How we treat our obese selves

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Americans are apparently not very nice to the overweight -- and many people think that’s just fine.

Researchers at Yale University recently compared self-reported weight discrimination with race- and gender-based discrimination -- and found it just as appallingly common, they reported in the International Journal of Obesity. Such discrimination, they told the Yale Daily News, was even more prevalent than that based on ethnicity, sexual orientation and religious beliefs (and, as you may suspect, we wouldn’t win any prizes for tolerance in those areas either).

Says one of the authors, Rebecca Puhl, on the Health Care Blog:

‘Because people often assume that body weight is ‘a choice,’ they feel that it shouldn’t be considered a legitimate form of stigma or discrimination. This is wrong.’

Adds one responder:

‘If we focus our attention on this by intelligent health benefit design, tax policy and public awareness of the need for physical activity, we can begin to get control over this increasingly serious public health problem.’

Considering the nation’s generally oversized waistline, perhaps someone should study whether we’re becoming a nation of self-haters.

-- Tami Dennis