I just read this sentence in a published research article and it jumped out at me.
I just read this sentence in a published research article and it jumped out at me.
"Obesity is an abnormal accumulation of body fat over an individual's body."
We as a society have determined that we will use the word obesity for things, depending on how you want to parse data, that negatively affect morbidity, mortality, quality of life, cost of healthcare, utilization of healthcare, etc. I'm not going to get into that particular minefield. Let's just accept that the word obesity is a stand in for bad things based on a little left or right shifting of an imaginary gaussian curve. Specifically, obesity is a generalized reference to body fat, not including brain or breast tissue.
Here's my quibble: if accumulating body fat is something that bodies do, how is it abnormal? See, accumulating fat is, in fact, an evolutionary thing that continues to keep people alive today. Just not in the narrowly considered group of people who have the luxury of not starving to death on a regular basis.
However, even in that group, it is a normal biological process to accumulate fat. I am aware of no research showing that that is not a normal process, nor that obesity is, in every case, a form of disregulation of some body system or function. Now, I'm not including things like Prader-Willi syndrome which are known conditions you could call a disorder. I'm talking your average person. Saying it's "abnormal" throws a whole bunch of non-scientific, judgmental bias at it that is helpful neither in scientifically understanding fat metabolism, or the psycho-social aspects of weight (whether associated with health or not), nor in communicating and addressing anything that might allow deliberate and controlled manipulation of a healthy fat metabolism and weight.
We already know that it is not helpful to conflate weight and fat metabolism, but we do it anyway because we lack precision in our concept and discussion. What it tells me is that even in the scientific community people are still more concerned about appearance and the social assumption and stigma of weight, rather than the connection of fat metabolism and health.
That sentence scans as obese = abnormal. It could, for example, have been written as ... Obesity is a degree of accumulation of body fat that is associated with health outcomes that [negatively] impact quality of life. You don't need the negatively, because it's implied, assumed, and the next sentence lists the for examples of what it affects and they're all things people immediately consider negative.
This was a poor article overall. What gets me is that it was published in a peer-reviewed journal and nobody said take out the loaded language and just stick with (whatever resembles) the facts. Color me unsurprised that the editors and reviewers neither critiqued the quality of the data nor the bias in the language with which it was presented. Words have meaning, people. It's important. If you're going to publish mediocre work, at least demand of yourselves and others that they control for their own bias. It does affect the interpretation of data.
"Obesity is an abnormal accumulation of body fat over an individual's body."
We as a society have determined that we will use the word obesity for things, depending on how you want to parse data, that negatively affect morbidity, mortality, quality of life, cost of healthcare, utilization of healthcare, etc. I'm not going to get into that particular minefield. Let's just accept that the word obesity is a stand in for bad things based on a little left or right shifting of an imaginary gaussian curve. Specifically, obesity is a generalized reference to body fat, not including brain or breast tissue.
Here's my quibble: if accumulating body fat is something that bodies do, how is it abnormal? See, accumulating fat is, in fact, an evolutionary thing that continues to keep people alive today. Just not in the narrowly considered group of people who have the luxury of not starving to death on a regular basis.
However, even in that group, it is a normal biological process to accumulate fat. I am aware of no research showing that that is not a normal process, nor that obesity is, in every case, a form of disregulation of some body system or function. Now, I'm not including things like Prader-Willi syndrome which are known conditions you could call a disorder. I'm talking your average person. Saying it's "abnormal" throws a whole bunch of non-scientific, judgmental bias at it that is helpful neither in scientifically understanding fat metabolism, or the psycho-social aspects of weight (whether associated with health or not), nor in communicating and addressing anything that might allow deliberate and controlled manipulation of a healthy fat metabolism and weight.
We already know that it is not helpful to conflate weight and fat metabolism, but we do it anyway because we lack precision in our concept and discussion. What it tells me is that even in the scientific community people are still more concerned about appearance and the social assumption and stigma of weight, rather than the connection of fat metabolism and health.
That sentence scans as obese = abnormal. It could, for example, have been written as ... Obesity is a degree of accumulation of body fat that is associated with health outcomes that [negatively] impact quality of life. You don't need the negatively, because it's implied, assumed, and the next sentence lists the for examples of what it affects and they're all things people immediately consider negative.
This was a poor article overall. What gets me is that it was published in a peer-reviewed journal and nobody said take out the loaded language and just stick with (whatever resembles) the facts. Color me unsurprised that the editors and reviewers neither critiqued the quality of the data nor the bias in the language with which it was presented. Words have meaning, people. It's important. If you're going to publish mediocre work, at least demand of yourselves and others that they control for their own bias. It does affect the interpretation of data.
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