Helen Pluckrose Discusses Obesity and Fat Shaming

It occurred to me to write this article because 'tis the season where we celebrate refined carbohydrates and overeating. Holiday eating automatically means a table filled with sugary treats. Here's another well-known fact: Here in the U.S. more than 70% of us are overweight or obese.

The thought of holiday sweets automatically puts me in defensive mode.  I've substantially modified my eating and exercise routines several times during my life. I've once lost more than 30 pounds and I've lost more than 20 pounds twice. I know from experience that I need to consciously watch what I eat, make myself get on the scale several times each week and force myself to exercise. If I don't do these things, I inevitably gain at least 2 or 3 pounds each month. Over the course of 12 months, that can add up to more than 30 pounds. My personal struggles and hard-won successes probably explain my lack of patience with the common claim that being obese is something over which they have no control.  Or the claim that obesity is something that can be healthy or even admirable. I bristle when I hear people accuse me of "fat shaming" when my careful words and motives focus purely on health issues faced by obese people.

I've followed the writings of British writer Helen Pluckrose on many topics, including weight loss and "fat shaming." I follow her on Twitter and really enjoy her matter-of-fact upbeat attitude. Pluckrose currently describes herself as obese and indicates on Twitter that she is working on losing weight. In the attached 2019 article, "Big Fat Lies: The Fat Activism Movement is Risking Lives by Suppressing Obesity Research," she offers the facts first, then her opinions, regarding obesity and accusations of fat-shaming. For starters, according to WHO, most of the world's population "lives in countries where an excess of weight now kills more people than being underweight."

The accusation of "fat shaming" often begins with the false claim that overeating has little to do with obesity.  Pluckrose does not buy this attempt to portray obesity as an immutable characteristic:

There are certainly plenty of people who insist they eat very little and yet are heavily overweight, but it’s hard not to notice that in regions where people genuinely don’t have enough to eat, none of them are obese.  Similarly, people who tell us they are obese because of their genes do not seem to have answers for where all these obese genes suddenly came from as our grandparents’ generation did not have the same problem

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Don’t buy Girl Scout cookies

Today, an acquaintance (I’ll call her “Laura”) asked me if I would buy some Girl Scout cookies from her daughter’s troop. I told her “No thank you.” 

It’s not that I don’t enjoy eating Girl Scout cookies (I do enjoy Thin Mints and Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies).   It’s not that I generally oppose the activities of Girl Scouts.  I approve of much of what Girl Scouts do. 

Here’s what triggered this post. Laura told me that the average box of cookies sells for three dollars and that the average profit for each box of cookies is only fifty cents.  Hmmmm. 

Therefore, I can support their Girl Scouts to the same extent by handing $5 directly to the local troop or by buying $30 worth of cookies.  Unless you think that eating cookies is an especially good thing, it makes much more sense to simply hand the local troop $5.  Then again, eating cookies, especially a lot of cookies, is not a good thing.  Cookies consist largely of refined carbohydrates and sugars.  These are exactly the kinds of ingredients that invite obesity.  Are the Girl Scouts concerned about obesity?  Very much so (so am I), yet they continue to rely on cookie sales to fund their activities.

But let’s go back to the money for a moment.  If you click here, you can see it stated that “all of the revenue” from cookie sales “stays with the local Girl Scout council that sponsors the sale.”  The official site carefully …

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