New AHA Obesity Statement Urges Clinicians to Think Beyond Clinical Treatment and Prevention

Crooks, cons and failures.

"Think bigger: that's the thrust of the American Heart Association's (AHA) new scientific statement on obesity prevention [1]. To have any meaningful impact on the obesity epidemic, clinicians need to go beyond clinical prevention and treatments for obesity and use influence and advocacy to effect social and environmental change, authors of the statement say."

These are the same great thinkers that have been unable to get us out of this mess despite years of efforts.

"'The main point of the statement is that we need to place more emphasis on population-based and preventive approaches than we have to date,' Dr Shiriki K Kumanyika (University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia), lead author on the statement, told heartwire. 'This point has been made in different ways before, in different kinds of documents, and it's being made globally, but we are still in the process of educating health professionals about what this actually means and why it's needed.… It's inefficient to put all your eggs in the basket of screening and treating the individual.'"

The only good thing about this is the admission that sick care and its tools cannot deal with the matter of overweight/obesity.

But AHA does not go far enough. They should admit that overweight/obesity are not medical problems at all.

"The statement emphasizes the need for changes that would help people make better food choices and be more physically active. Examples include things like limiting the availability of high-fat, low-fiber foods and sugary drinks, reducing restaurant portion sizes, reconsidering the location of fast-food restaurants, and thinking more creatively about community design and infrastructure to enhance 'walkability' of neighborhoods and commutes between home, school, and recreation."

Though some of these approaches have limited value, real value is found in rewarding the good, not rewarding the bad and not punishing the good.

Once we stop penalizing socially and calorically responsible people by forcing them to underwrite the rescue and repair of the socially and calorically irresponsible fat people and make fat people pay for their diseases of choice, you will see a change.

"'In a way it's like the tobacco scenario, when people realized there were some broad policies that could be made that would change the options that people had,' Kumanyika explained. 'With food it's trickier, because food is not inherently harmful...'"

Yet this paternalistic/maternalistic AHA scum wants to punish people who relate to food responsibly by increasing costs and decreasing choice.

And BTW, it is not "like the tobacco scenario." Smoking cessation is a result, in no small part, of targeting the behavior itself by increasing the costs of tobacco, increasing sick care costs to smokers and making cigarettes less available to certain segments of the population. (the last makes some sense for Calories and is doable via Gram Shop Acts)

The best approach remains letting fat people enjoy/experience the consequences of their choices and let the chips (and fish) fall where they may.