Voice of Reason: Fact vs. Fiction on Obesity
By
Benjamin Radford
At a June 2, 2005, press conference, Dr. Julie
Gerberding, the director of the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, issued a rare and curious
apology. She apologized for the mixed messages
and contradictory studies regarding the dangers
of obesity, acknowledging that flawed data in
several CDC studies had overstated the risks.
We have all heard the news reports, such as that
400,000 Americans die annually from obesity and
that fat kills more people than smoking. Amid
the hue and cry, a small group of writers and
researchers were questioning the numbers and assumptions.
Paul
Campos, author of The Obesity Myth: Why America's
Obsession with Weight Is Hazardous to Your Health,
is among the most vocal critics of the CDC. Campos
and others rightly sounded the alarm over bad
science, and his book was prominently featured
in a recent Scientific American cover article.
Campos
believes that the efforts to portray fat as unhealthy
and unacceptable are driven by junk science, hatred
of fat people, and a profit-hungry dieting industry.
Campos charges that "almost everything the
government and the media [are] saying about weight
and weight control [is] either grossly distorted
or flatly untrue," and he even calls former
Surgeon General David Satcher "unhinged"
in his efforts to curb America's obesity.
It
is certainly true, as Dr. Gerberding admitted,
that various estimates of obesity's death toll
were consistently overstated. While Campos and
other critics gloat in vindication, it pays to
be skeptical of the skeptics. The fact is that
obesity is only the latest in a long list of public
health threats that have been overstated by a
sensationalist news media (and, to a lesser degree,
by the medical community). The dire warnings and
hype surrounding West Nile virus, ebola, flu,
anthrax, Mad Cow disease, and even AIDS, to name
just a few, all far outstripped any reasonable
public health threat. Furthermore, the whole controversy
may leave some with the impression that obesity
is not a health threat, when in fact it clearly
is. The CDC criticisms gloss over just how difficult
and imprecise medical research can be. The public
wants quick and easy answers, but real medical
progress is often slow, expensive, and fraught
with contradictory studies. In the end, science
and medicine corrected itself.
CDC
critics such as Campos adopt a crusading tone
and blame the news media and medical journals
for getting their facts wrong and presenting a
biased viewpoint. So how does The Obesity Myth
stack up?
Let's
start with Campos's subtitle. Does America have
an obsession with weight? Campos certainly seems
to think so; he calls America "a nation of
dieters." Yet, unlike the fictional Bridget
Jones, studies and surveys find that while some
Americans are dieting, a majority are not, and
a surprising percentage-one-third to one-half-rarely
or never diet. According to a 2002 survey published
in USA Today, only one out of every five women
said losing weight was a top priority. In 2000,
a People magazine survey found only one-quarter
had dieted at any point in the last year. Studies
published in medical journals have found similar
results. For a critic who repeatedly criticizes
others for exaggerating numbers, Campos starts
out on shaky ground.
Campos
compounds this factual error with a logical one
by suggesting that "advising people to eat
less and exercise more appears to have ended up
making Americans a good deal fatter" (p.
33). He is mistaking correlation for causation,
but the misunderstanding goes far deeper than
that: Campos is assuming-incorrectly-that Americans
have been following the advice to eat less and
exercise more. In fact, studies have found that
most Americans eat poorly and don't exercise regularly.
This is an important and often overlooked point
in the obesity debate.
Wrongly
convinced that most Americans are dieting, Campos
blames the "fat police" medical establishment
and the media for causing low self-esteem in women.
"Few Americans-and especially very few American
women-are satisfied with the appearance of their
bodies," Campos writes. The zealous skepticism
with which he attacked the CDC's inflated numbers
is absent when it comes to examining his own assumptions.
In 1998 USA Weekend conducted one of the largest
surveys ever taken of American youth, surveying
over a quarter of a million students in grades
6 to 12. Among the results: 93 percent of teens
feel good about themselves. A recent Gallup poll
of more than five thousand adults found that 90
percent of Americans are confident in their looks.
In 2000, the British Medical Association issued
a report that concluded "The majority of
young women (88 percent) say they are of average
or above average self-confidence with only 12
percent saying they're not very confident."
And a 2004 survey, "The Real Truth About
Beauty: A Global Report" found that only
ten percent of women were "somewhat or very
dissatisfied" with their beauty. The facts
show exactly the opposite of what Campos claims.
Many
obesity skeptics denounce popular culture's obsession
with thinness. While thin bodies are undeniably
present in entertainment media, large bodies are
just as present, from Oprah Winfrey to Roseanne
Barr and Kirstie Alley, American Idol Ruben Studdard
to Starr Jones and Queen Latifah. Bizarrely, Campos
cites very thin actresses Kate Moss and Calista
Flockhart as being the "cultural ideal."
He offers no support for this claim (ideal according
to whom?) and seems unaware that both Moss and
Flockhart were continually and harshly criticized-not
lauded-for their thin bodies.
The CDC critics, Campos among them, deserve credit
for helping reign in the public's phantom fears
of fat. But in the process they have perpetuated
more myths than they have debunked. The latest
chapter in the war on fat is a good lesson in
the importance of being skeptical not only of
others' assumptions and beliefs, but also our
own.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benjamin Radford wrote about exaggerated media
claims in the March/April 2005 issue of Skeptical
Inquirer, based on his book Media Mythmakers:
How Journalists, Activists, and Advertisers Mislead
Us.