A brief post on a topic I may return to: None of the writers I follow on blogs and other social media — the ones who understand the experience of obesity in the way that I do (Jane Cartelli and Zoe Harcombe come to mind) — think the AMA was right to label obesity as a disease.

I've now said a couple of times ( 1 | 2 )that I don't think it's a disease, though that doesn't mean that being obese doesn't suck.

I consider it to be a condition that results from a complex web of factors that include food addiction (a biochemical sensitivity that some people have, and that is a disease), lassitude, bad habit, ignorance, and rampant and intrusive marketing by corporations who formulate food-like substances for profit without regard to effect.

I don't think ill of the AMA for making the declaration, and am flummoxed by those who see it as a cynical act to drum up business. As if doctors don't have enough to do. I assume the body acted out of such concern and frustration about the unabating pandemic that it disregarded its own committee's recommendation. (I'm OK with the committee's position, too: Their objection was that BMI, the measure used to determine if someone is overweight or obese, is unreliable, and that's true: Many pro athletes would be considered obese, even though their bulk is muscle and they can run the 40 in 4.7.)

But I digress — another opportunity and intention for brevity, blown.

My point is that the people I know who most understand obesity — and no, I wouldn't include the medical profession, on balance, in that crowd — don't think that obesity is a disease.

Actually, I've seen a lot of dumb asses reach the same conclusion, albeit with vacant reasoning. That kinda leaves the AMA on its own. Kinda.