Surgeon General Targets Obesity as Health Risk

So, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson has suggested that all Americans lose 10 pounds as a patriotic gesture, according to your Dec. 14 story, and Surgeon General David Satcher has compared obesity to cigarette smoking as a health risk. Well, I’m sure they mean well, but their words are facile and, frankly, poorly conceived. All Americans? What about those millions of Americans who already don’t get enough food and are starving, many of them small children? What about the teenage girls already struggling with eating disorders, the result of media pressure to look thin? Also, comparing obesity to cigarette smoking as a public health problem is comparing apples to oranges. After all, no one ever died from secondhand fat.

Those of us who do need to lose weight are dealing with a very personal thing, and much of the satisfaction of weight loss comes from knowing that we did it for ourselves. I do not want my private health issues forced onto the jingoistic “Hooray for America” bandwagon.

Katie Waitman

Los Angeles