HOW do you feel about fat?
If you are fat then you probably fit somewhere on a sliding scale of guilt, or at least know you're expected to feel guilt. If you are thin then you probably feel sorry for fat people or you make a show of not noticing, of not flinching when you're in the window seat of the bus and half your thigh disappears under the thigh of your fat seat mate.
It's very difficult to be nonplussed about obesity; everyone has an opinion. It is accepted that ours is an obesogenic society: no-one walks, no-one cooks, foods are pumped full of sugar.
Katie Hopkins, antagonism expert, is gaining three stones and losing them again for a documentary showing that fat people are just shysters. For her, personal responsibility is all. It may be easy to be fat but one must exercise self-restraint.
There are questions raised over whether the obese should be entitled to benefits and treatment on the NHS. Doctors are to stop skipping around the issue and bluntly tell patients they are fat. Obese women, says a study by Manchester University, are paid less than their slim colleagues.
Obesity is estimated to cost the NHS in Scotland £200 million a year. Two thirds of Scots are overweight. The likelihood is, you're fat, reading this, right now. But would you call yourself so? Sizes are larger now; what was once classed as fat is now average.
This week Edinburgh University released findings of a study that says we are not addicted to sugar, or fat or food but to eating itself. It is a psychological compulsion to eat because of the pleasure found in the velvet mouthfeel of a cream slice, sweet and languid on the tongue. For example.
Over-eating is a behavioural disorder, like gambling, rather than a substance-based addiction, such as alcohol dependence.
University College London also released a study this week, suggesting those who feel discriminated against because of their weight are more likely to gain weight: around a kilogramme in four years. You have to wonder why, when one is ridiculed, patronised, and given poorer customer service, one would continue blithely on, doing nothing about it.
Well, you don't really. Weight going on is a pleasure, coming off it is a misery. When you feel miserable you are more likely to comfort eat. Your confidence is too low to take part in exercise classes. It's tough to keep diet and morale up without collapsing into a pile of Thorntons mini caramel shortcakes. For example.
But that's a vicious circle right there, an obesogenic circle, if you will.
Scornful skinnies look at the fat and blame them but I imagine most obese people blame themselves, regularly resolve to eat less and exercise more, and feel guilt at the burden they put on the NHS. A bit of fat-shaming is not going to reverse that trend.
Obesity is a health risk and not a moral failing, for some it is a form of self-harm. We see this in the rise in the push of information about Type II diabetes. A health worker I spoke to recently said: "In the east end of Glasgow we found there's no point in saying, 'You're overweight, you're going to die,' because you'd just get back, 'Of course I'm going to die.' More effective is, 'You're overweight and you might lose your sight to diabetes'."
Moral judgment might, according to this study, be part of the problem. But I don't believe silence is the answer. Neither are euphemisms such as "energy-dense food".
On a community level, fat is the last acceptable form of discrimination - it's one of the rare occasions on which the majority is persecuted. But on a personal level it is taboo to raise the topic.
There must be a way to discuss fat freely and sensitively without judgment or criticism. Without this, the slim are just as much part of the problem. Can it be fixed? Fat chance.
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