Obesity: It's time to stop the fat attack

My dad's cousin, Pat, died recently. She was the largest person I've ever known; probably 30 stone. Many years earlier, however, her slim, fit husband had died from bowel cancer. Her last years were a struggle as her spine collapsed and she became wheelchair-dependent. But she died in her eighties and, apart from her mechanical problems, was essentially healthy until her sudden heart attack.

What really bedevilled Pat's life was the rampant fatism that exists in our society. She was a fine lady with a great Lancashire take on life: Jane Austen transposed to Southport. But I noticed heads turning when I was with her; comments whispered behind hands - a disability apparent for all to see, but attracting a negative moral judgement that people don't use about other traits.

To be so fat in our society is a cardinal sin, attracting waves of public disapproval. The parents of an obese child were threatened with having their son put in care recently. "Dr" Gillian McKeith bullies overeaters mercilessly on screen while cloaking her advice in a veil of questionable science. Barely a day goes by without another TV programme picking apart the daily habits of fat children or sad, fat women. Heat magazine and its ilk print unflattering photos of celebrities in their swimwear, inviting us to mock them. It's a modern form of bear-baiting.

"But being fat is self-imposed!" say the moralisers, in self defence. Only partly. The environmental versus genetic debate rages in scientific journals. The consensus is that it's a bit of both. And even if fat people eat more and do less than thin ones, does that make them evil?

Myths about fatness abound. US academic Paul Campos, author of The Obesity Myth, debunks many of them. For instance, the idea that Americans are getting fatter because of fast food is questionable. "The heaviest consumers of fast food in this country are single men in their 20s who weigh less than the average American," says Campos.

Another common misconception is that fat people are lazy. Recent evidence from the Early Bird study in Plymouth, which is tracking the weight and activity of 300 children, found no link between how much kids do and what they weigh.

It's not even true that rates of obesity are rising. Although obesity in men and children is still increasing in the US, the rate among women has slowed down. And where the US leads, we usually follow.

Although obesity is a national health problem, Campos says it is exaggerated by an industry that seeks to promote weight-loss products. "We are in the grip of a cultural hysteria driven by a $50bn [£25m] a year weight-loss industry which profits from increasing anxiety about weight and body image, and it's something the government has bought into and helped promote."

Thin taxpayers may argue that they shoulder the burden of obesity. Certainly, the National Audit Office says that obesity accounted for 18 million days of sick leave and 30,000 premature deaths in 1998. On average, each person whose death could be attributed to obesity lost nine years of life. Treating it costs the NHS at least £500m a year. Bad - but not as bad as alcohol abuse, which costs the NHS more than three times as much, at £1.7bn a year.