If I were a less sensitive man – and some would argue I am – this would be the part where I say, "I told you so."
For years, as part of our increasingly softening society – we've been telling everyone that, yeah, you can be heavy and healthy, fat but still fit, obese but OK. It's like the trophies we hand out to all the kids after the little league baseball season — no matter who actually won — so that no one feels left out. Or like losers. Or that anything is actually anyone's fault. Or maybe just everyone else's fault, based on a cursory look at any civil court docket in the nation.
While we've manage to demonize smokers and drinkers, for some reason our fast-food nation actually turned the table when it comes to so-called fat shaming. Or bullying, as we call it now. If you smoke, you're a disgusting human being. But if we call someone out on their weight or diet, you're the disgusting human being. The obese? They're the victims, and not even of themselves.
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As a society, we've arrived at a place where obesity is OK, embraced almost as a lifestyle choice. It doesn't matter that we all pay the price in taxes and health care costs.
In fact, the alleged obese but healthy crowd managed to cite studies that backed them up, finding that not everyone who was overweight suffered from hypertension, heart disease, diabetes or any of the other afflictions we typically associate with them.
But now we have some scientists who appear to have debunked this school of thought, actually studying the studies, combing through more than 60 years worth of research. And, in the interest of clarity, I'll cite the Time article directly:
"The researchers, from Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, Canada, found that people who tipped the scales at above their recommended body mass index but did not have abnormal cholesterol or blood pressure, for example, still had a higher risk of dying from heart disease over an average of about 10 years compared to metabolically healthy individuals within normal weight ranges. In their analysis, published in Annals of Internal Medicine, the researchers separated individuals in the previous studies into six groups: normal weight and healthy, normal weight and unhealthy, overweight and healthy, overweight and unhealthy, obese and healthy, and obese and unhealthy. Their results showed that regardless of the person's BMI, an unhealthy metabolic state — such as having hypertension, diabetes or high cholesterol levels — was consistently linked to an increased risk of dying during the study period or having a heart event. And contrary to previous studies that suggested that heavier people with normal metabolic readings could have 'benign obesity' or 'metabolically healthy obesity,' the team also reported that metabolically healthy obese participants had a higher risk of dying earlier or having heart-related problems than those who were normal weight and also metabolically healthy."
Apparently, most, if not all, of the previous research, the scientists concluded was flawed in how they were established or recorded.
More importantly, though, this isn't about shaming or bullying. It's about accepting reality, and destroying a deadly illusion that being overweight is OK and that you won't someday pay the price.
The sooner we get past the politically correct myth, the sooner we can maybe rein in one of this country's single greatest driver of health care costs. We do everyone a disservice by buying into this fairy tale. It's time to not only accept that there's no Santa Claus, but that the old guy could stand to lose a few pounds.
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