How Capitalism is Keeping Us Fat

Have you ever counted the number of weight-loss ads you see in a day?

To be honest, neither have I. But I'm guessing the number is a lot higher than any of use would have guessed. Magazines, commercials, billboards, and internet ads and spam are try to sell us fortunes worth of diet plans, products, machines, pills, and special foods that promise to make us look like exactly like the models who sell them.

Clearly, the weight loss industry is as profitable as ever. Yet somehow, the obesity epidemic doesn't seem to be slowing down. How can this be?

Perhaps it's time to ask ourselves and important question: what kind of effect does capitalism, and a profit-seeking society and economy, have on our attempts to stay healthy?

Here's what we all need to remember: the weight-loss industry, like any other enterprise in this wonderful free market system, needs to place profits before all other considerations in order to survive and thrive. And what's the best way for a business to have sustainable profit? Repeat customers!

But wait! How can repeat business be kept in an industry that promises to make permanent changes for people? It can't. However, the various weight-loss products, services, and plans that are being hawked out there can continuously bounce customers from one to another to another, which, if you play your cards right, can be even better for your profits, as new customers are often the most enthusiastic, most trusting, and most willing to lay down big bucks in the hopes of buying some new miracle.

This is why the weight loss industry will always make its biggest profits by providing weight loss solutions that are unsuccessful for nearly all who try them. However, they need to be successful in just enough people to give consumers false hope and make them keep buying. (Atkins diet, anyone?) People ignore or fail to see the fine print (which you can find on pretty much all weight loss ads) that says "results not typical." They don't realize that while some of the people who have success in making healthy lifestyle changes may use this or that product or plan along with everything else, real success happens for the same reasons it always has.

Recently, we've started to come to some understanding of the fact that people have different body types, different genetics, and different tendencies to be heavyset or put on weight. This new knowledge could have been the death-knell for the weight loss industry...if they hadn't acted quickly, and cleverly to manipulate facts for their advantage.

Somehow, the knowledge that weight gain - and loss - happen differently for different people has turned into the illusion that weight loss is completely shaped by genetics and thus, just plain impossible for most people. That is, until a new "scientific breakthrough" comes along and shatters that barrier of impossibility!
Luckily for the weight loss industry, not everyone has has bought of the idea of weight loss being impossible. People continue to debate, heatedly and endlessly, about the role of genetics in weight, and largely, we don't debate intelligently. Instead, we fight on extreme sides, with people on one side being utterly convinced that being fat is completely in a person's control, and people on the other side insisting that they have no control whatsoever.

What does this mean for people of size? It means that they will continue to get the shaming message from society that says, "You're all fat because you're lazy, gluttonous, disgusting pigs." But at the same time, they will be told, "There is nothing you can do about it." These two forces will keep fat people fat, but also keep them constantly on the lookout to eagerly buy the next silver bullet that will "cure" them.

As far as I can tell, the truth about weight loss is this: it is possible for everyone, though all bodies and lifestyles are different and may require somewhat different methods, supports, analysis, and goals for what is reasonable in what amount of time. But this truth is terrible for the profit of the industry.

What's even more damaging, however, is the idea of respecting someone in spite of their fatness, or of someone who is overweight seeing weight as just that - weight - and respecting themselves for who they are.

But if fat folks were to lose their shame, see through the scams and figure out how to lose weight and keep it off - or, just not worry about it so much - a multi-billion dollar industry would crumble. And that industry will do everything it can to see that that doesn't happen.