Pop Economy!

“Oh my god– it’s crowning!” the crowd gasped.

It’s undisputed that America’s obesity epidemic costs you, me, and every US wage-earner more than our share of taxes to compensate for.  But what if I told you that we’re spending our money in the wrong place– that the epidemic itself is being perpetuated by fat, pregnant mothers giving birth to chubby little babies?  Now have I got your attention? (Admittedly, it may have been from my use of deliberately inflammatory language.)  But hear me out:

New research suggests “something in an obese woman’s womb can  program her fetus toward becoming a fat child and adult.”  But the crazy thing is, that “something” is not simply genes.   By comparing children born to mothers before and after weight-loss surgery, scientists at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in New York in collaboration with Laval Hospital in Quebec discovered that “obese women who lose weight before pregnancy may be helping the next generation keep off excess pounds– even if fat-promoting genes run in the family.”

Why would this be?  One reason might be that the surgical bypass operation can make a woman’s body less efficient at digesting and absorbing food, thus lowering levels of sugar and fat in the blood.  This in turn reduces the overall calories delivered to the fetus to those seen in normal-weight mothers.  Conversely, obese mothers are thought to influence their fetuses as well by imprinting the earliest cues for brain circuitry which will control the child’s balance between calories consumed versus those burned away.  This may last a lifetime.

Like every other uniquely American problem, when given the choice between “an ounce of prevention or a pound of cure”, we will literally and figurately choose the pound of cure every time!  But why fight the crushing obesity epidemic after it’s happened?  (According to one respected expert, obesity costs us $393 Billion in health costs and lost productivity in 2009.)  Instead, the better course would be to prevent it from even occurring in the first place by heeding the following expert advice from the article, by way of the Boys from Brazil:

1) Avoid pregnancy until you’ve lost weight.  2) If pregnant, hold down the weight gain during pregnancy, and 3) After giving birth, “get down to a healthy body weight to prepare for the next pregnancy.”  (Are you still reading this?  Back to the henhouse ladies!)

Incidentally, lest you think I’m not even-handed on this site, I was being wry when I said it’s “undisputed” that the obesity epidemic is an American economic catastrophe.  As a matter of fact, in “Obesity: An Overblown Epidemic?” (Scientific American, 2005) W. Wayt Gibbs notes that “a relatively small group of scientists and doctors, many directly funded by the weight-loss industry, have created an arbitrary and unscientific definition of overweight and obesity [ie, the Body Mass Index].  They have inflated claims and distorted statistics on the consequences of our growing weights, and they have largely ignored the complicated health realities associated with being fat.”  UCLA Sociologist Abigail C. Saguy also defends this contrarian view: “Many more medical issues pose a greater threat to more Americans [than obesity], most notably malnutrition and smoking.  Media coverage of obesity overtook reporting on hunger and malnutrition in 2002 despite the fact that the World Health Organization deemed hunger to be the leading cause of world death…Similarly, cigarette smoking continues to be the leading cause of ‘preventable death’ despite the increasing shift of focus from smoking to obesity.”

“Given the ineffectiveness of weight-loss techniques and products, the study questions the effectiveness of “pathologizing” or “medicalizing” heavier weights. Weight loss is elusive for 75 percent to 95 percent of participants of commercial weight-loss programs in one- to three-year follow-ups,” she said.  “If one assumes that weight is largely outside of personal control, then raising concern over the health risks associated with obesity has little remedial function.  Furthermore, discussions of obesity’s potential health risk can offer a thinly veiled language through which to extend judgments of responsibility, blame and morality.  Such finger pointing, in turn, may worsen the stigma and discrimination faced by fat people.” 

I think she makes an excellent point, but I still think my pumpkin picture is kinda funny.