I am also critical of the food system, as it currently exists, but I find it troubling that people often seem to reach for the convenient and easy scapegoat used by just about everyone — fat people.

Now that “pro-food” ideas are getting so much play, I see these themes resurfacing in those circles. People involved with both camps (pro-food and vegan) sometimes fall victim to pseudoscience and unfounded assumptions when they don’t have to. These food philosophies can be backed up with quality science and reason, without having to play on people’s fears about fat, disease, etc.

I’m very concerned about the centralized, corporate control of the food supply. I’m sure I could live a very healthy life eating nothing but Big Ag products, but I don’t think it’s conducive to our ability to live sustainably on our one planet. I’m glad to see this idea get articulated with more and more frequency; once more people are able to make that complex connection, we’ll be able to rely less on base and simplistic appeals to people’s prejudices (fat=bad, etc.) in order to advance our ideas about food politics.

akirklan@umich.edu
ask for “The Environmental Approach to Obesity: A Case for Feminist Skepticism”

I’m delighted to hear this discussion here because it’s a point that I’ve not heard grappled with much.

And thats before we even consider that the people you’re referencing, the people who are “unable to exercise,” 1) likely aren’t unable to exercise and 2) are likely experiencing weight problems which are medical and unrelated to food. In other words, you’re pulling a fictional scenario out of your ass.

One of the most important things we recognize and promote, though, is that you can have any body type – fat, thin, and everything in between – and enjoy the benefits of eating healthy foods, and that scare-mongering about fat being unhealthy is nonsensical and hateful. Thus, our healthful tips and posts are about embracing a pro-food and healthy eating lifestyle at every size.

That said, we’ve encountered some resistance lately from people who have conflated our pro-food emphasis with diet-pushing. We are strictly anti-diet, of course, but these concerns have opened my eyes to another problem of the pro-food attitude, which is largely within the fat community. Health has for so long been brandished as a weapon against fat people (unrightfully so!), and as a result, people have become wary of those emphasizing such an attitude.

That’s why I loved this article – because it spoke up for the place of pro-food within the fat community and belied the perception that this approach is fat-bashing. The problem began with those who used the pro-food attitude in order to fat-hate, but the consequences, as I’ve seen them recently, have been an extreme wariness on the part of some to accept a HAES-grounded pro-food contingent (that will hopefully become the mainstream).

The “fat=unhealthy” meme has been used to fat-shame in my family for several generations, to the point where passing on dessert has become a moral act right up there with donating blood or volunteering at the food bank. As you might imagine, asking for dessert when everyone else is passing draws the kind of disapproval usually reserved for snorting cocaine off the table during Christmas dinner.