need to know if we need one seat or two, because this eyeballing happening at the gate is incredibly discriminatory, and it’s so unnecessary.”
Tweet chat: Why Are We Fat and What Can We Do About It?
To raise public awareness about obesity prevention and treatment, Dr. Richard Besser, ABC News’ chief health and medical correspondent, will host a one-hour “tweet chat” on Twitter today from 1-2 p.m. ET. To participate, sign into Twitter and click here for the hashtag. Follow the conversation or jump in with comments and questions of your own.
Medical experts from the American Council on Exercise, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Center for Science in the Public Interest and Cornell University will join Besser on the chat to answer your questions and offer advice.
Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/fat-last-acceptable-prejudice-study-finds-210003564--abc-news-topstories.html
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Categories: Fat Loss Diary Tags: ET, Food Policy, Richard Besser, Yale University
Fat Is the Last Acceptable Prejudice, Study Finds
At a time when obesity is seen as a serious public health threat, research has found a growing prejudice against fat people.
Last week, the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University published a study suggesting that male jurors didn’t administer blind justice when it came to plus-size female defendants.
Female jurors displayed no prejudice against fat defendants but men — especially lean men — were far more likely to slap a guilty verdict on an overweight woman and were quicker to label her a repeat offender with an “awareness of her crimes.”
Another recent study by the Center for Creative Leadership found that top managers with a high body mass index were judged more harshly and seen as less effective than their slimmer colleagues by their peers, both at work and in interpersonal relationships.
Join the ABC News Tweet Chat about Obesity Prevention and Treatment Today at 1 p.m.. ET
Rebecca Puhl, one of the Yale researchers who co-wrote the juror study, said these displays of fat stigma are par for the course.
“Thinness has come to symbolize important values in our society, values such as discipline, hard work, ambition and
willpower. If you’re not thin, then you don’t have them,” she said.
Previous research by Puhl and her associates found that prejudice against fat people was pervasive and translated into inequities across broad areas of life.
Some examples: Fifty percent of doctors found that fat patients were “awkward, ugly, weak-willed and unlikely to comply with treatment” and 24 percent of nurses said they were repulsed by their obese patients. Nearly 30 percent of teachers said that becoming obese was “the worst thing that can happen to someone” – and more than 70 percent of obese people said they had been ridiculed about their weight by a family member.
Heavy-Duty Stereotypes
Kenlie Tiggeman, a political consultant who lives in New Orleans, said she’s never needed a study to highlight hostility against fat people. As someone who has lost 120 pounds but has a 100 more to lose, she lives it.
Last year Tiggeman was thrown off a Southwest Airlines flight not once but twice because the carrier deemed her “too fat to fly.” According to Tiggeman and witnesses, she was stopped at the gate both times by airline employees who proceeded to quiz her loudly about her weight and dress size before denying her boarding access.
Far from being an isolated incidence, Tiggeman said the experience was symptomatic of what she encounters every day.
“Just last week I was at the swimming pool in my gym when I overheard a woman on her cell tell a friend she was whale watching,” Tiggeman said. “She was looking right at me. I know she was talking about me.”
People have no qualms aiming such overt cruelty at obese people, Puhl said, because there are few consequences. She said that fat stigma is rarely challenged and often ignored. In effect, it’s the last acceptable prejudice.
Article source: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/stigma-obese-acceptable-prejudice/story?id=18276788
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Categories: Fat Loss Diary Tags: ET, Food Policy, New Orleans, Yale University
Fat Is the Last Acceptable Prejudice, Study Finds
At a time when obesity is seen as a serious public health threat, research has found a growing prejudice against fat people.
Last week, the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University published a study suggesting that male jurors didn’t administer blind justice when it came to plus-size female defendants.
Female jurors displayed no prejudice against fat defendants but men — especially lean men — were far more likely to slap a guilty verdict on an overweight woman and were quicker to label her a repeat offender with an “awareness of her crimes.”
Another recent study by the Center for Creative Leadership found that top managers with a high body mass index were judged more harshly and seen as less effective than their slimmer colleagues by their peers, both at work and in interpersonal relationships.
Join the ABC News Tweet Chat about Obesity Prevention and Treatment Today at 1 p.m.. ET
Rebecca Puhl, one of the Yale researchers who co-wrote the juror study, said these displays of fat stigma are par for the course.
“Thinness has come to symbolize important values in our society, values such as discipline, hard work, ambition and
willpower. If you’re not thin, then you don’t have them,” she said.
Previous research by Puhl and her associates found that prejudice against fat people was pervasive and translated into inequities across broad areas of life.
Some examples: Fifty percent of doctors found that fat patients were “awkward, ugly, weak-willed and unlikely to comply with treatment” and 24 percent of nurses said they were repulsed by their obese patients. Nearly 30 percent of teachers said that becoming obese was “the worst thing that can happen to someone” – and more than 70 percent of obese people said they had been ridiculed about their weight by a family member.
Heavy-Duty Stereotypes
Kenlie Tiggeman, a political consultant who lives in New Orleans, said she’s never needed a study to highlight hostility against fat people. As someone who has lost 120 pounds but has a 100 more to lose, she lives it.
Last year Tiggeman was thrown off a Southwest Airlines flight not once but twice because the carrier deemed her “too fat to fly.” According to Tiggeman and witnesses, she was stopped at the gate both times by airline employees who proceeded to quiz her loudly about her weight and dress size before denying her boarding access.
Far from being an isolated incidence, Tiggeman said the experience was symptomatic of what she encounters every day.
“Just last week I was at the swimming pool in my gym when I overheard a woman on her cell tell a friend she was whale watching,” Tiggeman said. “She was looking right at me. I know she was talking about me.”
People have no qualms aiming such overt cruelty at obese people, Puhl said, because there are few consequences. She said that fat stigma is rarely challenged and often ignored. In effect, it’s the last acceptable prejudice.
“There are no federal laws on the books that make it illegal to discriminate on the basis of body weight, so on the whole it remains legal. That sends a message that it’s no big deal,” said Puhl.
Puhl suspects that public health campaigns branding obesity as a disease are sometimes perceived as criticizing individuals rather than the environmental and social factors that lead to weight gain. This, she said, gives some people license to engage in public fat-shaming.
She also believes media portrayals of heavy people as fat, lazy and gluttonous do them no favors.
“Overweight people are usually shown in stereotypical ways — engaged in out of control eating or bingeing on junk food — and they are often shown as the target of humor or ridicule,” she pointed out. “With the amount of media we all consume, it’s no wonder these stereotypes stick.”
Big Changes Needed
Puhl said because of the public’s belief that obesity is a temporary condition completely under an individual’s control, fat people didn’t get much sympathy, even from others struggling with their own weight.
“For things to change there needs to be a greater understanding of how complex the condition is and how hard it is to reverse,” she said.
Even as obesity rates continue to soar, Puhl hasn’t seen much improvement in public perception except for a few glimmers of hope in the workplace and health care environment.
Tiggeman, for one, is fighting back. She’s suing Southwest, not for monetary gain but to force the airline industry to address its policies regarding overweight passengers, she said.
“I have no problem being held to a standard, but I think that standard shouldn’t be applied arbitrarily based on how an airline employee feels about my size,” she said. “We need to know if we need one seat or two, because this eyeballing happening at the gate is incredibly discriminatory, and it’s so unnecessary.”
Tweet chat: Why Are We Fat and What Can We Do About It?
To raise public awareness about obesity prevention and treatment, Dr. Richard Besser, ABC News’ chief health and medical correspondent, will host a one-hour “tweet chat” on Twitter today from 1-2 p.m. ET. To participate, sign into Twitter and click here for the hashtag. Follow the conversation or jump in with comments and questions of your own.
Medical experts from the American Council on Exercise, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Center for Science in the Public Interest and Cornell University will join Besser on the chat to answer your questions and offer advice.
Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/fat-last-acceptable-prejudice-study-finds-210003564--abc-news-topstories.html
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Categories: Fat Loss Diary Tags: ET, Food Policy, Richard Besser, Yale University
New Anti-Obesity Ads Blaming Overweight Parents Spark Criticism
This week, a new anti-obesity media campaign launched in Minnesota has been getting a lot of attention, and not necessarily the good kind.
One ad (see above) features two kids bragging about how much their dads can eat, and trying to one-up each other. A dad walks up, hears the kids, and looks down guiltily at his tray of burgers and fries. Another ad shows an overweight mom wheeling a cart of unhealthy groceries around the store, eventually noticing that her chubby daughter is wheeling a smaller cart but doing the same thing.
The messaging has sparked fresh debate about going after overweight people in the name of taking on the well-documented public health concerns over the country’s growing waistlines. The Atlantic places the ads in the “gray area between educating and shaming.”
And Lindy West, a staff writer at the blog Jezebel who is frank about her own weight issues, wrote a tirade about the new ads, called: “It’s Hard Enough to Be a Fat Kid Without the Government Telling You You’re an Epidemic.” The post has garnered more than 63,000 comments so far. (Warning: Parts of West’s post are not family fare.)
“The idea that some kids would sit around bragging about their fat dad who’s so proud of how fat he is, is just ludicrous,” she tells The Salt.
“I just find [the ad campaign] to be really reductive and — condescending comes to mind. Fat people know about nutrition. We know that eating four cheeseburgers a day is not the way to go.”
For West, the ads are squarely in the shaming category. “Fat people are already ashamed. People are already really unhappy with their bodies, which has a lot to do with the way that other people talk to you, and these preconceived notions that they have about your life.
“Fat people hate being fat, because everyone’s mean to you, and you can’t find clothes that fit you, and you can’t fit into the chair at the restaurant,” she says. “We’ve been shaming fat people for decades, and clearly it’s not doing anyone any good.”
The ads were created by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota. Marc Manley, the vice president and chief prevention officer, says he was very involved with the creation and messaging behind the ads.
“Our intent in creating these ads was really just to show good parents having moments of realization that they needed to change their own behavior in order to send the right message to their kid,” Manley says.
He says the nonprofit used to put out PSAs that were more positive, like this one encouraging people to get up and dance. But, he says, the problem of obesity in Minnesota and nationwide is so tough, they needed a new, more dramatic approach.
Rebecca Puhl at Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, has spent over a decade studying attitudes toward weight.
She recently headed a nationwide study that looked at attitudes toward different anti-obesity messages.
“What our research shows is that people feel much more motivated and empowered to make healthy lifestyle changes when campaign messages are supportive and encourage specific health behaviors,” she says. “But when campaign messages communicate shame or blame or stigma, people report much less motivation, and lower intentions to improve their health behaviors.”
Manley says he stands by the new ads. “Just because people like an ad doesn’t mean it moves them to action,” he says. These ads are just part of a range of efforts his organization is undertaking to address the obesity issue.
The goal of the ads, he adds, is “to trigger some thinking and some dialogue about this very serious health problem.”
It’s fair to say they’ve certainly done that.
Article source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/09/27/161831449/new-anti-obesity-ads-blaming-overweight-parents-spark-criticism
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Categories: Fat Loss Diary Tags: Blue Cross, Food Policy, Marc Manley, Rebecca Puhl
20% 'Fat Tax' Needed to Fight Obesity
It’s a proposition some might find hard to swallow: a 20-percent tax on unhealthy food to improve the health of the nation.
Yet such a tax — spread across the food chain from manufacturer to consumer, coupled with changes in food policy to spur production of healthier food — is needed to reverse the pandemic of obesity and chronic diseases, researchers say.
Two articles published online today (May 15) in the British Medical Journal describe this course of action. These opinion pieces come one week before the 65th World Health Assembly, to convene on May 21 to 26 in Geneva, where diet-related diseases will be the primary topic.
Size of fat tax
One article, led by Oliver Mytton of Oxford University’s Department of Public Health, looked at tax schemes worldwide to see what has worked, however marginally. Many countries are now using such “sin” taxes, which have curbed tobacco and alcohol use, to limit the consumption of unhealthy food, Mytton said. These taxes are based on the basic economic theory that, as the price of an item rises, the consumption of that item will fall. [7 Diet Tricks That Really Work]
But this theory isn’t necessarily true with food, Mytton said. Just because the price of microwave-ready, deep-fried, gooey cheese sticks goes up doesn’t mean the nation will switch to kale. People might continue eating deep-fried, gooey cheese sticks, because that’s what they like to eat and that’s all they know how to eat.
Mytton’s group, however, found numerous cases in which a relatively high tax altered food consumption in a healthful way. One example comes from Denmark, where early assessment is showing that a new relatively high “fat tax” on oh-so-cherished saturated fat has prompted people to eat foods with a healthier fat profile. Another study comes from Boston, at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital cafeteria, where a 35-percent increase in the price of sugary drinks led to a 26-percent reduction in consumption.
Analyzing such food tax schemes, Mytton’s group eyeballed a 20-percent tax as the level at which changes on food consumption become noticeable.
Mytton is cognizant of unintended consequences of food taxes — for example, trading one evil for another, less sugar for more fat, or buying less healthy food for lack of money to buy any food. For this reason, he suggests introducing a sugary beverage tax, in which the alternative is usually drinking more tap water.
“A tax isn’t going to fix obesity; it’s not going to fix diet-related diseases,” Mytton said. “There’s no single solution. But it can have a role in moving people in the right direction” with their eating patterns. Mytton also would like to see subsidies for healthy foods, such as fruit and vegetables.
Food policy and marketing
A second article, by Corinna Hawkes of the Centre for Food Policy at City University, London, calls for broad changes in food policy and marketing. This opinion piece complements a scientific paper Hawkes and her colleagues published last month in the journal Food Policy, which primarily targets the food industry as the best place to fight diet-related diseases.
Hawkes argues that changes in food production — for example, less sugar, salt and trans-fats, used now because they are inexpensive alternatives for healthier ingredients — could dramatically lower the incidence of obesity and heart disease with minimal effect on consumers’ pocketbooks.
In essence, she is calling for a reversal of the changes in the food supply system that, in recent decades, have “coincided with rises in obesity and non-communicable diseases,” she said. During this period, large food processors and retailers have wielded greater control over food production through tightly controlled supply chains. Through better price control and innovative marketing, these companies have created a consumer demand for cheaper but unhealthier food, largely in the form of easy-to-prepare processed foods and drinks.
Strategies similar to what went into the creation of inexpensive, unhealthy food — cheap corn syrup as sweetener, or cheap soy and corn to fatten cattle — could work to make the industry find ways to use healthier ingredients and healthier manufacturing practices, Hawkes said.
And then there’s marketing: “Food marketing to children simply must be stopped,” said Hawkes “It’s absurd that it exists at all.” [10 Ways to Promote Kids' Healthy Eating]
Patrick Basham of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, is one of many who have argued that sugar and fat taxes are misguided, because they do little to change consumer-buying habits. In a March 30 article in U.S. News World Report, Basham said that soda taxes would need to be 100 percent just to see a 10-percent drop in consumption, on average across the entire population.
Also, given the poor economy, governments might be less willing to introduce taxes or changes in the food supply if they have a negative impact on jobs.
Mytton, who describes himself as pragmatic, said that governments actually might see food taxes as a way to generate revenue while reducing health costs. He points to countries such as Mexico, where diabetes now is the leading killer, something entirely the result of a poor diet and which is predicted to bankrupt the country’s health system by the end of the decade.
Christopher Wanjek is the author of the books “Bad Medicine” and “Food At Work.” His column, Bad Medicine, appears regularly on LiveScience.
Copyright 2012 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/20-fat-tax-needed-fight-obesity-000726848.html
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Categories: Fat Loss Diary Tags: Bad Medicine, Christopher Wanjek, Food Policy, Hawkes It