(no subject)

[owlectomy]

Books that when you read the title, you know exactly how bad they're going to be:

What If We Do Nothing: The Obesity Epidemic

I guess they could have hired a writer with some actual science education, but instead they blew their budget on stock photos of sad people stuffing their faces with junk food.

Sanjeev takes off his school uniform for the last time. He is thirteen years old, and tomorrow he starts work breaking up stones in the local quarry. There, with his three brothers, he will work from dawn to dusk for just a few rupees a day.

Once, Sanjeev thought he would be a doctor, but this is no longer possible. His family no longer has any money to send him to school. All his brothers and sisters need to work now to keep their father alive.

Sanjeev's father was once a well-to-do manager of a computer call center. Like many people with well-paid jobs in India, however, he ate too much, gained too much weight, and then developed diabetes. He is now almost blind and too ill to work; he depends on his family to pay for the insulin injections that he needs several times a day.

The year is 2020, and families like this live in cities all over India. In the old days, people in India never seemed to have enough food to eat. In some rural areas, they still do not, but in the cities, many people are overweight and obese. There is not enough money to pay for their treatment. India now has the highest rate of diabetes in the world.

I have little doubt that there is an element of truth to this story, but if Sanjeev's father had been hit by a bus then we wouldn't think this is an obesity problem, but a problem of funding adequate health care and education for everybody, and having workplaces that accomodate people with disabilities. If he had been hit by a bus then this implication that he is RESPONSIBLE FOR RUINING HIS FAMILY'S FUTURE FOREVER would look as ugly as it is.

Comments

[wordweaverlynn]

Pounding head on desk.

In which I get really mad at this book as a fat person, a person with Insulin Resistance, etc...

[megwrites]

Yeah, this author does not know how science works, nor health, and should not be writing books about them. For one thing, diabetes is not this terrible, horrible, *gasp, horror, life-is-over* type of disease. Yes, it requires management and yes, it's chronic but a lot of people live with diabetes, both type 1 and type 2 for their entire lives and manage it well if they can get to good health care.

Also, the stats surrounding the links between diabetes and obesity are mostly correlative, not causative. But I wouldn't expect a blowhard like this author to get it.

If Sanjeev's father is going blind, it means HIS DIABETES IS NOT BEING TREATED WELL. It doesn't mean that it is his fault. If he's being made to feel guilty about needing insulin (in this theoretical case) he may not take it as he needs to and that contributes more to diabetes related complications than the disease when well managed itself would. Also, it's entirely possible he was diabetic before he gained the weight as well. *shakes head*.

Also, what does "too ill" even mean in this scenario. I know a LOT of diabetics who go to work and do all types of jobs and are just fine.

Like you said, the problem is adequate health care funding and education. Not Sanjeev's father.

And is anyone else really creeped out by how this guy just HAS to point out starving, improverished rural Indian people as though somehow it's even related to the scenario or that Sanjeev's fat father has anything to do with it. It not only smacks of poverty porn for Westerners but fat-hating poverty porn that puts the blame for malnourishment squarely on the shoulders of people who are obese, despite the fact that obesity and living at or near poverty lines in urban areas are strongly associated.

Ugh. I just can't even with this entire book. You're right. The minute that I saw that title, I knew I shouldn't have even looked at the excerpt. *shakes head*.