Overeating doesn’t cause obesity. Obesity causes overeating.”
–Dr. Lee Kaplan, Harvard University

Obesity is a disease.

Image created by OpenAI’s ChatGPT with DALL-E.

We see it everywhere, the very real and ongoing obesity pandemic. This pernicious disease now affects nearly half of the adults in this country, including those on both sides of the hospital bed rails, bringing with it over 200 associated complications and morbidities.

Obesity first became common in America during the last decades of the 20th century; since then its prevalence has only accelerated. Our youth have not been spared, with one in six children and one in four adolescents currently affected.

Despite what we see, many fail to recognize obesity as a true disease with complicated origins. The misguided and reductive idea that behaviors such as eating too much and moving too little are the predominant factors in risk and causation of obesity perpetuates the belief that those suffering with this devastating disease have an underlying character flaw such as gluttony, laziness, or lack of willpower. This in turn propagates societal and medical bias, leading to patient shaming and delayed obesity interventions.

While there’s no standard definition of obesity, it can be […]