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Penn and Teller: Bullshit! Obesity Episode

amy March 23rd, 2007

The new season of Penn and Teller’s Bullshit! (one of my top 5 TV shows) kicked off last night with an episode about obesity. It wasn’t their greatest episode, but still made plenty of good points and is worth a watch. Here’s what they had to said about obesity (based on memory so I’m sure I’ll miss plenty):

  • BMI is Bullshit. It was invented by some guy in the 1800s for a different purpose than it is used for today: to assign a health evaluation based solely on one’s weight and height.
  • Based on the current BMI definitions, Brad Pitt is overweight and George Clooney is obese.
  • Penn and a ripped body builder have the same BMI.
  • Insurance companies inappropriately use BMI to determine who qualifies for health insurance and how much they must pay.
  • The use of the word “epidemic” to describe obesity is sensationalist and doesn’t really mean anything.
  • Fat guys can be better athletes than skinny guys. In the “fat guy” olympics, the skinny guy came in third after two obese men.
  • The diet industry and “obesity watchdogs” are in bed together. An obesity conference they visited was mostly skinny people trying to sell the newest food and supplement magic-bullets for weight loss.
  • We are genetically predisposed to eat and f*&%. That’s why we are here after all, our ancestors knew how to do those two things very well. Dieting goes against evolution. Science has invented a way to f@#$ without the consequences of unwanted pregnancies, but they haven’t found a way to eat without unwanted pounds. Yet.
  • Fat people are humans too, and deserve to be treated as such.
  • It has not been medically proven that losing weight improves your health.

I thought the episode was great up until the last point. Maybe I’m not remembering correctly but it seemed like they dropped a bombshell that is contrary to popularly held opinions, then didn’t take the time to back it up with scientific evidence.

Also, a point that they didn’t make about BMI that would have been an interesting addition is that until 1998, a BMI of 27.8 or less was considered to be healthy in the United States until it was changed to another arbitrary number (25) to come into line with the World Health Organization.

I definitely agree that BMI and all of the sensationalism surrounding the “epidemic” of obesity are bullshit, but I still believe we should be striving to adopt a healthier lifestyle by eating reasonably and exercising moderately.  Healthy eating and moderate exercise will make you healthier by lowering your cholesterol and blood pressure and decreasing your chances of cancer and heart disease.  Weight loss is a side effect of those changes.  And if you do all of that and still wind up with an “overweight” BMI, so what?  You can still kick some unhealthy skinny guy’s ass at track :-)