Scientific American Accused of ‘Public Health Disinformation’ for Claim Fighting Obesity 'Racist'
The fight against obesity is rooted in “racism,” according to a Scientific American essay that claimed black women “consistently experience weightism.
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The fight against obesity is rooted in “racism,” according to a Scientific American essay that claimed black women “consistently experience weightism in addition to sexism and racism,” and the prescribing of “weight loss” has “long since proved to be ineffective.”
In a tweet from the Scientific American Twitter account sharing the piece on Wednesday, the popular guide — which is the oldest continuously published magazine in the U.S. — claimed the “heightened concern about black women’s weight reflects the racist stigmatization of their bodies.”
“It also ignores how interrelated social factors impact black women’s health,” it added.
The piece, originally published in volume 323, issue 1 of the science magazine and titled “The Racist Roots of Fighting Obesity,” was authored by Sabrina Strings, an associate professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine, and Lindo (formerly Linda) Bacon, a self-proclaimed “genderqueer,” who serves as an associate nutritionist at the University of California, Davis.
While asserting that the prescribing of weight loss to black women “ignores barriers to their health,” the essay details the health challenges they face.
“Black people, and Black women in particular, face considerable health challenges,” it begins.
“Compared with their rates in other racial groups, chronic cardiovascular, inflammatory and metabolic risk factors have been found to be elevated in Black women, even after controlling for behaviors such as smoking, physical exercise or dietary variables,” the essay continues.
In addition, the piece claims black women “have also been identified as the subgroup with the highest body mass index (BMI) in the U.S., with four out of five classified as either ‘overweight’ or ‘obese.’”
Many doctors, the authors contend, “have claimed that Black women’s ‘excess’ weight is the main cause of their poor health outcomes, often without fully testing or diagnosing them.”
“While there has been a massive public health campaign urging fat people to eat right, eat less and lose weight, Black women have been specifically targeted,” they allege.
Though the “heightened concern about their weight is not new,” the authors argue that it “reflects the racist stigmatization of Black women’s bodies.”
