The course is great, and everything I've been seeing in the news lately has made me think this was a wise decision, especially this article from the May Atlantic, which I've posted in several places:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/04/beating-obesity/8017/
Most important in this article, I think, is the way it reframes obesity from being an issue of lack of willpower, to being one of a cultural ill, yet another result of capitalism's excesses.
Important to note, from another useful article on the topic
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-bennett/should-anti-obesity-campa_b_569921.html
[...]we also recognize that the influence of the media, advertising in particular, is daunting--and cannot be ignored. In 2004, the Kaiser Foundation reported that the majority of research shows that children who spend the most time with media are most likely to be overweight. Contrary to popular opinion, this is not because they are not getting out and exercising. The more likely factor, the study concluded, was the influence of billions of dollars spent on advertising and marketing of unhealthy foods.
Ugh.
I was speaking recently with a friend of mine who's battling an alcohol problem, and we were discussing one of the [many] pernicious cycles in substance abuse: each time a person trying to cease a bad habit 'fails,' he or she feels bad about him or herself for what was clearly caused by a lack of willpower, and therefore commonly viewed as a character failing. This self-loathing leads to more abuse as an escape.
The other problem is that we misconstrue how powerful willpower actually can be. Some people have the idea that they should be able to work themselves into a state in which they are devoid of desire, and in which being surrounded by temptations of whatever sort would simply not affect them. This is silly. Willpower is, on some level, finite, and except for in the case of the most unnaturally austere people, if one is surrounded continually by temptation, physiology and biology will win out. I know that in certain contexts, when I am around cigarettes, I still want to smoke. So I avoid being around them, and it's not a problem. This is a self-hack, and it's necessary to keep me from smoking. Many, many former smokers I've spoken with have said that the most helpful factor in their attempt to quit smoking was the indoor smoking bans that have passed in various states of the U.S. only relatively recently.
In a way, this conceit of equating infinite willpower with good character supports the crappy-food industry. Of course three Oreos are not a problem if I'm a good person, so I can buy them, have them in my home, and if I eat the whole package, that's not the advertiser's and manufacturer's fault, that's my own moral failing.
In the Atlantic article I linked to above, Marc Ambinder states this in a different way:
The only way to cure obesity is to radically rewire the relationship between the stomach and the brain. Diet and exercise can’t do that as quickly or as well.
That is, deciding not to eat a sugary, fatty food is doing something my body and brain did not evolve to have me do; it is the imposition of culture on top of somewhat of a physiological imperative. So my hack is to not watch TV, not see these ads, not bring this crap into my house, because I know that if it is there, I will consume it.
I think having this different perspective on weight problems is good for me, because if I am doing community health nursing with marginalized or underprivileged populations, I will encounter many many obese people, and I need to get over the idea that their obesity represents a moral failing. Taken to its logical extreme, that is a racist idea. Since I would see more black and Hispanic people with these weight problems, I would have to conclude these are peoples more prone to moral failings. Awesome.
