HOW HE SEES IT War on obesity is phony, baloney

By PAUL CAMPOS
SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE
I got a nice letter the other day from Eileen Naughton, president of Time magazine. We go way back -- to last month's Time/ABC News Summit on Obesity, where both of us gave talks.
"It was a great pleasure meeting you," Naughton told me. "Because of your commitment, agitation and foresight, our country stands a very good chance to reverse the course of this rising epidemic."
Indeed, in Naughton's embarrassingly generous judgment, I personally had played a vital role in "raising public awareness about the most preventable -- and fastest-growing -- health crisis facing this country."
"But our work is far from over," Naughton reminded me. "Time will continue to cover the obesity story with a sharp and critical eye until we see tangible signs that government, the medical profession, the food industry and individual citizens understand the urgency of setting America on a healthier course."
"Please accept my sincere thanks," she said, "for lending your insights and expertise to this important public policy debate."
I wish I could accept Naughton's sincere thanks, but I just can't. Here's why: She seems to have missed the part of my talk in which I lambasted Time and ABC News for helping to foment more panic about a phony health crisis, by organizing a summit that was focused almost exclusively on the wrong questions.
She also apparently wasn't paying close attention when I noted it was a sad comment on the state of elite American journalism that a conference of this sort could be held without inviting even one of the many doctors, scientists, eating-disorder specialists and other health professionals who reject the idea that trying to make Americans thinner will improve public health.
Problem's size
Naughton's letter shouldn't have surprised me. In her remarks summing up the conference proceedings, given from the same stage from which I had unleashed my none-too-subtle dissent just a couple of hours earlier, she noted, "We all agree on the size of the problem, I think."
Here, I think, is a perfect example of the distorting effects cultural hysteria and moral panic can have on public debate. A variety of medical experts ranging from the editors of the New England Journal of Medicine, to leading obesity researchers such as Steve Blair, Paul Ernsberger, Glenn Gaesser and Jeffery Friedman, and many others reject the whole notion that we are in the midst of some sort of public health crisis because of increasing weight.
Such people point out that Americans are both healthier and living longer than ever; that Americans weigh on average just a few pounds more than they did a generation ago; that the rates of most of the diseases associated with obesity are at all-time lows; that trying to make people thinner usually doesn't make them either thinner or healthier; and that, in sum, the current panic over weight is scientifically baseless and socially perverse.
Yet when Time and ABC News organize a major conference on this subject, the many powerful criticisms that have been made of a diet culture that continues to foist its useless, expensive and dangerous "cures" on the American public can be treated as if they simply don't exist.
Kafkaesque touch
My receipt of Naughton's comically inappropriate form letter, which so perfectly symbolizes this situation, featured a particularly Kafka-esque touch. Before mailing it, her personal assistant had taken the trouble to phone me, to make sure the letter was being sent to the correct address.
To the extent the contents of this absurd document throw light on the essentially fraudulent character of a phony war, then yes, I suppose it was.
X Paul Campos is a law professor at the University of Colorado.