Posts Tagged ‘public health campaigns’

Food systems are a key ingredient in the problem we face with obesity. But working toward healthier food systems is a challenge that goes well beyond the cartoonish ideas that surface in some public health campaigns. For example, marketing practices can be a vexing problem. Food security is a dimension of the problem that came […]

Two days into a week of intense meetings about obesity science and policy at #ECO2021 and #COS7, one thing is hard to miss. The quality of research and analysis is strong. But people living with obesity are front and center. In fact, we see strong confident voices for persons living with obesity. Not sad victims. […]

One reason that obesity can be such a difficult topic is because people link it to appearance. Thus we live in a culture where people presume they can diagnose a person’s health based on body image. Looking healthy becomes a surrogate for being healthy. People do very unhealthy things to reach for a healthy appearance. […]

About a year ago, Boris Johnson had an epiphany. He came uncomfortably close to death because of COVID-19. Obesity was the reason it was so bad for him, he decided. “I was too fat,” he said. So he launched the Better Health campaign to slim down the UK. But the UK is not alone in […]

Once again, we see the impulse rise to catastrophize obesity. A new study in BMC Public Health offers up a comparison of deaths due to smoking and adiposity. So naturally, this sparks splashy headlines. Obesity kills more than smoking! Scary stuff. But not terribly helpful. Because the subtext of this sort of hype is finger […]

It’s time for a shift in media narratives about obesity in Western Australia. So says the Health Consumers Council of Western Australia, in concert with the government there. The HCC is a nonprofit voice of the health consumer. It works across many health issues to ensure people have a say in health policy. HCC listened […]

Implicit bias about obesity is a funny thing. In the middle of a conversation about it, someone tells us, “Sure, it’s biological. But you can’t just go eating burgers and fries all the time.” Invite people to share their thoughts about obesity and you get images of a mom gorging herself on a ridiculous burger. […]

We confess to being fed up with campaigns right now. But three articles in JAMA Pediatrics shine an especially harsh light on childhood obesity campaigns in two forms. One is the PSA approach exhorting families to beware of childhood obesity. The other is the practice of weighing and measuring kids in school and sending BMI […]

Who knew that Boris Johnson was a secret fan of Michelle Obama? If imitation is sincere flattery, we see some flattery of her in the new Better Health campaign coming from the NHS. Let’s Move! has become Let’s Do This! So the UK is on a crash course of self-directed weight loss, with a little […]

Two weeks ago, Cancer Research UK blanketed the United Kingdom with billboards to proclaim that having obesity is like smoking. We and more than 12,000 petitioners have voiced strong concern that this misguided campaign will serve only to promote weight stigma, not health. Because CRUK has thus far not granted that promoting stigma might be […]