"Obese" or "fat"?



We read:

"Doctors should call people "fat" rather than "obese" to make it clear that they needed to lose weight, a British health minister said on Wednesday.

Anne Milton, a Conservative, said the term "obese" distanced people from the problem and that calling them fat would encourage "personal responsibility". She said many National Health Service professionals were worried that if they called people "fat" they might cause offence but she insisted that anyone with such a weight problem needed to know.

Tam Fry, of the National Obesity Forum, which campaigns to raise awareness of the health problems of being overweight, accused Mrs Milton of scientific ignorance. "The word 'obese' is a medical description of a weight that is such it might dispose someone to medical problems," he said. "The word 'fat' is a stigmatising word that is the kind children use to insult each other.

Source

"Obese" was once used only for the grossly fat but it is now much more widely applied. I favor reversion to the original usage

No comments:

Post a Comment

All comments containing Chinese characters will not be published as I do not understand them