Today's Fat & Happy Music: "Freedom" (Suchi Waters Benjamin), "Women's Bodies" (Rebecca Riots), "You Need A Great Big Woman" (Diva la Grande
), "Large Women" (Keep the Lights On
), "Fat Gal" (Johnny Bond
), "I Like 'em Fat Like That" (Louis Jordan & His Tympany Five), "So Round, So Firm, So Fully Packed" (Merle Travis) & "Big Fat Mamas Are Back In Style" (Kristie Agee & Big Potential).
Food for Thought: I read from and discussed the January 1, 1998 New England Journal of Medicine editorial by Jerome Kassirer, M.D. & Marcia Angell, M.D. entitled: "Losing Weight -- An Ill-Fated New Year's Resolution." (Kassirer is the author of On the Take: How Medicine's Complicity with Big Business Can Endanger Your Health
, while Angell is the author of The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It
.)
Some excerpts from the editorial (emphases mine):
"Today, at the start of the new year, millions of Americans will resolve to lose weight, but by tomorrow, or next week, or maybe next month, most of them will have given up trying. Few will have lost weight, and even fewer will sustain the loss....Since many people cannot lose much weight no matter how hard they try, and promptly regain whatever they do lose, the vast amounts of money spent on diet clubs, special foods, and over-the-counter remedies, estimated to be on the order of $30 billion to $50 billion yearly, is wasted. More important, failed attempts to lose weight often bring with them guilt and self-hatred....To add injury to insult, the latest magical cures are neither magical nor harmless."
And:
Given the enormous social pressure to lose weight, one might suppose there is clear and overwhelming evidence of the risks of obesity and the benefits of weight loss. Unfortunately, the data linking overweight and death, as well as the data showing the beneficial effects of weight loss, are limited, fragmentary, and often ambiguous. Most of the evidence is either indirect or derived from observational epidemiologic studies, many of which have serious methodologic flaws. Many studies fail to consider confounding variables, which are extremely difficult to assess and control for in this type of study."
Audio: Listen to and/or download the mp3 recording of today's show here. (Right click on the link and "save as" to download.)
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