“Every week or month, another example emerges of knee-jerk assumptions about what everyone knows, rather than what we actually do know, shaping decisions in medicine and government. Despite all the talk about "evidence-based" policy, for instance, Medicare is now covering doctor-prescribed weight-loss efforts while the evidence clearly shows that they don't improve health or result in sustained weight loss. The First Lady is devoting herself to eradicating childhood obesity, when the latest meta-analysis of 55 interventions showed an approximate mean weight loss of... one pound. These "health" initiatives have not just failed, they've backfired, contributing to the rise in weight-based discrimination and bullying, among many other damaging side effects.”

Linda Bacon- Everyone Knows Obesity Is Hurting Us, But Is the Fight Against Obesity the Problem?

The beginning statement referring to “assumptions about what everyone knows” shows an important aspect that many people studying obesity and people who discriminate against fat people don’t consider. The foundation of their ideas is based on a history of false notions on the dynamics of being fat. Fat people didn’t come into being from modern social forces/ institutions or from merely ‘lacking willpower’; people who happen to be fat have been around for the same amount of time as the thinner body type that these people assume is the default body setting.

“Men may be stronger, but it is women who endure.”