Dietitian makes call to cancel the term 'obesity'
'The Big Saturday Show' panelists react to a university article labeling 'obesity' as a racist term.
A physician who came under fire for comments claiming that obesity is more of genetics than lifestyle in a "60 Minutes" interview earlier this month is now a member of the Biden USDA's 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, which will help determine dietary standards for Americans over the coming years.
Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, a doctor specializing in obesity medicine at Mass General Health in Boston, claims diet and exercise have little impact on the disease that affects nearly half of all Americans, so what does she think people should do about it?
"The number one cause of obesity is genetics," Stanford told CBS' Lesley Stahl.
"That means that, if you were born to parents that have obesity, you have a 50 to 85% likelihood of having the disease yourself even with optimal diet, exercise, sleep management, stress management," she added.
A person measures her waistline with measuring tape. (iStock)
Stanford elaborated during the interview to claim that an overwhelming majority of U.S. doctors hold a bias toward obese patients.
"Are you saying that doctors don't understand obesity? Doctors?" Stahl asked.
"Doctors do not understand obesity," Stanford confirmed.
Her comments coincide an uptick in the disease in recent years, with the CDC reporting that the percentage of obese Americans shifted up to 41.9% in 2020 from 30.5% in 2017.
Even more concerning statistics from Harvard University's T.H. Chan School of Public Health indicate 43 million preschool-aged children were obese in 2010 worldwide and the numbers have been on a steady incline since the 1990s.
"If nothing is done to reverse the epidemic, more than 1 billion adults are projected to be obese by 2030," the page reads.
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Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford participates in the panel discussion during The Media Empathy Foundation Spotlight Series: Weight Stigma In Popular Culture at the Whitby Hotel on June 29, 2022 in New York. (Photo by Craig Barritt/Getty Images for Media Empathy Foundation)
The Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee consists of 20 "nationally-recognized" physicians, according to the USDA, and was announced by the agency's Secretary Tom Vilsack as well as the Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra last Thursday.
"The Committee will be tasked with reviewing the current body of science on key nutrition topics and developing a scientific report that includes its independent assessment of the evidence and recommendations for HHS and USDA as they develop the Dietary Guidelines for Americans," the USDA's press release on the committee stated.
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Further along, the report focuses on an equity lens to health, claiming that the committee will focus on socioeconomic status, race and more to better determine how to approach obesity.
"The 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee will examine the relationship between diet and health across all life stages and will use a health equity lens throughout its evidence review to ensure factors such as socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, and culture are described and considered to the greatest extent possible based on the information provided in the scientific literature and data."
The committee updates federal dietary guidelines every five years, acting as a cornerstone in public health perception.
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