The War on Obesity as a Moral Project: Weight Loss Drugs, Obesity Surgery and Negotiating Failure

Integrated prevention of obesity and eating disorders: barriers, developments and opportunities

“…The so-called 'war on obesity' (54)(55)(56) has been very strong in recent years yet, despite this, the high prevalence rates and growing health and financial burdens remain (21) . Many of the traditional obesity prevention programmes, largely designed and carried out by experts in obesity with little or no background in other fields such as those of body image or ED, basically focus on physical activity, diet and weight control.…”

Health promotion viewed in a critical perspective

“…As stated in the introduction of this paper, a major focus on health exists in Denmark and in Western societies in general. Research shows that overweight citizens are a group of people who are not simply perceived as persons with weight problems due to excessive calorie intake compared to energy output [5][6][7]9,10,[14][15][16]19,21,22]. They are not simply perceived as persons who do not exercise enough.…”

“…evidence from sociological inspired empirical studies of the situation of overweight people shows, however, that another way of explaining excessive weight is to link the weight "problem" of this group of citizens to imagined negative personality characteristics such as being lazy, being unable to set limits, lacking selfcontrol, having had a difficult childhood, having dysfunctional relationships or simply having a problematic personality [4][5][6][7][8][9]19,21,22]. These sociological studies clearly show that the overweight body represents more than a body that has a too large calorie intake measured against physical activity; for many, the overweight body has also become equivalent to a container of psychological problems.…”

“…The medicalization of society in which strong economic interests are at play has influenced how we evaluate overweight: is it a (potential) disease that needs treatment or a lifestyle some people choose? The choice points towards the fact that competing cultural meanings exist regarding the "overweight" body in Western societies [9,[14][15][16].…”

“…[4][5][6][7][8][9]. I discuss health promotion in relation to overweight citizens because a) they are growing in number, with more and more citizens in Western countries becoming overweight; b) an increasing number of intervention programs are being developed with the goal of helping overweight individuals lose weight; c) there is overwhelming interest in the lives of overweight individuals in general, not least in the pharmaceutical industry, which has an economic interest in turning overweight citizens' lives into a medical problem that needs a (costly) pharmaceutical solution, and in television shows that focus on overweight individuals as problem persons [10]; and d) there is a strong focus on the risk of being overweight among both lay persons and experts, despite some medically based knowledge showing that it is only obese citizens who have a BMI above 30 and do not exercise who have a higher risk of death [11,12].…”