Meowzer had an interesting post today about how fat Americans are vs. what people say about how fat Europeans are. My comment is still in moderation, but here is what I wrote:

Hmmm….as an American expat living in Norway, I can vouch for the fact that Americans are way fatter than Norwegians…both statistically and anecdotally. When I get off the plane in the US after having been in Norway for a while, I’m always flabbergasted, so to speak, about how fat Americans are. You just don’t see fat people in Norway. I’m 5′10″, size 24-26, and it’s incredibly rare that I see anyone my size. There are many people who have a bit of extra padding on them, people who would register as “overweight” statistically, but that few would consider actually fat.

My personal experience is corroborated by the statistics. Norway has excellent online access to national statistics, and I was able to look up the most recent statistics about weight very easily (SSB’s statistics about lifestyle habits). Also check out Salon’s article about “Healthcare, American style”. Norway has 10% “obese” people, whereas the US has over a third percentage-wise (44% of Norwegians have a BMI above 25, about two-thirds percentage-wise for Americans). The US has about equal numbers of “obese” and “overweight” people, whereas Norway has over three times as many “overweight” people as “obese” people. “Obese” people, IMO, are the people who are visibly fat, whereas “overweight” people look mostly normal, to my eyes. This is what accounts for people’s (correct) perception that Americans are fatter (than Norwegians, at least!).

It seems to me that you’re beating a straw man in most of the first paragraph of your post. I’ve never heard anyone claim that there are no fat Europeans, or that all Europeans are extreme health nuts (smoking and boozing it up are a lot worse here, I’m pretty sure). Making this straw man argument, particularly when statistics and people’s perceptions tell them otherwise, is dangerous because it makes us look less credible, and thus more likely to be dismissed when we want to debunk statistics about how fat affects health.

I react strongly to arguments that Americans aren’t fatter (or aren’t less fit) than people in European countries because it so totally is at odds with my experience of living in Norway (and statistics). I do feel like a freak here, and it’s not surprising given how few people living here are as fat as I am. And I’m guessing there are fewer fat people living in the city, where I live, than in the boonies. And don’t even get me started on the fitness and health of Americans vs. Norwegians…

An interesting article in Aftenposten today: in light of the advertising industry’s powerful ability to influence body image, The Socialist Left Party of Norway wants to investigate whether it’s possible to alter advertisement laws to disallow advertisements pressuring people to conform to unrealistic beauty standards, and generally prohibit advertisement of cosmetic surgery and weight loss aids. They reason that while politicians shouldn’t be able to control the content of TV programs, they do have the ability to legislate the contents of advertisements. The article cites statistics that among 15-year-olds in Norway, 51% of girls and 20% of boys are dissatisfied with their bodies; 80% of the girls surveyed diet, and 10-20% have eating disorders.

As a side note, the difference in weight statistics between Norway and the US is interesting: The WHO reports that 43.4% of women and 54.8% of men in Norway are “overweight” (BMI 25 or higher), with 9.3% of women and 11.3% of men falling into the “obese” category (BMI 30 or higher), whereas in the US, 72.6% of women and 75.6% of men are “overweight” and 41.8% of women and 36.5% of men are “obese”. No wonder I feel like such a freak here!

Today I bought and tried this:

It reminded me of this:

Perhaps the problem is that I’m not a teenager anymore?

On the front page of Aftenposten’s online edition today is an article about Hamna preschool in Frogner, Oslo, where sugar is forbidden. Yes, forbidden. The following foods are not allowed to be brought from home or served in the preschool:

• cake
• rolls
• yoghurt
• dairy desserts
• rice porridge
• chocolate sandwich spread
• jam
• peanut butter
• sweetened cereal
• juice
• juice drinks
• cocoa

Prim and brown goat cheese, traditional Norwegian sandwich toppings, are no longer served in the preschool, but they are allowed to be brought from home. Sugar-free variants of yoghurt and jam aren’t allowed either, because it’s not easily possible to tell whether or not the foods in question are actually sugar-free. In Norway, cocoa and blackcurrant toddy are traditionally served during breaks when hiking, but this, too, is forbidden in Hamna preschool. The kids are instead served caffiene-free fruit tea–with no sugar added, of course. Sometimes they’re allowed to have warm milk with honey.

When this sugar-hysteria first came to Norway, I was troubled when I saw how it was affecting the traditional, and extremely healthy and well-balanced, Norwegian food traditions. So many of the forbidden items on the list–rolls, rice porridge, jam, juice, cocoa, and brown goat cheese–are important components of that traditional food culture. And forbidding yoghurt and peanut butter? Things have really gone too far.

Aftenposten consulted some actual scientists about this development, and they, what with degrees in nutrition and all, had some sensible things to say.

- Jeg synes faktisk det både er misvisende og useriøst å operere med et slikt begrep. Det er ganske ekstremt, og det er noe jeg ikke er enig i. Sukker er ikke gift, og det er praktisk umulig å få til en helt sukkerfri barnehage, sier Svein Olav Kolset, professor i ernæringsmedisin ved Universitetet i Oslo til Aftenposten.no. [emphasis in original text]

Svein Olav Kolset, a professer of medical nutrition at the University of Oslo, thinks that “it’s both misleading and irresponsible to operate under this kind of concept. It’s quite extreme, and something I’m not in agreement with. Sugar is not poison, and it’s in practice impossible to create an entirely sugar-free preschool” [emphasis mine].

He continues:

- Jeg skjønner ikke den pedagogiske tankegangen her. Det går ikke an å melde seg ut av resten av matsamfunnet på den måten. Maten i barnehagene bør reflektere et normalt kosthold, og sukker er en naturlig del av den maten et menneske får i seg. Barnehagene bør forholde seg til de generelle kostholdsanbefalingene, sier han.

“I don’t understand the pedagogical mindset here. It’s not possible to check out of the rest of society’s food culture in this way. The food provided in preschools should reflect a normal diet, and sugar is a natural part of the food a person eats. Preschools should operate under general nutritional recommendations”.

Amen, Stein Olav. Hamna is not a private preschool, which means that it receives state funding, and therefore the city government’s implicit approval of its operating principles. It’s irresponsible behavior for a governmental institution to support a nutritional philosophy that is so extreme.

Nutririonist Line Kristin Johnson at the Center for Obesity at the Southeastern Norway Regional Health Authority, who has 19 years of experience in the field, is concerned that this sugar-hysteria results in the prohibition of foods containing important nutrients:

- Det er for eksempel sukker i de fleste yoghurter, men det er også både kalsium, proteiner og B-vitaminer. Dette er ting barn trenger når de vokser opp, sier Johnson, som som har jobbet som ernæringsfysiolog i 19 år.

As an example, she says that although most yoghurts contain sugar, they also contain calcium, protein, and B-vitamins–nutrients children need to grow.

I know that adults are trying to do right by children when they enforce such draconian nutritional rules on their kids. I understand that there’s little we can do about the way individual parents raise their children. Individual parents have generally not got the resources to consult nutritionists about the best way to feed their kids. Given the health care crisis in the US, many parents there won’t even be able to get nutritional advice from their pediatricians…advice that might not be terribly trustworthy, anyway, since most doctors have virtually no education whatsoever in the subject of nutrition.

Governmentally-funded preschools, do, however, have the resources to help them make decisions about how to run their programs. When preschool employees view their preschools’ nutritional policies as carte blanche to evangelize a non-nutritionist-approved meal program, the need for professional guidance in choosing these policies becomes even more evident. “Vi vil gi barna kunnskap om at sukker ikke er sunt for kroppen eller tennene”, says Eva Sollie, administrative assistant at Hamna preschool. “We want to give children the knowledge that sugar isn’t healthy for the body or the teeth“, she says.

I know that if I had a kid, I’d certainly want the meals it received at preschool to be planned by an administrative assistant. I mean, she probably reads “Hjemmet” and everything right?

Aftenposten is finally getting the message out that fedme er ikke så farlig som antatt…det er verre at vi sitter så mye stille. The newspaper has generally stayed with the status-quo when it comes to coverage of “the obesity epidemic”, providing statistics about how many children are fat, how many adults are fat, which communities in Norway are the fattest, etc. You’ll still read those statistics in the article, but I think this is the first time I’ve read anything at all about the modern research being done on the subject of fat and wellness. Interestingly, the article is based on the reasarch of Glenn Gaesser, the darling of the fat acceptance movement and the author of “Big Fat Lies”. Some quotes from the article:

Fedmeproblemet er overdrevet. Det som gjør det usunt å være overvektig er ikke vekten i seg selv, men inaktivitet. Inaktivitet er mye farligere enn overvekt.

Flere undersøkelser viser at overvektige kan være like sunne som normalvektige, bare de er i god form…

En stor undersøkelse fra det amerikanske folkehelseinstituttet konkluderte med at personer som har noen kilo for mye, har mindre risiko for å dø tidlig enn de som er tynne, og at dødeligheten blant folk med fedme er langt lavere enn tidligere antatt.

Veier du noen kilo for mye, men er aktiv og har et sunt kosthold, så er situasjonen bra…

…i takt med at nordmenn er blitt tyngre de siste par tiårene, har folkehelsen også blitt betydelig forbedret. Gjennomsnittlig levealder har økt, dødeligheten av hjerte- og karsykdommer har sunket kraftig, kolesterolet har gått ned og det samme har blodtrykket, noe som gjør at stadig færre dør av hjerneslag.

Ekstremt få klarer å slanke seg uten å gå opp i vekt igjen. Gjentatte endringer i kroppsvekt er svært usunt, og det øker faren for en rekke sykdommer. All forskning viser at vekten er svært vanskelig å kontrollere, men både kostvaner og fysisk trening er lett å styre. Derfor bør man fokusere på det hvis man ønsker å være sunn…

I’m thrilled to see this message finally getting out in Norway, and in Aftenposten, no less.This article was published late Friday night on Aftenposten.no, which means it’ll probably be gone from the front page before many people have a chance to read it. I wonder if it’ll show up in the print edition.

Wow.

The first point I want to make is about the subject of the post, obviously. I think a lot of people, especially here in Norway, don’t really understand how deeply fat hatred runs in the US. If you haven’t been exposed to this kind of vitriol before, it’s hard to understand where my interest in fat acceptance comes from. I know it’s different here in Norway, but regardless, any time I step outside my house I expect that there is some percentage of people who feel about me like the guy in who wrote that list feels about fat people. It seems like it’s impossible to underestimate the amount of rabid hate directed towards fat people in my culture.

The second post I want to make is about the comments. Given this is a discussion about hate directed towards a group of people, someone mentioned racism. Then, since Fatshionista is so incredibly fucking PC, a bunch of members of the discrimination-comparison police squad came charging out from lurkdom to “educate” the poor soul who had the hubris to make the comparison. Here’s my favorite quote:

If I said that the discrimination faced by blacks and the discrimination faced by gays was WITHOUTADOUBT different and incomparable, would you ask me why or would you tell me I was wrong?

I think you should ask. I think you should open yourself up to the possibility of learning something new today.

Two things about this quote are typical of the way anti-racism activists act in discussions about race. First, the “WITHOUTADOUBT” part. There is no room for debate. What they believe is the Truth, it is Right, period. Second, should you disagree with them on any point (and it’s worth noting that the people being attacked by this kind of anti-racist activist are seldom bigots–they’re almost always anti-racist themselves), you are in need of being educated. Education preferably takes place by a fellow white person, as any “POC” involved in the discussion is tired of “educating” white folks. And for the “educator”, a condescending attitude is de rigeur. We whiteys need to understand that we’ll never be able to understand.

OK, I get that. I actually agree with pretty much every single tenet of anti-racism activists’ platform. The only tenet I disagree with is that black people get the last word, and their perception of any given situation is right. That’s the “WITHOUTADOUBT” part. And condescension I just despise. That’s a terrible way of trying to get someone else to see things your way–they lose face if they admit you might have a point. These attitudes turn people away from a very important cause.

Most importantly (and this was the point I originally intended to make when I set out to write this post), people learn by analogy. Telling someone they cannot compare two things, and telling them they also will never understand, is a self-fulfilling prophecy. First, how can I expect to understand even a little about your experience if I’m not allowed to compare it to my own? Comparison doesn’t mean you have to equate the two things being compared. Comparison allows you to see both the similarities and the differences. Comparison helps you see that you won’t be able to fully understand the other person’s experiences…but then, no one can ever fully understand another person’s experiences. Duh! And comparison does not have to result in a ranking of the things being compared. Finally, telling me I’ll never be able to understand doesn’t exactly motivate me to try to understand. No, telling me I’ll never understand inspires animosity. How is any of this conducive to accomplishing anti-racism activists’ goals?

I find it so frustrating to see advocates for causes I believe in shoot themselves in the foot.

I was reading this mildly interesting Salon article about which foods should be refrigerated whin I came to this realization:

In any internet article or discussion relating to food, someone will mention that Americans are fat, regardless of that fact’s relevance to the actual subject matter.

Very similar to Godwin’s Law. Help me come up with a better name.

Cool article! You’d never guess these guys are “obese”. A wonderful illustration of how absurd the namecalling of The Obesity Epidemic has become.

Turgåing ikke nok til å komme i form
(Here is the equivalent article in English.)

Oooh, this article pisses me off. My first reaction is a simple “fuck you”. What is “enough” exercise? How good shape do you have to be in to be in good enough shape? Good enough shape for what?

Part of the reason this article gets on my nerves so much is because this is such an incredibly Norwegian attitude: unless you get your pulse way up, get out of breath, and get sweaty, you’re not really exercising. Walking is barely even considered exercising here. I myself get 6-8 hours of exercise each week between yoga and walking, while Johannes gets a little less with his walking and Jujitsu, although his Jujitsu workouts are so intense that he comes back with a soaking wet gi. I don’t know about Johannes, but my “numbers” are all good, I’m strong and flexible, and I don’t feel like my condition stops me from doing anything I want to do in life. Despite this, we both feel like we don’t get enough exercise. The attitude expressed in this article is precisely why we feel that way, and it makes me furious. It’s like we can never win unless we run or ski or jog on a treadmill or something. I’m tired of feeling like everyone thinks of me as a fat lazy slob because I don’t do those things. You know, I do what I can. I do the exercise I do because I enjoy it. I simply do not enjoy intense aerobic exercise. And I know that I’ll never maintain any habit that I don’t do for the joy of participating in the activity itself. There are definitely some people in this world who enjoy intense exercise for the feeling the exercise itself gives them, but they’re relatively rare. And I’ve said my piece before about people who claim to be motivated by health.

Then there are the many people, especially in the US, get virtually no exercise at all. American society isn’t set up for it, for one thing. It’s a strange country where people make every effort to avoid having to exert themselves (e.g. driving around the parking lot for five minutes looking for the closest parking place available. And I’m sure you’ve seen this picture), and then pay for the privilege of exercising at health studios. I’m sure some Norwegians are the same. Exercise is often not a privilege the working class can afford, we must remember. Imagine a single mother trying to follow these articles’ workout advice while working two jobs to try to feed her kids, in addition to her second shift. How is this article going to make her feel? She’s a lot more likely to die or experience a lower quality of life from a lack of quality medical care due to not having medical insurance than due to not being in “good enough” shape.

I expect a majority of the people in both the US and Norway will never meet the expectations outlined here. The exercise we’re able to do–”it’s not enough”, we’re told. Well, fuck it, then. If we’re never going to be in “good enough” shape to meet these researchers’ standards, then why bother at all? There are two things this article is going to achieve, and neither are in harmony with the authors’ stated goals. First, this information will make the sweat hogs feel even more self-righteous than they already do, and second, it will frustrate and demotivate the majority of us who exercise moderately or don’t exercise at all. I don’t debate the facts laid out in these articles, but is this what the authors are trying to achieve?