by Barbara Altman Bruno, Ph.D., DCSW. Previously posted on the Health At Every Size® Blog and reposted here with author permission.

HAES® and the war against obesity responded increasingly to each other by the 21st century. The war against obesity ramped up to what sociologist Abigail Saguy referred to as a moral panic, from the late 1990s on. It was abetted by inaccuracy, the U.S. government, and apparently, Morgan Downey, J.D. Downey, former Executive Vice President of The Obesity Society and Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of the American Obesity Association, “dedicated more than 10 years to driving awareness, support and actionable change to policies affecting obesity in America. Among Mr. Downey’s many accomplishments are his successful efforts to have the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Social Security Administration recognize obesity as a disease, and his work to have obesity elevated in both Democratic and Republican Party platforms. This ultimately resulted in both political parties holding forums on future obesity policy, at their respective 2008 national conventions.”

“Other accomplishments include Mr. Downey’s success in changing Internal Revenue Service policies to allow taxpayers to deduct costs of obesity treatments as a medical deduction and in expanding National Institutes of Health research funding on obesity. He created the first series of conferences on obesity and public policy..., collaborated with the Federal Trade Commission Partnership for Healthy Weight Management on efforts to control weight-loss fraud, and led efforts to create ‘The Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Prevent and Decrease Overweight and Obesity, 2001.”

“Mr. Downey also served as the director of the Washington office of the American Society for Bariatric Surgery, where he organized major expansions of Medicare coverage of bariatric surgery in” National Coverage Determination…”

“He consults with several organizations on obesity issues including Allergan Inc., Amylin Pharmaceuticals Inc., Arena Pharmaceuticals, and Orexigen Therapeutics.”

http://www.downeyobesityreport.com/morgan-downey-bio/

Psychologist Bonnie Bernell published Bountiful Women in 2000, In her review of the book, Debora Burgard said, “Bernell’s gift is to make visible the everyday heroines all around us, the large women who prove through their courage, humor, and sheer heart that you do not have to be rich and thin to have a satisfying life.”

Fatima Parker, Activism Vice President of the International Size Acceptance Association, began appearing in British, French, and Middle Eastern/North African media in 2000, promoting size acceptance and Health at Every Size®.

Psychologist Debora Burgard started the Showmethedata (SMTD) listserv in 2001. SMTD is a private association of research-oriented consumers and professionals who are working within the Health at Every Size model. “We promote responsible and accurately-reported research on weight- related issues, and ‘scientific literacy’ and critical thinking skills for the public.” She started “Body Positive,” a website aiming to help boost body image at any weight. She had worked with the healthiest fat women and the sickest thin women, and found it impossible to prescribe for fat people, behaviors and intentions that harmed people with eating disorders.

Investigative reporter Alicia Mundy’s book, Dispensing with the Truth, appeared in 2001. It revealed the workings of drug companies, the diet drugs Redux and fen-phen, and some of their victims. It also named the new industry--combining drug companies, researchers, and obesity experts--”Obesity, Inc.”

In 2002, Dr. William Klish told the Houston Chronicle: “If we don’t get this epidemic [of childhood obesity] in check, for the first time in a century children will be looking forward to a shorter life expectancy than their parents.” “Since then, Klish’s statement has entered the lexicon of obesity scaremongers...without a shred of credible research to back it up.” Klish “told the Center for Consumer Freedom that while he is the originator of this pessimistic prognostication, his claim does not come from ‘evidence-based research.’ Rather, he explained, ‘It’s based on intuition.’”

http://www.consumerfreedom.com/2005/03/2768-life-expectancy-another-obesity-myth-debunked/

Inspired by a Bruno activism workshop in AHELP, psychologist Claudia Clark of Bowling Green State University began participating in health fairs and observing No Diet Day at the university, then created a size acceptance group on campus, and organized women’s body image retreats. Her college hosted an organizational meeting of the Association for Size Diversity and Health (ASDAH) on May 16, 2003. Cheri Erdman and Paul Ernsberger presented at that one-day meeting to about 30 attendees. Approximately 14 people continued on later that afternoon to brainstorm potential organizational structure, mission and goals, membership criteria and fees, etc. Clark headed up ASDAH, Miriam Berg was the Newsletter Editor, Roki Abakoui was membership chair (followed by Anne Kaplan) and Dana Schuster took on Conference planning. The original group working as a ‘steering committee’ included: Donna Pittman, Roki Abakoui, Dana Schuster, Paul Ernsberger, Catherine Shufelt, Veronica Cook-Euell, Judy Miller, Lisa Breisch, Francie Astrom, Miriam Berg, Renee Schultz, Darshana Pandya, Judy Borcherdt, Joanne Ikeda, Ellen Shuman. Lynn Ellen Marcus started the ASDAH Yahoo group in 2006. Miriam Berg and Dana Schuster were charged with the task to take all of the discussion and ideas and draft a mission statement and goals for ASDAH. It is an all-volunteer, not-for-profit organization, whose members and leaders are committed to Health at Every Size® principles.

Psychologist Peggy Elam started Pearlsong Press in the autumn of 2003. “Pearlsong Press endorses Health At Every Size®, and promises that every book and product we publish or offer for sale... celebrates size diversity or at least does not contradict it” (from the website).

Dr. Jerome Kassirer, former Editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), noted in 2004: “On the question of obesity, physicians have been extensively involved with the pharmaceutical industry, especially opinion leaders and in the high ranks of academia. The involvement was in many instances quite deep. It involved consulting, service on speakers’ bureaus, and service on advisory boards. And at the same time some of these financially conflicted individuals were producing biased obesity materials, biased obesity lectures, and biased obesity articles in major journals.” (http://www.consumerfreedom.com/article_detail.cfm/a/163-a-weight-loss-wonderland)

Colorado law professor Paul Campos wrote The Obesity Myth in 2004, which was subsequently republished as The Diet Myth. He continued exposing anti-obesity public health messages in newspaper and magazine columns, blogs, and debates, and recommended giving up the war on obesity.

Fat activist Marilyn Wann, author of Fat!So?, began the fat studies listserv in 2004, having been inspired by an exhibit on the fat body by Columbia University graduate student Lori Don Levan. “It was a weekend conference and a fat-positive art show at the school’s art gallery in the end of February 2004...I was a keynote speaker and so were Laurie Toby Edison and Debbie Notkin from Women En Large. Kate LeBesco gave a great talk.

“During Lori’s conference, I stayed with a friend, Anahid Kassabian... Anahid suggested that “Someone needs to start the field of fat studies and it should be you.” Wann “realized I could invite every academic person I knew to join an email list and see what happened. I invited 50 or 60 people and many of them joined. I knew academic people with interest in weight-related topics because I had been going around giving talks on college campuses for 7 or 8 years.”

Julie Gerberding, Director of the Centers for Disease Control, entangled herself in politicized fat-fear mongering. “If you looked at any epidemic—whether it’s infl uenza or plague from the Middle Ages—they are not as serious as the epidemic of obesity in the terms of the health impact on our country and our society,” said Gerberding in 2004. Gerberding requested $6.9 billion for the CDC’s 2005 budget by claiming 400,000 deaths per year due to obesity. A study by CDC researchers and others was published in Obesity Research, claiming that obesity-related medical expenditures in 2003 cost $75 billion, half financed by taxpayers through Medicare and Medicaid. In January 2005, the CDC published an erratum in JAMA, lowering the estimate of deaths attributable to excess weight to 365,000/year. (See Center for Consumer Freedom http://www.consumerfreedom.com/article_detail.cfm/a/161-cdc-must_retract-obesity-deaths-study).

Social workers and sisters Judith Matz and Ellen Frankel published Beyond a Shadow of a Diet: The Therapist’s Guide to Treating Compulsive Eating, in 2004. It was followed in 2006 by The Diet Survivor’s Handbook: 60 Lessons in Eating, Acceptance and Self-Care. Their blog is http://www.dietsurvivorsgroup.blogspot.com . Matz published “Recipe for Life” in Psychotherapy Networker, Jan.-Feb. 2011.

In their 2004 book, The Spirit and Science of Holistic Health, health educators Karen Carrier and Jon Robison contrast traditional, Cartesian views about weight with holism, including Health at Every Size. Says David Sobel, MD, author of Healthy Pleasures, “Holistic health promotion replaces disease with joy, fear with meaning, and external control with inner trust” (back cover).

In 2005, the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) released a deeply flawed study that sought to justify Klish’s assertion. But like Klish, Dr. Jay Olshansky and his team of co-authors admitted that their dire prediction relied on their “collective judgment,” rather than empirical, scientific evidence. “These are just back-of-the-envelope, plausible scenarios. We never meant for them to be portrayed as precise,” said Allison in Scientific American in June 2005.

Even noted obesity scaremonger JoAnn Manson explained to the Associated Press, “the calculations that were made may not be perfect.” An internal review committee at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called Allison’s method for counting obesity-attributable deaths “fundamentally flawed.” Despite the controversy surrounding Allison’s method, the authors of the NEJM study explained that because they only wanted “plausible estimates rather than precise numbers,” they chose to rely on Allison’s “simpler approach.”

Not surprisingly, that approach exaggerated the problem. MSNBC said that other life expectancy forecasts rely on past mortality trends; the Olshansky group used obesity prevalence data and previously published estimates of years of life lost from obesity. Olshansky co-authored the study with David Ludwig, who compared childhood obesity to a “massive tsunami heading for the United States.” (In 2011, Ludwig suggested that very fat children be removed from parental custody.) David Allison presented so many financial conflicts of interest that NEJM published a three-page financial disclosure, listing more than 100 organizations (mostly weight-loss companies) from which he received money.

http://www.consumerfreedom.com/2005/03/2768-life-expectancy-another-obesity-myth-debunked/

“The National Weight Control Registry: A Critique” by Joanne Ikeda, Nancy K. Amy, Paul Ernsberger, Glenn A. Gaesser, Francie Berg, Claudia A. Clark, Ellen S. Parham, and Paula Peters, was published in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior (July-August 2005), 37:4.

Katherine Flegal at the Centers for Disease Control—and also the Center for Weight and Health in Berkeley, California—authored an analysis, “Excess Deaths Associated With Underweight, Overweight, and Obesity” (JAMA 2005 Apr 20; 293(15); 1861-7) which vastly lowered the estimate of excess mortality among people deemed obese or overweight. Conversely, overweight was associated with fewer deaths (as had been indicated previously in other population studies).

In 2005, Australian physical education professors Jan Wright and Michael Gard published The Obesity Epidemic: Science, Morality and Ideology, which demonstrated “in persuasive detail, with ample citations, that the epidemiological evidence underlying the interpretation of the data by obesity science is subject to skeptical consideration because it generally fails, on closer examination, to warrant the claims being made for it.” (Richard Klein, Essay Review of The Obesity Epidemic in International Journal of Epidemiology 35:1, pp. 207-8.)

“Obesity is the terror within,” Surgeon General Richard Carmona said during a lecture at the University of South Carolina in 2006. “Unless we do something about it, the magnitude of the dilemma will dwarf 9/11 or any other terrorist attempt.” He had previously referred to obesity as the terror within in 2003, calling it “a threat that is every bit as real to America as the weapons of mass destruction” and a growing epidemic.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/obesity-bigger-threat-than-terrorism/

In early 2006, educators from five disciplines (law, sociology, nutrition, political science, and exercise physiology) published an article questioning the supposed public health crisis posed by increasing BMIs. It evaluated four central claims made by those who were calling for intensifying the war on fat: that obesity is an epidemic; that overweight and obesity are major contributors to mortality, that higher than average adiposity is pathological and a primary direct cause of disease, and that significant long term weight loss is both medically beneficial and a practical goal. “The epidemiology of overweight and obesity: public health crisis or moral panic?” was written by Paul Campos, Abigail Saguy, J. Eric Oliver, and Glenn Gaesser.

Eric Oliver’s 2006 book, Fat Politics, shows “how the so-called obesity epidemic has little to do with genuine health concerns. Instead, not surprisingly, it’s all about money: drug manufacturers who finance ‘obesity institutes’ that hype the dangers of overweight to sell diet drugs; diet and exercise companies with a vested interest in convincing people that their excess pounds are hazardous to their health; bariatric surgeons who want your insurance money; researchers who find that focusing on the dangers of obesity greatly improves their chances of getting grant money and publishing their findings.” (Amazon review by P. Lozar, 4/6/06)

Continuing the critique of “obesity science,” registered nurse and writer Sandy Szwarc began her blog, Junkfood Science, in 2006. She wrote: “The more I’ve learned, the more horrified I’ve become. Science is being misused for marketing and political purposes. Evidence is being distorted and bias has inundated media, research, government policies and clinical guidelines. Unsound information proliferates in professional and advocacy organizations, academic institutions and journals; and even professionals aren’t reaching beyond beliefs to critically examine studies and recognize credible information So much valuable and critically important information, and the very best science—well documented in careful, objective, evidence-based research—is almost never reported by mainstream media. Fear sells and unfounded scares, exaggerations and “what-ifs?” are being used to terrify people about their foods, bodies and health.”

http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2006/11/introduction-and-why-i-created-this.html

The first ASDAH conference was held at the Sheep Barn at Case Western Reserve University on June 23-25, 2006. Presenters included Paul Ernsberger, Richard Koletsky, Jon Robison, Miriam Berg, Lynn McAfee, Lily O’Hara, Roki Abakoui, Frances Berg, Deb Burgard, Claudia Clark, Nancy Ellis-Ordway, Carol Kostynuk, Dana Schuster, and Marilyn Wann.

American Psychologist, in April 2007, published “Medicare’s search for effective obesity treatments: diets are not the answer,” an extensive review by Traci Mann, A. Janet Tomiyama, Erika Westling, Ann-Marie Law, Barbara Samuels, and Jason Chatman of UCLA. The authors concluded, “If Medicare is to fund an obesity treatment, it must lead to sustained improvements in weight and health for the majority of individuals. It seems clear to us that dieting does not.”

The fat acceptance and Health at Every Size® communities expanded online. Blogs came into being, and thus began the “fatosphere.” Kate Harding started Shapely Prose in 2007, closed in 2010. In 2009, Lessons from the Fat-o-sphere, co-authored with Marianne Kirby, was published. A list of some of the blogs ends this chapter.

New York Times medical writer Gina Kolata published Rethinking Thin in 2007. It again debunked the belief that one could deliberately and permanently lose weight and keep it off. She said, “I’d often wondered how obesity researchers can keep doing study after study, advertising for subjects…, starting them off again and again on a path whose outcome they must know for sure.” (p. 221)

In 2008, Linda Bacon, a professor of nutrition with a background in exercise physiology and psychotherapy, published the first edition of her groundbreaking book, Health at Every Size (Benbella).

The second, improved edition arrived in 2010. In 2011, Bacon and English dietitian/researcher Lucy Aphramor published “Weight Science: Evaluating the Evidence for a Paradigm Shift” in Nutrition Journal, 24 January 2011. In the article, the evidence they presented suggested that shifting to a weight-neutral, HAES® paradigm improved health without negative unintended consequences.

HAES® pioneer Esther Rothblum joined attorney Sondra Solovay (Tipping the Scales of Justice, 2000) to edit The Fat Studies Reader in 2009. The compilation included chapters on health, sizism, social inequality, and taking action.

In 2009, dietitian and researcher Corinna Tomrley and Ann Kalosky Naylor edited Fat Studies in the UK, which included information by Lucy Aphramor, Katie LeBesco, and other scholars, artists, and activists. Aphramor cofounded HAES® UK in May 2009 with activist Sharon Curtis.

New York Times writer David Brooks, in a column (“The Post-Trump Era,”3/25/16) cites Thomas Kuhn, author of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: “According to Kuhn, intellectual progress is not steady and gradual. It’s marked by sudden paradigm shifts. There’s a period of normal science when everybody embraces a paradigm that seems to be working. Then there’s a period of model drift: As years go by, anomalies accumulate and the model begins to seem creaky and flawed. Then there’s a model crisis, when the whole thing collapses.”

The list of anomalies, “obesity paradoxes,” has grown over the years. The voices against the weight-centered health paradigm have been growing. The model crisis is pending...

Blog Lists

As of 1/1/11, fat-friendly and/or HAES-friendly blogs included:

• Fatshionista (name changed to Two Whole Cakes)

• Family Feeding Dynamics

• Fierce, Freethinking Fatties

• Communications of a Fat Waitress

• riots not diets

• Obesity Timebomb

• The Rotund

• Elizabeth Patch’s More to Love Sketchbook

• suethsayings

• DISCOURSE

• First, Do No Harm

• The Curvaceous Bounty of Sin City

• JeanC’s Cat House and Shooting Society

• Unapologetically Fat: A Study in Happiness

• Diet Survivors Group

• Body Impolitic

• Spilt Milk

• Men in Full

• Big Fat Delicious

• Commentary/Nicholosophy

• Stacy Bias – Fat Activist and Body Image Campus Speaker

• Big Fat Deal

• Loving My Belly

• FattyPatties

• Fatshadow

• 2007 Fatosphere Feed – FatFu.com

• Living~400lbs

• Fat and Not Afraid

• Red No. 3

• Kat’s Haven ZaftigDelights~KnitzyBlonde!

• Fat Chicks Rule

• The Curvy Girl’s Guide to Style

• Songs from the Fat Lady

• Life with Bliss

• The Pearlsong Letter

• On The Whole Shakesville

• Fat Heffalump

• Fat Lot of Good

• Lynne Murray

• The Girl Who Turned an Insult into a Novel

• Fatties United!

• The Well-Rounded Mama

• lifeinfullcolour – The Start Of Something Big

• Ilaeria

• NotBlueAtAll

• Big Fat Blog – The fat acceptance weblog

• Fat Nurse

• Body Love Wellness –Lose the Diet, Love Your Body

• Ampletude: gloriously unapologitic fatness

• The F-Word.org

• A Celebration of Curves

• Shapely Prose

• The Zaftig Thespian

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Barbara Altman Bruno, Ph.D., LCSW, is a clinical social worker, size acceptance activist, and HAES pioneer. She has presented at clinical conferences, appeared in television, radio, magazines, newspapers, and demonstrations, and has written many articles, including well-being columns for larger people, guidelines for therapists who treat fat clients, a brief history of HAES, and a book, Worth Your Weight (what you CAN do about a weight problem). She is former co-chair of education for the Association for Size Diversity and Health (ASDAH) and is on NAAFA’s Advisory Board.

OPINION DISCLAIMER: Any views or opinions stated in the NAAFA Community Voices Blog are personal and belong solely to the blog author. They do not represent the views or opinions of NAAFA or the people, institutions or organizations that the owner may or may not be associated with in professional or personal capacity, unless explicitly stated. Any views or opinions are not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, or individual.