Diets Do Harm: A Critique of the Paradigm Weight-Focused Health

Abstract

In recent years “overweight” and “obesity” have been positioned among the greatest challenges for the public health of the country, to such a degree that they have normalized phrases like the war on obesity to refer to a common enemy, to which should be removed. For these purposes, they have been established various policies that, instead of preserving health, have resulted in violent measures that have encouraged judgment and stigmatization towards fat bodies. Among the individual solutions that have been proposed different governing institutions highlight diet and exercise as two fundamental pillars in the “anti-fat” treatment. However, little is known talks about the repercussions of undergoing diets to lose weight and if there really is evidence science that demonstrates that this can be a long-term sustainable alternative. This text seeks problematize diet culture with a reading different from the traditional health-centered approach weight, in the hope of contributing to a change of paradigm in nutrition science that prevents more people in the pursuit of thinness end losing his health.