To "'Health Fraud'" <healthfraud@lists.quackwatch.com>
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2007 05:42:45 -0700
Subject: [healthfraud] Healthy Weight Week Jan 21-27
Colleagues
Please distribute this news release to contacts and the media as you think
appropriate. Pasted below and also attached.
Thank you, Francie
News Release: for 1/21/2007 contact: Ronda Irwin
701-567-2646
http://www.healthyweight.netHealthy Weight Week Jan. 21 - 27
celebrates sound lifestyle habits
Are you sick of advertising that portrays American women as excessively
thin, hollow-eyed, and self-absorbed?
If so, you may be happy to know that during Healthy Weight Week, Jan. 21-27,
health providers across the country emphasize the value of maintaining one's
own natural weight, rather than losing weight.
The year 2006 was not reassuring. It was a year in which fashion industry
moguls admitted that a size zero is no longer thin enough for them: they
demand models in size double zero, negative zero, and even negative two. The
death in Brazil last November of model Ana Carolina Reston, who reportedly
carried just 88 pounds on her 5-foot-8 frame, and three other
self-starvation deaths in quick succession within a few weeks in that
country, caused an uproar, but little effective change. While the city
council in Madrid, Spain, did start a small rebellion, banning models with a
body mass index under 18 from the Madrid Fashion Week runways, a move that
reportedly would bar up to 40 percent, model agencies deny their models are
too thin. They reject regulation of any kind. "We just wouldn't use someone
who was really underweight or too thin," says Sarah Doukas, Kate Moss's
agent.
Dieters weak from hunger can be found anywhere. In New York, subway
authorities recently announced that fainting dieters are among the top
causes of train delays. Between Oct. 2005 and Oct. 2006, sick passengers
caused about 400 delays each month or some 12 to 14 delays every day. Most
of these were dieters who faint from dizziness, said Asim Nelson, transit
emergency medical technician.
However the media continue to emphasize the risks of obesity and downplay
any risks of underweight, in spite of national studies that dispute this
logic. Research at the National Center for Health Statistics, CDC, published
in the Journal of the American Medical Association (Apr. 2005), reveals that
the risks of obesity have been much overstated, and that in fact fewer
deaths are associated with overweight than with underweight or with
so-called normal or "healthy" weight.
"This hysteria over weight is causing tragic problems for children and for
people of all sizes. Instead, we want to help them move ahead to improving
their health in positive ways," says Francie M. Berg, a licensed
nutritionist and adjunct professor at the University of North Dakota School
of Medicine, whose organization Healthy Weight Network started Healthy
Weight Week 14 years ago.
Berg contends that whether a person enjoys good health or not is more a
matter of lifestyle than weight. During Healthy Weight Week people are
encouraged to improve health habits in lasting ways: to live actively, eat
normally and nutritiously, relax and feel good about themselves and others.
It's a time to celebrate the diversity of real women, as well as men, and to
help them shift focus from failed weight loss efforts to being healthy at
their natural sizes.
One of the week's events is "Rid the World of Fad Diets and Gimmicks Day,"
on Tues., Jan. 23. The 18th annual Slim Chance Awards are announced,
spotlighting the four "worst" weight loss products. This year's "winners":
PediaLean, a fiber capsule for children that can clump into an obstructive
mass in their throats and stomachs; Isacleanse said to remove [nonexistent]
toxins and pollution from your body; ChitoGenics, claimed to block sugars,
carbohydrates and fats; and the Magic Ear Staple, stapled into the cartilage
of your upper ear to suppress appetite. (For past awards see
www.healthyweight.net/past.html )
"Health experts are only beginning to realize the risks people take in
efforts to reshape their bodies to thin ideals. These risks range from
abdominal pain, faintness and depression, to bone loss, heart arrhythmias
and sudden death," says Berg. Her recent books Underage and Overweight and
Women Afraid to Eat, articulate the damage done to children and women by
current approaches to weight in our society.
###
SIDEBAR
Three reasons not to diet:
-- Diets don't work; dieters regain weight and often regain more than they
lose.
-- Dieting disrupts normal regulation and throws the body into a stressful,
defensive state.
-- Dieting leads to disordered eating, and is the primary precursor for
eating disorders.
(For more reasons not to diet, see handout "Top 10 Reasons not to Diet"
http://www.healthyweight.net/10reason.pdf )
###
FOR MORE INFORMATION
http://www.healthyweight.netTO ARRANGE AN INTERVIEW
Francie M. Berg
tel 701-567-2646
email <fmberg@healthyweight.net> beginning subject line with "Berg -
interview"
FRANCIE M. BERG, MS, serves as chair of Healthy Weight Week, is a licensed
nutritionist, adjunct professor at the University of North Dakota School
of Medicine, and author of 11 books. Her new book "Underage and
Overweight: Our Childhood Obesity Crisis - What Every Family Needs to
Know" explains the real facts behind the obesity crisis and provides a
7-point plan for raising confident healthy-weight children.
(For bio information see
http://www.healthyweight.net/media.htm )
