U. Illinois Chicago School of Public Health to Cancel the Term ‘Obesity’ Because it’s Racist
“weight discrimination has increased by 66 percent, and is one of the only forms of discrimination actively condoned by society”
The University of Illinois Chicago School of Public Health is looking to tackle obesity. No, not the health problem but the word itself.
A dietician at the school has declared the word to be racist and has a more woke suggestion to replace it.
Jesse O’Neil reports at the New York Post:
University of Illinois Chicago wants to cancel the word ‘obesity’ because it’s ‘racist’
The woke police are coming for the term “obesity.”
The University of Illinois Chicago’s school of public health published an article by a dietitian claiming the medical term is “racist” and should be replaced with the wordy term “people with larger bodies.”
Author Amanda Montgomery, RN, argued that race scientists used “fatness and differing body characteristics” to classify black people as “less civilized” and “as a way to justify slavery, racism and classism, and control women,” according to her health brief, entitled “Addressing weight stigma and fatphobia in public health.”
Montgomery also contends that losing weight “has detrimental effects on our physiology” and many people can’t become thinner because of “uncontrollable genetic or environmental factors.”
Amanda Montgomery appears to be part of the school’s “Collaboratory for Health Justice.”
She posted the following on their website:
Addressing weight stigma and fatphobia in public health
Public Health’s focus on “obesity” prevention has increased exponentially within the last few decades,and with it an increase in weight stigma and negative attitudes towards people in larger bodies. In the past decade, weight discrimination has increased by 66 percent, and is one of the only forms of discrimination actively condoned by society (1,2). Decades of research have shown that experiencing weight stigma increases one’s risk for diabetes, heart disease, discrimination, bullying, eating disorders, sedentariness, lifelong discomfort in one’s body and even early death…
Additionally, “obesity” related public health approaches can be harmful because they are based on limited or poor quality evidence, they focus on preventing one outcome at the expense of another outcome, they lack community engagement and they ignore the root cause of problems…
The focus on body size is rooted in racism
Around 81 percent of societies historically have favored people in larger bodies5. Larger bodies signified wealth and prosperity while thinness signified poverty andweakness. However, this began to change due to racism and eugenics. Charles Darwin and other race scientists created a hierarchy of civilization, placing whitemen on top and people of color, specifically black people, at the bottom, considering them to be “less civilized.” Fatness and differing body characteristics wereused to justify lack of civilization: fatness used as a marker of “uncivilized behavior” while thinness was “more evolved”. This idea was maintained throughoutthe United States in the 19th and 20th centuries, as a way to justify slavery, racism and classism, and control women through “temperance”. This ideology hasperpetuated Desirability Politics- where thinness and whiteness are given more access to social, political and cultural capital…
Welcome to the woke future of medicine. Professor Jacobson talked about this in a recent post. It’s a cause for great concern.
Featured image via YouTube.
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Comments
This is BS. I have had a “fat enhanced body” in the past and you can be damn sure I did not like seeing “obesity” on my medical chart. Just like with drugs and alcohol, eating less food and exercising more is not easy. Some people can do it and some can’t. But denying facts does not make them go away, as the clowns are now finding out with heir catastrophic “denying crime” program.
“But denying facts does not make them go away”
Did you fail your Marxism class? Have you even HEARD of 1984?
Contemporary American history is replete with examples of problems that entirely went away because Democrats gave us brand-new terms:
The illegal alien problem
The negro crime problem
The welfare problem
The abortion problem
The mental illness problem
The illiteracy problem
The tyranny problem
Mark my words, America — when cancer is finally conquered, it won’t be one of these asshole doctors who do it — it will be a lexicographer.
Will this diminish my hard earned status as a “fat bastard?”
I object!
When I was a kid we used to call the grossly overweight “fatso.” As I got older “lard ass” moved to the forefront. And, finally as I became more proper and respectable I started referring to them as the “obese.” And now I’m wrong!!! TS
I am under-height.
Well, yeah—on all fours. But rear up on yer hind legs like you mean business and get measured..
Still under-height. 254 at 6-1.
Is that from head to tail?
How about ‘rotund’?
I ain’t sayin’ she’s fat or nothin’ but her graduation picture was an aerial photograph.
She’s so fat, it took Nationwide 3 days to get on “her side”.
Wait, what?!!!!!!! Racist against whom? Samoans?! Seriously, if you had to associate ten words with “obese” would “black” even be one of them?
Perhaps Italian?
Oh Italian. That’s grande ossatura—means big boned.
The Italians I saw in Sicily and Catania were all fit, trim, and healthy. They still eat real food.
Not-a the Italian who gave-a birth-a to me!
I saw my heart doc last Wed and we talked about watching fat consumption since I’ve gained weight since last time. I was not pleased with the doctor’s presumption I got fatter from eating fats …. rather … during the pandemic and staying home I got little exercise and started baking artisan bread – which ups my bread intake by 400%. There’s no fat in the bread I make, nor in pasta unless it’s an egg noodle. Funny when it’s a doctor making stereotypical assumptions …
Obese black women are extremely common wherever I go in the USA.
So I’m black now? I don’t understand. I thought I was just really fat.
Does this mean I no longer have white privilege. Damn it, I just found out I had that a couple of years ago and I haven’t seemed to have been able to make much use of it.
Look at the bright side. Now your life matters.
This is true. But the change had absolutely nothing to do with racism or eugenics. White people valued fat just as much as anyone else did. And white people are about as likely to get fat as people of almost any other race, except maybe Polynesians. The modern aesthetic in favor of slim bodies is a product of our prosperity. We no longer have starvation, so showing that you’re obviously not starving is no longer a status symbol. Being slim, rather than a sign of poverty, became a sign of being rich enough to have the money to eat healthier food, which tends to be more expensive, the education to know what a slimming diet is, the leisure to worry about ones diet, as well as to exercise, and the self-control to diet and exercise. And if one has the genes to help with that, that’s great too, but those genes aren’t particularly race-linked, as far as I know.
Um, claiming that the term is racist is, really, more of a window into the mind of the claimant. That means THAT individual, or group, considers it to specifically refer to a specific races. I detect some serious projection.
You’re forgetting that they’ve been telling every white person they’re racist and don’t know it. So, no matter what, you’re guilty if you’re white.
How ’bout “BMI Challenged”?
Meh, ‘a rose by any other name…’ If folks want to ignore chronic obesity and accept preventable injury, disease and death and the medical community helps them to do so because feelings might get hurt then ok. However no more picking on smokers.
Volumetrically enhanced.
If my height increases to 8’6″, I figure then I’ll be height/weight appropriate.
She’s so fat, everytime she turns around, it’s next week.
Will Durst covered this in 1992:
He’s not fat, he’s “Gravity enhanced.”
No, No. No. You mustn’t say short, “Vertically Challenged!”
And no one is bald, they are “Persons of Scalp.”
And the stupid are “Hard of Thinking.”
And the crazy are “Logically Impaired.”
How about “fat pig”? How is something that has allegedly increased 61% over a decade increasing “exponentially”? Do you even have any idea what that means?
When you have nothing else you scream racism.
“Racist” is the left’s reflexive ejaculation, like a Muslim’s “inshallah.”
Actually, some non-Muslim Dumb-o-crats are quite fond of dropping “Inshallah,” too. Biden did it, a few months ago. A gay, Irish-born guy who lives in my building will inject it, totally inappropriately, into conversation about run-of-the-mill, condo-related issues, for example: “I hope the new boiler gets installed quickly, Inshallah.” It’s ridiculous on any number of levels. I think he believes that it makes him allegedly look worldly, cool and sophisticated, But, it’s just idiotic. Especially because in innumerable Islamic countries, this guy would be stoned to death or tossed off of a rooftop for his homosexuality.
It’s like trying to act French by exclaiming “sacre bleu”.
Even worse: some Jews peppering their conversation with Yiddish regardless of whom they are conversing.
Worse: the words are often misused, and badly pronounced. I went to an entire high school full of that kind.
Obese comes from L obedere, to devour
Obesity comes with politically congruent (“=”) alternatives: “fat is beautiful”, “healthy at any weight” are first-order comorbidities of progressive conditions including self-abortion through several mechanisms (e.g. Covid-19, 20… Covax 21, 22).
Each new day brings a new and unwelcome manifestation of the Dumb-o-crats’ Orwellian linguistic madness and their obnoxiously totalitarian co-opting of our lexicon and its rational understanding among sane people.
I fear for the health of “birthing persons” “of larger bodies,” while I fear for our collective sanity.
Men who call themselves “women” are deemed to be “trans” women.
Pregnant women are deemed to be “birthing persons.”
The overweight are deemed to be “people with larger bodies.”
Juvenile criminals are referred to as “Justice-involved youth” (a classic euphemism from the Obama era).
A person of a certain ethnicity and skin pigmentation is praised and lauded as a “person of color.”
Illegal aliens are re-classified as “undocumented immigrants,” or, one better, “undocumented Americans.”
If I’m omitted any other classic euphemisms employed by the totalitarian Dumb-o-crats, please feel free to add to my list.
Islamic terrorism is trivialized and sanitized as a manifestation of “workplace violence,” or, an expression of “mental illness.”
It’s turning into a real-life Married With Children episode.
But instead of eye-candy Kelly, they give us crazy-eyes Jankowicz.
I recommend replacing “obesity” with the more PC term “triglyceride challenged.”
Like the Griz, I’m the perfect weight. The problem is that I’m four inches too short.
Montgomery also contends that losing weight “has detrimental effects on our physiology” and many people can’t become thinner because of “uncontrollable genetic or environmental factors.”
That quote is from an alleged RN. What school did she go to?
Probably an honorary degree…
It’s Friday.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2mU6USTBRE
So, by this idiot’s assumption, only Black people are fat? Obese is a medical term. What’s next, saying the word “cancer” is racist and trying to replace it with “cell-challenged”??
Progressives – now more accurately identified as fascists – are notorious for redefining words to fit their narratives. It’s time we stop them from raping language to their ideological reinterpretation of reality.
We have to remember that the multi-colored land whales are a key prog demographic.
I wonder if she has given any consideration to the “racism” of Covid-19 (AKA WuFlu) in that its inflicted fatality appears to favor those “obese” persons, according to analysis by many medical groups.
And don’t forget that we (as a society) do a lot less physical work than our parents, and certainly our grandparents. And those doing physical work today usually do it for fewer hours each day. If intake is not likewise curtailed, o just might become larger. Those $10 Starbucks super double-something latte drinks (500+ calories) don’t help either.
Simple formula: calories consumed – calories burned. Any calories not burned eventually result in weight gain. For 90+% of people it really is that simple. As a society we don’t perform manual labor like our grandparents but still want to eat the ‘farmhouse breakfast’ our grandma made.
I have a large body–I’m tall, have higher than average muscle mass due to working out. I am not fat. Saying my situation is the same as someone with an extra 30lb of fat over the average is not “the science” ™
Jesse Watters had a large scale farmer on TV tonight who said the monthly increase in a family’s food bill could be $1,000 the way his costs are going. While I think he was exaggerating, the progressives should instead be trumpeting the opportunity that starvation delivers to reduce obesity in the country. /s
It is a very serious concept. Supposed you are an ambulance EMT and you must transport a patient. You need to take special measures to transport an I-won’t-say-the-word patient vis a vis a normal weight person. Seriously. How can EMTs communicate rapidly and reliably with their dispatchers or hospital staff if they have to you know, um, beat around the bush and hint at the problem.
My nutrition class is going to need another week of lecturing just to add unnecessary pc words.
Education has gone through this, too. “Moron”, “Idiot” and “retarded” all have specific meanings, but educators are not allowed to use them. “Delayed” is in common use now, but someone with an IQ below 70 is not going to be able to solve differential equations if we just give him more time. As a society we’re “reality challenged”.