People often say to me “There are all these health experts and scientists and government officials constantly sounding the alarm about the ‘Obesity Epidemic’ and its terrible health consequences. Are you saying that all these experts are wrong? How could that be?”
It could be because there is a huge amount of money involved. The total revenues of the weight loss industry are in the neighborhood of $60 billion a year. And a lot of that revenue depends on people believing that fat is a disease and that there is this terrible “Obesity Epidemic.” And when there is that much money involved, it tends to warp peoples judgments, even the judgment of the so-called experts.
No, you say. That couldn’t happen. Well, yes, it could happen and in fact, it has happened before. Do you remember ulcers? For the longest time it was assumed, without very much really solid evidence, that ulcers were caused by stress and the stomach acids that stress was assumed to generate. Psychotherapists and related practitioners built whole careers around helping people manage stress, surgeons made lots of money cutting out pieces of peoples’ stomach, and the pharmaceutical industry came out with one billion dollar blockbuster drug after another (think Tagamet and Zantac) to control the stomach acids that were presumed to cause ulcers.
All and all, ulcers were a multi-billion dollar business. There was only one problem. Ulcers were not caused by stress.
In 1981, two Australian physicians, Barry Marshall and Robin Warren, discovered a type of bacteria that could live comfortably in the stomach. Furthermore this bacteria, helicobacter pylori, was present in the stomachs of people who had ulcers. They ran a number of experiments, including treating some people who had ulcers with a simple course of antibiotics. And in almost all cases, the antibiotics cured the ulcers.
The resistance from the medical/surgical/pharmaceutical establishment was fierce. Finally in desperation, Marshall actually drank a concoction of the bacteria, developed severe gastritis, and then cured himself with antibiotics.
But despite all this, the establishment resisted and it wasn’t until an NIH consensus conference in 1993 that it was finally accepted that bacteria, and not stress, caused ulcers. As a result, ulcers are now treated with an inexpensive course of antibiotics and the entire multi-billion dollar ulcer industry ceased to exist.
The experts were wrong and vigorously fought change, primarily because they had a massive financial conflict of interest. They knew that their income models would fall apart if bacteria were truly the cause of ulcers.
A couple of good reviews of the history of these events can be found at Slate and at the Australian medical Journal.
In 2005, Marshall and Warren were awarded the Nobel Prize for their work.
So it is with the “Obesity Epidemic.” The research is unequivocal. The overwhelming majority of the healthcare consequences being attributed to obesity are in fact caused by a lack of fitness. But most of the experts have their snouts in the massive $60 billion “Obesity Epidemic” feeding trough. They can be expected to fight tooth and nail against anything that would suggest that the “Obesity Epidemic” Emperor has no clothes.
