robot-heart-politics:

jayparkinsonmd:

T-Shirt Says to “Eat Less”

So Urbane Outfitters pulled this T-shirt from their stores due to cries from anorexia groups that it sends the wrong message. So let’s look at the numbers:

Prevalence of Anorexia = 1%

Prevalence of Obesity = 35%

Americans eat, on average, 3,790 calories a day. That’s nearly double what we should eat. Know how many calories you should eat.

I think it’s safe to assume that the US could stand to “eat less.” It’s a message the vast majority of us need to implement in our lives. Because remember, the kids today are expected to live a shorter, lower quality life than their parents. And that’s not due to anorexia.

So here’s a solution. Put a little asterisk and then put “Unless you are anorexic” in fine print!

UPDATE: So any time I mention anything on my blog about eating less/obesity, it tends to irk many people. A few people have commented saying “No, the US doesn’t need to eat less, we need to eat healthier.” So here’s the deal. If one person eats 5,000 calories of fast food a day vs. another person who eats 5,000 calories of food from Whole Foods, both will be obese. It’s simple physics. First, ensure you are taking in just the right amount of calories per day. Then, ensure those calories come from healthy, fresh, and whole foods.

We need to have a real dialogue about this issue of obesity. Our culture doesn’t want to talk about it for fear of offending 35% of the population. But the real issue is, it’s killing 35% of the population. Coddling, being sensitive, or ignoring the issue won’t help us progress and solve this epidemic. So what does the conversation look like? We desperately need to have the conversation that obesity is bad for you, bad for our economy, and bad for the environment. 

Okay, seriously? This is the most offensive thing you’ve ever posted. Considering that this is a t-shirt marketed to a demographic (female adolescents and young adults) that is both the most likely to develop an eating disorder and among the least likely to have an obesity problem (at less than half the rate of the general population, ~15%), I’m just appalled.

Here’s a fun statistic: “Nationwide, 12.3% of high school students had gone without eating for 24 hours or more to lose weight or to keep from gaining weight during the last 30 days.”

Giving advice like, “Just don’t eat so much, fatty,” which believe it or not, most fat kids already hear all the time, often results in seriously disordered views of eating that cause people, especially young women, to develop a screwed up relationship with both food and their body image. It’s these sort of hang ups that cause patterns of starving oneself, binging and purging, along with a whole host of other methods of “weight control” like taking laxatives, diet suppressants, etc. In many cases, the eating habits people develop as a result of their food hang ups often only make them heavier, because they follow up periods of starvation with binging. Even if you do lose weight though, this still isn’t healthy eating.

“Eat less,” is not the correct advice for anyone, especially not for teenage girls. And there is something very screwed up about a doctor saying it’s perfectly okay—even a good thing—to pile on teenage girls (since that is whom this t-shirt is targeting) about their weight, along with everyone else who already makes fun of them and teases them and gives them a hard time about their weight. And yes, advocating a t-shirt that says “EAT LESS” is advocating piling on.

The advice you give here is so stupid and counter-productive that it makes me absolutely shake with rage. You pull out your statistics, and assume that just because there are a lot of obese people and a lot of people eating too much that that means that the best solution to the problem is just to be an asshole about it and tell everyone to stop shoving food down their gullets, because “coddling” them makes you look “soft on fatties.” And being soft on fatties mean all the fatties will die!

Good grief. You are a fucked up human being.

I agree completely that we do need to work, in general, on improving the American diet. This includes reducing calories consumed, but instead of shouting, “EAT LESS!” at everyone and making people get some weird complex about every morsel of food that goes in their mouth, we need to teach a healthy approach to food period. It’s not just about eating fresh, whole foods under the right calorie count. It’s about cultivating a lifestyle wherein people are eating the right amounts of healthy foods and getting exercise they need, without putting the emphasis on what the scales say or on some cultural idea that being fat is shameful and embarrassing and that people who are fat deserve to be harangued by arrogant jerk offs like you.

You aren’t helping. In fact, your “advice” is counter-productive, and all the more damaging because it comes from a supposed health authority. What you posted was extremely irresponsible, and I’d think that as a doctor, you’d be a little more conscientious about what you say and how you say it. Because this? Is really, really, unbelievably fucking rotten health advice.

The bolded part = <3 And seriously: who thought it was a good idea to put this shirt on a model that looks like she’s about to drop over from hunger?