WASHINGTON - Aug. 5, 2020 - Canadian doctors are being told by their medical association that being obese isn't necessarily unhealthy, and that they should not even discuss a person's weight - much less recommend eating less - without permission, because it "casts blame and shame upon people living with obesity."

This although obesity is a major controllable factor in causing deaths from the pandemic, one in four Canadians are obese, the rate of obesity has tripled over the past three decades in Canada, overweight accounts for over 10% of all Canadian health expenditures, and it reduces Canada's GDP by almost 4%.

Interestingly, HBO comedian Bill Mayer recently advocated just the opposite, and his approach seems to make more sense, says public interest law professor John Banzhaf, who has been called the lawyer "Who's Leading the Battle Against Big Fat" as well as
"The Man Big Tobacco and Now Fast Food Love to Hate," and who has studied and written extensively on how to reduce obesity, as well as smoking, which he slashed.

New guidelines just published by the Canadian Medical Association seem to put more emphasis of patients' feelings than about their mortality and morbidity, says Banzhaf, since they specifically admonished weight-related stigma against obese patients, and argue that culture wrongly casts "blame and shame upon persons living with obesity." The guidelines blame "assumptions about personal responsibility and lack of willpower."

But notes Banzhaf, who has helped pressure millions to quit smoking by banning smoking in public places and thereby stigmatizing smoking, many smokers quit not because of counseling by doctors or public health messages, but rather because they could no longer stand being treated as "social pariahs," a term they frequently used.

Comedian Bill Maher has just suggested on his HBO program that we should at least consider using fat shaming as a tactic to attack America's second most serious and expensive public health problem (after smoking), despite objections from many liberals (whom he called "the NRA of mayonnaise") and from the so-called fat acceptance movement.

Maher ridiculed that movement which excoriates anyone who criticizes a person for being fat - accusing such critics of suffering from fat-phobia and sizeism - and drawing an analogy to criticizing someone who is drunk; saying sarcastically "How dare you drink-shame me - being blotto is beautiful."

But shaming smokers - making them feel, in their own words, like "social pariahs" - was tremendously effective in helping smokers do what most already wanted to do, says Banzhaf, who played a major role in slashing smoking in the U.S., thereby saving millions of lives and hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars in medical care costs.

http://banzhaf.net/ jbanzhaf3ATgmail.com @profbanzhaf

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