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Academics from America have claimed the word ‘obesity’ is now racist and that people should use the term ‘people with larger bodies.’
The suggestion has sparked a fresh wave of fury in the so called Culture Wars with many people arguing that the word is a scientific term that can refer to all races, genders and sexes.
The claims come from The University of Illinois Chicago's school of public health which published a health brief named: "Addressing weight stigma and fatphobia in public health."
In the paper, Amanda Montgomery RD argued that the word had led to an increase of negative attitudes towards fat people.
She instead proffered they should be referred to as 'people with larger bodies’.
The paper also states that public health approaches to obesity can be harmful as they prioritise weight loss and ignore other factors as to why someone is large.
Montgomery also argued that stigmatism against fat people is rooted in societal issues like race dating back to thinkers like Charles Darwin, who she claims created a 'hierarchy of civilization' that placed people of colour at the bottom as they were 'less civilized a justification she claims he made by their 'fatness'.
She explained: “Fatness was used as a marker of 'uncivilized behavior' while thinness was 'more evolved'.
“This idea was maintained throughout the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries, as a way to justify slavery, racism and classism, and control women through 'temperance'. This ideology has perpetuated Desirability Politics- where thinness and whiteness are given more access to social, political and cultural capital.”
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University of California, Irvine associate professor Sabrina Strings echoed Montgomery's arguments about the racism present in fatphobia.
She said in a lecture: "While many believe that fatphobia is a relatively recent invention, I will underscore the centrality of slavery and race science in its perpetuation throughout the western world.
She then argued that doctors "took up the mantle of anti-fatness as a result of social and cultural shifts in thinking about race and feminine propriety in the early 20th century."
In terms of Obesity problems, America remains the fattest country in the western world.
Amazingly 138 million or 40% of Americans are considered medically obese.
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