The Judgement of Society and our Obesity Pandemic

We live in a country that is fat.

The evidence is clear. It ranges from what we see. Go ahead, go to the mall. Go to the playground. You will be surrounded by both adults and children who are anywhere from overweight to obese. Then there is the public health data. Long gone is the lean nation we once knew, and even the Department of Defense considers this a national security issue. Yet, we still believe this is an individual failing. In fact, it is a sign of a weak body and a weak mind. This is the morality play we tell to each other.

This is so common that grocery stores have a few electric carts for those who can barely walk. Yes, they are there for people who are disabled for a slew of reasons, ranging from a bad knee (I have used them for that reason) to morbid obesity. This is a very different country or world, then even thirty years ago.

I was a medic for a decade or so in the 1980s and 1990s in Tijuana, Mexico. In the course of ten years, I only responded to one patient who was what today we call bariatric, and so morbidly obese that she did not fit on the ambulance gurney. This patient was suffering from a heart attack, and she needed to get to the hospital. This is why the family called 911. It took ten people, and a solid oak door to get her into the back of the ambulance. It took that many to get…