A few weeks ago my bloggy-friend over at WMTC wrote this post. In short, some asshat wrote a quote- scientific-unquote paper about how fat people “contribute” to global warming. Yeah, and I’ve been pretty “warm” about it ever since.

Doesn’t is just make more sense that it would be the industries, not the individuals who are causing the biggest problems for the environment? Methinks Mr. Asshat did not think through his equations, nor did the allegedly prestigious medical journal who printed the tripe.

This morning I came across this, regarding a new book, Sick Planet: Corporate Food and Medicine, by Stan Cox. In it, he goes after the corporations who place profits above the public interest. Here’s a favorite:

Atkins was just one phase, if an especially newsworthy one, in the long, meandering evolution of Western dieting. In the years since Marty and I did our analysis, traditional low-carb regimens in the Atkins vein have largely given way to diet plans more focused on the “glycemic index” of carbohydrates and foods. Diet plans, diet foods, devices, drugs, treatments, organizations, and facilities come and go, but one thing never changes: the weight-reduction market never loses economic weight.

In the US alone, sales were $58 billion in 2007, and Marketdata Enterprises, Inc. predicted that they would reach $69 billion by 2010. With the low-carb boom fading, Marketdata saw continued growth in diet plans, diet-food home delivery, diet pharmaceuticals, and bariatric surgery (which drastically reduces the capacity of the stomach).

Marty and I analyzed the ecological impact of the Atkins diet in only one dimension: the nutrient composition of the food consumed. To my knowledge, the total environmental burden has not been estimated for Atkins or any other weight-loss strategy. The foods and other commodities they offer are generally heavily processed, with high packaging-to-product ratios. Anything having to do with medicine can be ecologically pricey, as we saw in Chapters 1 to 3, and health clubs and weight-loss centers have an impact as well.

and

Nutrition schemes make excellent commodities because they are perennially popular whatever their failure rate. (And failure is the norm; according to a National Institutes of Health panel, “In controlled settings, participants who remain in weight loss programs usually lose approximately 10% of their weight. However, one third to two thirds of the weight is regained within 1 year, and almost all is regained within 5 years.”
If they did their job well, or if people swore off them for good whenever they failed, the market would slow to a trickle. But the success of weight-loss plans isn’t entirely the result of failure; their tag-team partner, the food industry, ensures a steady flow of lapsed dieters seeking a second or a fourth chance. Newly overweight customers seem to grow younger every year. It takes the ideas of entrepreneurs, an excess supply of fattening foods, and plenty of sedentary jobs and couch-potato pastimes to keep the weight-loss game going.

and of course

America and other Western nations — and even some poorer ones — have broken out of the historical pattern that says the rich shall be fat and the poor thin. Here, food, especially low-nutritional-value, fattening food, is plentiful and cheap while commodities advertised as “solving” the problem of excessive weight gain are not. In 2006, Forbes magazine surveyed the costs of ten of the most popular weight-loss plans. Not surprisingly, all of them added significantly to the dieter’s weekly food bill, with the median increase pegged at 58 percent. The Jenny Craig plan was the most expensive, boosting food costs by 152 percent. Atkins was number three, with an 85 percent increase. Nutrisystem added 109 percent, Weight Watchers 78 percent. The strategy of eating low-fat sandwiches at Subway restaurants, heavily publicized on TV, was the cheapest, adding 26 percent.

While I’ve been mostly suspicious of the packaged-food diet plans, I will admit to pretty much living on Lean Cuisines and Weight Watchers Frozen Crap Dinners back in my single days. All the while I was wondering why my blood pressure was so high and why I had a tendency to retain water all the time–not just at certain times of the month–but the crazy amounts of sodium aren’t the subject of this post. Meanwhile, Sweetness was living on ramen noodles and Vietnamese take-out.

Since shortly after the wedding, we pretty much stopped eating processed or packaged foods–diet or otherwise. It was already too late for me to lose much weight just from making that switch, but most of what we eat, if not organic, is at least un-processed. It’s more work for sure but the food tastes better, we put less into the garbage/recycling systems and we feel we’ve made some small contribution to a healthier planet. We’ve saved money too which is never a bad thing.

So, who uses more of the planet’s resources? Us with our modest mid-sized vehicle, which we use for work and errands (which we combine) and not much else and our un-processed foods? Maybe the Skinny Bitch, driving her Hummer to the gym 4 days a week? Or the GIANT SOULLESS CORPORATION whose only motivation is profit no matter the cost to humans or the planet?

Yeah. That’s what I thought.