We as a culture need to stop focussing on obesity as a primary cause of bad health – and not just out of compassion but for pragmatic reasons too.
There have been a few articles in the past few days (notably on the BBC and in the Guardian) citing a new study, editorialised in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, indicating that exercise is bugger-all use for losing weight, and that really it’s all about diet.
This may or may not be the case – to be fair to the research, they were really attacking bad diets and in particular sugary drinks more than dismissing exercise, and the news headlines are largely spin, but what I want to argue is that focussing on ‘obesity’ as the monster to beat rather than bad health is in and of itself incredibly damaging. So, for all you viewing at home…
