From correspondents in New York
August 4, 2004
UNASHAMED of their size, fed up with fat jokes and angry at the US obsession with dieting, overweight activists are forming protest groups to campaign against the campaign against obesity.
The activists complain that obesity is portrayed as "the next worst thing after terrorism". They insist obesity, which doctors say contributes to 300,000 premature deaths a year in the US, is not a disease.
"We're living in the middle of a witch-hunt and fat people are the witches," said Marilyn Wann of San Francisco, a militant member of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance.
"It's gotten markedly worse in the last few years because of the propaganda that fatness, a natural human characteristic, is somehow a form of disease."
NAAFA holds its annual convention starting today in Newark, New Jersey, bringing together activists for workshops on self-acceptance, political advocacy and the "fat liberation" movement.
"I hope we can be a force of sanity in the midst of hysteria," NAAFA spokeswoman Mary Ray Worley said. "I've found allies in all kinds of unexpected places, but overall there's a lot of animosity. Some people act like obesity is the next worst thing after terrorism."
The convention comes as the movement is scrambling to counter US government pronouncements that obesity is a "critical public health problem" costing more than $US100 billion ($142.52 billion).
Jeannie Moloo, an American Dietetic Association spokeswoman who counsels overweight clients at her nutrition practice in Sacramento, California, empathises with the activists' fight against bias, but says they should be wary of oversimplifying obesity-related health issues.
"Some people can be overweight all their lives and not end up with diabetes or heart disease or hypertension," she said. "But the majority are probably going to develop one of these life-altering conditions."
Fat-acceptance groups were dismayed when federal officials announced last month that Medicare was discarding its declaration that obesity is not a disease.
The policy change will likely prompt overweight Americans covered by Medicare to file medical claims for treatments such as stomach surgery and diet programs.
"Obesity is not a disease," insisted Allen Steadham, director of the Austin, Texas-based International Size Acceptance Association.
From AP
The Australian