When term started again in September, I started a module on nutrition. I'd picked it because I find nutrition interesting, it's an extremely important subject and handy knowledge to be armed with as a fat person. While the subject is no less interesting than I'd hoped, the lectures themselves seem to be stealing all my Sanity Watchers Points.
The lecture course focusses quite heavily on the subject obesity, not just in lectures dedicated to the study or nutrition and obesity, but the ZOMGBESITY! Epidemic gets referenced in almost all other lectures. Wherever there is even the tiniest chance of it being relevant. The information we're given is overwhelmingly biased in favour of the party line; i.e. that if you're fat it's your fault for eating junk and being lazy and you ave to fix it with a diet aka eating less and exercise more. The role of genetics is being downplayed, socio-economic factors are completely ignored. The fact that diets don't work is also never mentioned, the side effects of Alli seriously downplayed and we're never once asked to critically think about why so many of the weight loss drugs have had to be pulled from the market.
Add in to that a thin white male lecturer who practically sweats privilege making jokes about eating 50 Mars Bars a day and I become so angry that I feel sick. And it doesn't help that 250 people laughed at is stupid jokes, because haha, aren't fat people stupid for eating Mars Bars all day and aren't we thin people superior to them in every way?
And our Science Library has literally no books that look at obesity science from even a remotely FA/HAES viewpoint. Our Arts library has plenty, looking at fat from a historical/political/sociological/feminist point of view. But the science library does not, and neither does the medical library. Our campus libraries don’t have even a single copy of Paul Campos’ Obesity Myth.
