Obesity isn’t a ‘disease’, whatever the American Medical Association may think

This week, The Guardian informed us, a study revealed the ‘scale of the British public’s denial about weight problems’. Data collected by the Association for the Study of Obesity found that ‘more than a fifth of Britons who think their size is healthy or normal were in fact overweight’. This apparent delusion has been attributed to the normalisation of obesity in modern society. ‘We’ve almost become accustomed to people being bigger’,  Prof David Kerrigan told The Guardian, ‘because they don’t stand out.’

Dare we offer an alternative explanation for why a minority of overweight people see themselves as normal and healthy? Could it be that they are normal and healthy?

In terms of health, there is a great deal of evidence showing that overweight (but not obese) people live as long as ‘normal’ people and possibly slightly longer. In terms of normality, if most people are overweight then being overweight is normal by definition, but that is not what the Association for the Study of Obesity means.