TW: Dieting and weight loss
“Enlightenment-era rationalism elevated food to the moral plane of asceticism required for intellectual pursuit.” (Hannah Carlan, 2020)
At the end of last week I had planned to spend most of this week drafting my final paper, but as I did that I realized I wanted to build it as I did these last few weeks as I still feel I am missing some important pieces for my final summary. After last week’s article about new obesity guidelines for children, I decided I wanted to do a little more research on the proposed alternative, the guidelines put out by The Association for Size Diversity and Health, Health at Every Size (HAES). Their guidelines were originally put out in 2013, but are currently under review for an update, and the version I read was released a few years ago with an explanation of where they wanted to make some changes. While reading these guidelines they referenced fatphobia as being based on historical racism against Black women’s bodies, something I knew nothing about but wanted to make sure I had at least some context on before the end of the quarter. I decided to make my second reading for this week a book review of one of the books referenced by the HAES guidelines called “Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia”. The book is by Sabrina Strings, and the review was done by Hannah Carlan.
The thing that really struck me about the HAES guidelines was actually in the opening paragraph when they say “…health exists on a continuum that varies with time and circumstance for each individual.” As someone who has navigated a variety of health issues over the past few years I can say that my health is not a straight line, and my healthy probably doesn’t look like your healthy. Individualized healthcare is the only humane way to run a healthcare system, last weeks article and the HAES guidelines both point out that the lifestyle change care that has been the norm in the American healthcare system is completely ineffectual at helping people lose weight, as well as keep the weight off.
The HAES guidelines have five main principles at current. There are weight inclusivity, health enhancement, eating for well-being, respectful care, and life-enhancing movement. They plan to rework eating for well-being and life-enhancing movement into “tools”. The reason they give it
“Lastly, the principles of Life-Enhancing Movement and Eating for Wellbeing are likely to be removed as principles and instead be included as tools. These are approaches to health that are congruent with the Health at Every Size® framework. However, because many people do not have access to or do not prioritize these aspects of wellbeing, they don’t t as a core principle of Health at Every Size®. Health at Every Size® should work for all people, regardless of their health goals.”
It was in the health enhancement section that they mentioned that fatphobic policies were built after race discrimination laws were banned, and how fatphobia has anti-black roots. This wasn’t something I knew about, and I felt like if I was going to do an ILC that looked at medical discrimination, even briefly, it was important to understand the roots. I found a review of “Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia” a book by Sabrina Strings, knowing I didn’t have time to read the book in its entirety.
Carlans review makes mentions to renaissance art, the ideal body type for women at that time being a plumper, rounder shape. She describes the way in which art changed as Black enslaved people were added into paintings, though Black women were depicted as frail, servant types. With the introduction of sugar or “white gold”, there was a shift in European culture that lead to a fear of overconsumption and extra body fat. It moves then into how the 17th century brought word from scientists and philosophers that made awful comparisons to Black women’s bodies, and worked to bind being lazy and dumb to being fat, and then being fat to being black. I do not have the space to outline all the history I learned from the book review but I hope I will have the chance to read the whole book at some point.
Next week I will be reading a research study on the results of having too many choices in our diets and the results in the U.S and Europe.