Obesity: Still Phobic After All These Years?
We have a problem with the word obesity. The we in this thought is all of us, because after decades of watching the prevalence of obesity grow, people are still phobic about obesity when it comes close to home. Research tells us that obesity is not the worst word we can use to talk about this medical condition. There are words like morbidly obese, fat, and chubby that elicit much more anger.
But this medical condition, which affects about 40% of the U.S. population, has a name (obesity) that most people just don’t want to say. They prefer euphemisms: weight, BMI, and even overweight are all terms that people are twice as likely to accept as obesity.
The Name We Cannot Say
Ask cancer care professionals. They can tell you all about dealing with a disease so stigmatized that people have trouble saying its name. So they avoid it. Jarin Louis Noronha. He describes the effects of stigma on cancer patients:
“Stigma seriously harms all parties in the doctor–patient–caregiver relationship. Oncologists are commonly asked to keep the diagnosis hidden from the patient’s inner circle which propagates silent, solitary suffering. This decision is partly influenced by the reports that a cancer diagnosis leads people to see you as less than the person you were.
“Understandably, this pessimistic impression of cancer can lead patients to not accept the diagnosis. If people are worried that they may have cancer; they may conceal this apprehension because, when people are stigmatized, they shy away from discussing the matter.”
We have amazing new treatments for obesity, but even FDA shies away from talking about them as being for the treatment of obesity. The agency says their indication is “to reduce excess body weight.” Treat obesity? Nope. The indication is all about weight. Unless it’s heart disease or sleep apnea, or eventually a host of other obesity complications.
When talking to a U.S. Senator last week, he sang the praises of these drugs. But not for obesity. “No offense. I know the word is in your organization’s name. But I prefer to talk about whole health.”
We Can Deal with Anything We Can Talk About
Euphemisms and stigma make it hard to deal with any disease. They get in the way of cancer care. People suffer needlessly because of it.
And they certainly get in the way of obesity care. Stigma leads smart people to say stupid things like “the demand for weight loss drugs is becoming unsustainable.” They worry that too many people want to lose weight. Not that too many people have untreated obesity. Not that too many people suffer from the complications of denying them access to treatment.
Click here for research by Adrian Brown and Stuart Flint on the words people use for obesity and here for perspective on obesity stigma among health professionals. For perspective on cancer stigma, click here.
The Doctor, detail from painting by Frederick Cayley Robinson, licensed under CC BY 4.0
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July 29, 2025
