Or bourgoise professionals who think they know something. I’m A-OK with the above.

“But that doesn’t mean that people can’t do something about it.”

I don’t think anyone disagrees with that in an absolute sense, but that something is not diet and exercise manipulation, obviously.

In the MeMeMeMe piece, I think he’s taking the position that someone who was more libertarian wouldn’t be trying to bully other parents to feed their children the way she wants her own to be fed. He associates forced idealism with a left-wing ideology (this is certainly arguable. I’m just stating what I understand to be his beliefs, as clarification). But no, as far as I know she hasn’t posted up her party affiliation anywhere.

I’m in agreement with much of what Pollan writes in his books about nutrition, the evils of processed foods and the need for healthier diets; I just wish he would leave weight out of the equation. Not only does his focus on obesity alienate pro-food fatties like myself, it also ignores the fact that millions of thin people also eat crap. An unhealthy diet is unhealthy for anyone, fat or thin, period.

On the rest of your post, I just want to echo the important point you made about real fat politics being bipartisan. I think most people aren’t particularly interested in someone policing what goes in their mouths or how much they exercise, regardless of their personal politics.

The only end to the chain of logic that obesity is a social problem is to somehow eradicate fat people on a social level. That either makes them some second-class deviant group with relatively limited rights, or it means to actually attempt to physically eradicate them (one can argue that the two methods aren’t mutually exclusive).

Size needs to be removed from the social discussion all together. No, my size isn’t your business. You have the freedom to say whatever the heck you want about me, but you can’t intrude on my “property” (body).

And, on that note, I really do agree that it’s no one’s effing business what goes on with someone else’s body, and I really-really-really dislike the idea of policing people’s personal habits “for the good of the country,” or some such nonsense.

I find the Big Food issue more complex — I don’t agree with Pollan when it comes to “obesity,” but I do think there are some things in our food system that could use changing. Also, to me, “Big Food” is inextricably linked with “Big Diet,” who I, of course, have major beefs with.

OH ALSO, inspired by your evidence page, I started putting links to articles on my sidebar that I’ve been collecting over the years — one I found yesterday that you might like is: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18647629 . If you can, get the full text. It’s pretty amazing.

“Weight certainly is a genetic thing. But that doesn’t mean that people can’t do something about it.”

How is yo-yo dieting permanently changing one’s genetic setpoint again? You may not know this, but diets don’t work about 95% of the time. You don’t seem unreasonable or trollish, which is why I approved your comment, so I’ll point you to the links on my (always incomplete) Truth Behind Fat page. If you have any technical arguments to make about how genetically fat people can become permanently thin (and especially, why they should feel it necessary to do so) after reading what is linked from this page, come back and let us know.