March 3, 2021 — Today for Obesity Care Week (OCW2021), the focus is access to care. But access to care is not such a tidy, self-contained subject. That’s because the problems we have with access to obesity care often actually start with weigh bias – the OCW2021 theme for Monday. Let us explain with the experience of a good […]
February 28, 2021 — Is there a political hot button any hotter right now than cancel culture? The BBC aptly suggests these words have become potent weapons in political culture wars. A former president, voted out of office, defends himself a victim of cancel culture. The list is long for people who feel like aggrieved victims. So perhaps this […]
February 20, 2021 — Let’s say you’re a brilliant economist. Does it matter how attractive you are? Perhaps it should not. But according to a new study, it most certainly does. Attractive economists get to study and work at more prestigious universities. They get better jobs in the private sector. They even get more more citations for the papers […]
February 14, 2021 — Good cardiovascular health is simple, says the American Heart Association. Just follow Life’s Simple 7. It’s the AHA’s trademark guide to good health. Four ideal health behaviors and three ideal health metrics. The metrics are cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood glucose. The behaviors are eating healthy, being active, not smoking, and having a BMI less […]
February 8, 2021 — In the popular imagination, obesity is simple. Many people presume that the root cause is obvious. But the presumptions vary. Some like to blame the food industry – for junk food, too much sugar, and predatory marketing. In the UK, where weight bias is common, the NHS is blunt. “Obesity is generally caused by eating […]
February 4, 2021 — Writing in the Guardian, Dejan Jotanovic captures a fundamental flaw in the public conception of obesity. It is a singular fixation on weight loss, before and after. It squeezes life into two snapshots, leaving little respect for diversity: “My difficulty with body transformation photos is that we’re all somebody’s before and somebody else’s after in […]
February 3, 2021 — For people living with obesity, feeling invisible is familiar. For anyone, it’s hard to take. But when a person goes from being invisible to being noticed it can be jolting. Losing weight can do that and thus expose the unspoken bias that routinely confronts people with obesity. Suddenly, people who would once look right through […]
January 28, 2021 — Media images of good health are a tricky business. On one hand, fashion and lifestyle businesses are feeling pressure to include more diversity in the imagery they blast at us. But when they do, guardians of public health protest. So we have debates about what is healthy to show people in Cosmopolitan. Or the health […]
January 25, 2021 — This has become annoying. Casual misinformation about COVID vaccines is spreading through otherwise reputable news sources. “Experts” who haven’t bothered to look at the data are helping. Perhaps it comes from innocent ignorance. Or maybe from unconscious bias. But that really doesn’t matter. It is flatly wrong to keep reporting that COVID vaccines won’t work […]
January 15, 2021 — To be an educator might not mean much for a person’s income. But it confers tremendous power over the lives of students and thus our communities. Two publications this week remind us of the great power that educators have – for better or worse – in weight bias. Affirmation by a Teacher In a video […]
