Talking Point - Obesity
Created | Updated Jul 31, 2007
A recent study claims discrimination against fat people might not be simply due to bullying. Rather, it could be due to evolution. We have evolved to stay away from things which could cause us damage. If we see somebody who looks ill, we want to stay away because we know subconsciously they could harm us. In the study, people who agreed with the following statement:
It really bothers me when people sneeze without covering their mouths....were more likely to agree with this one as well:
If I were an employer looking to hire, I might avoid hiring a fat person.
However, it's getting harder to 'avoid' fat people because we are getting fatter as a nation. Fat is becoming an increasingly weighty issue. Levels of obesity have tripled in England since 1980. Experts say within a generation, 40% of the people in the UK could be obese.
In the developed world, famine has pratically disappeared. However, evolution has not yet caught on to the fact that we are now faced with an abundance of high calorific food. Dr Nick Finer,
a senior medical consultant on obesity says:
In the past, when we were hunter-gatherers, our bodies were programmed to eat what we could when we could. We needed to store food because we didn't know where the next meal would come from.The human brain is very good at telling us we are hungry and need food. But the problem now is that there is always plenty available and the brain is not so good at telling us we have had enough.
It's estimated one billion people globally are obese - what do you think needs to be done to stop this number increasing further?
Are you overweight?
Is there actually anything wrong with being a bit fat? Winston Churchill was fat, after all.
What kind of prejudices have you encountered?
Do you think obesity is an illness?
Or do you believe it is self-inflicted?
Is fat a class issue?
Should more stringent measures be taken against food manufactures so they are no longer allowed to use cartoon characters or popular entertainers to market foods to children which can be high in fat or salt?
Should millions of pounds be spent on drugs to tackle obesity – or should the focus be more about preventing it occurring in the first place?
