ASU anthropologist comments on health messages about obesity

A comment from an Arizona State University biological anthropologist is the “quotation of the day” in the March 31 edition of the New York Times.

“Of all the things we could be exporting to help people around the world, really negative body image and low self-esteem are not what we hope is going out with public health messaging,” said Alexandra Brewis, executive director of the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University.

The quote is taken from an article by Tara Parker-Pope that focuses on a recent report by Brewis and a team of ASU anthropologists, which found that fat stigma is rapidly and widely being adopted around the globe. The results show that, even in places that traditionally held fat-positive or -neutral attitudes, like American Samoa and Puerto Rico, negative perceptions of large bodies are now prevalent. Of concern is that, as fat stigma proliferates in areas that historically did not view obesity as unhealthy or undesirable, emotional and social trauma are likely to follow.