April 12, 2022 — Your health is in your hands. With these words, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky captures the essence of flawed thinking about public health. These words also capture the pervasive bias that gets in the way of coping well with both the COVID-19 pandemic and with obesity. This is the presumption that personal responsibility will take care […]
December 15, 2021 — With the new year on the way, no doubt many headlines will be urging readers to set resolutions to lose the weight they may have put on over the holidays. However, the way the British press talks about weight, obesity, and health has fluctuated markedly in recent years. To learn more about these changes, we […]
December 5, 2021 — Who can possibly argue with the virtue of healthy choices? And yet, that’s precisely what Anita Sreedhar and Anand Gopal are doing in a provocative commentary about the root of our problems in coping with a public health emergency. Much of the world has fallen into a trap: walking away from the common good of […]
September 30, 2021 — The “War on Obesity” has claimed many victims, but made little progress against the disease itself. This approach to obesity has done a fine job of setting up a war inside our own heads – self-stigma. “Weight stigma is widespread, damaging and difficult to eradicate,” writes Rebecca Puhl in the Washington Post. In fact, the […]
November 18, 2020 — We don’t mean to pick on this lovely ad campaign by the NHS. Because there’s nothing wrong with promoting healthy lifestyles. But unfortunately, it isn’t going to do a thing to reverse the obesity trends in the UK. It reflects a mentality about confronting obesity that fails over and over. Just do better and make […]
January 1, 2019 — Popular culture all over the world spells it out. We should aspire to live a healthy lifestyle. And we surely do. In the spirit of living healthfully, gym memberships will soar with the beginning of the new year. Roughly half of us will resolve to lose weight or improve our fitness. It’s a big business. […]
December 22, 2017 — On the subject of obesity, one way or another, it takes only seconds. Almost always, the subject of personal responsibility will claim its central role. To some people, it’s even a key tool for allocating scarce medical resources. But with a new paper in the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, Sven Ove Hansson helps us […]
August 2, 2013 — In the absence of truly effective treatments for obesity, a strong resolve is one of the best tools a person can muster to overcome obesity. But encouragement to overcome obesity is very different from admonition to take personal responsibility for it. A new study reminds us of the fine line between personal responsibility and shame. […]
May 23, 2013 — News about obesity is filled with speculation about what causes obesity, who is at fault for the problem, and often, personal responsibility. Dialogue about obesity is stuck between seeking a perfect villain at fault for spiraling obesity rates and personal responsibility as a total solution to obesity. Martin Binks recently published an excellent reflection on […]
