This is the fat-lash movement that causes American’s slimming industry so much pain. In his book Bin Fat Lies (Ballantine, 1996), Glenn Gaesser says that no study yet has convincingly shown that weight is an independent cause of health problems. Fatness does not kill people; things like hypertension, coronary heart diseases and cancer do. Michael Fumento, author of The Fat of the Land (Viking, 1997), an anti, fat-lash diatribe, compares Dr. Gaesser’s logic with saying that the guillotine did not kill Louis Ⅹ Ⅳ: Rather, it was the severing feet into a wicker basket.
Being fat kills in several ways. It makes people far more likely to suffer from heart disease or high blood pressure. Even moderate obesity increases the chance of contracting diabetes. Being 40% overweight makes people 30%-50% more likely to die of cancer, according to the American Cancer Society. Extreme fatness makes patients so much less likely to survive surgery that many doctors refuse to operate until they slim.
The idea that being overweight is caused by obesity genes is not wholly false; research have found a number of genes that appear to make some people bum off energy at a slower rate. But genes are not destiny. The difference between someone with a genetic predisposition to gain weight and someone without appears to be roughly 40 calories—or a spoonful of mayonnaise—a day.
An alternative fat-lash argument, advanced in books such as Dean Onrush’s Eat More, Weight Less (Harper Collies, 1993) and Date Atren’s Don’t Diet (William Morrow, 1978), is that fatness is not a matter of eating too much. They note that as Americans, weight has ballooned over the last few decades, their reported caloric intake has plunged. This simply explains peopled own recollection of how much they eat is extremely unreliable. And as they grow fatter, people feel guilty and are more likely to fib about how much they eat. All reputable studies show that eating less and exercising reduce weight.
Certainly, the body’s metabolism slows a little when you lose weight, because it takes less energy to carry less bulk around, and because dieting can make the body fear it is about to starve. But a sensible low-fat diet makes weight loss possible. The fat-lash movement is dangerous, because slimmers will often find any excuse to give up. To tell people that it is healthy to be obese is to encourage them to live sick and die young.