Paul Campos, in his essay entitled Being Fat is OK, describes a “propaganda war” between individuals fighting against the dieting industry and the government. The government is supporting the dieting industry by releasing information that is misleading and incorrect. Starting with the Body Mass Index, or the BMI, the government is claiming that sixty one percent of Americans are overweight. Paul Campos points out that even though he runs thirty five to forty miles a week and is considered to overall have excellent health, he is fat to the government because he is five foot eight inches and weighs one hundred sixty five pounds.
Scientifically this information is incorrect, because it has not been proven that weight effects death. There have been some correlations between weight and death, however there is no data supporting the theory that weight can cause death. Yet, dieting industries have convinced people that thin individuals are healthier than fat people, when in fact, thin people have simply started out with less weight.
On top of no scientific evidence supporting that weight can cause death, there is little evidence to suggest whether or not losing weight is healthy. In order to prove this, an experiment would have to be conducted where half of the subjects kept off all of the lost weight. Since there is no known way to keep lost weight off, it cannot be proven.
Even though ninety to ninety eight percent of diets fail, it is widely believed that fat people can choose to be thinner. Thus the dieting industries are making about fifty billion dollars a year, convincing people to invest in dieting, when is it most likely that their dieting plan will fail. Scientifically, information regarding weight loss and dieting cannot be proven, yet the government is still supporting the dieting industry. Campos concludes by comparing diets to “ineffective cures for an imaginary disease.”
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Hi Candelaria,
ReplyDeleteI thoroughly enjoyed reading your summaries--you've captured the full essence of each of the articles that we've read thus far.
Here's what I would like to see you do with your future summaries:
Let's work on making the summaries more concise. You can do this by summarizing only those parts of the readings that you find interesting instead of writing what TSIS refer to as "list summaries." For example, an author may write about A, B, C, and D in his article; however, you may be only interested in A and D. Therefore, focus on crafting a summary that represents what the author discussed about A and D. I hope this makes sense.