by A doctor who came under fire in a “60 Minutes” interview earlier this month for comments that obesity is linked to genetics rather than lifestyle is now a member of the Biden USDA’s 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, which will help set the nutritional standards for Americans for years to come.
dr Fatima Cody Stanford, an obesity medicine doctor at Mass General Health in Boston, claims that diet and exercise have little impact on the disease, which affects nearly half of all Americans. So what do you think people should do about it?
“The main cause of obesity is genetics,” Stanford told CBS’s Lesley Stahl.
“This means that if you were born to parents with obesity, you have a 50% to 85% chance of developing the disease yourself, even with optimal diet, exercise, sleep management, and stress management,” she added.
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A person measures their waist with tape measure.
(iStock)
Stanford stated during the interview that an overwhelming majority of US physicians have a preference for obese patients.
“Are you saying that doctors don’t understand obesity? Doctors?” asked Steel.
“Doctors don’t understand obesity,” Stanford acknowledged.
Her comments coincide with a rise in the disease in recent years, with the CDC reporting that the percentage of obese Americans has increased from 30.5% in 2017 to 41.9% in 2020.
Even more worrying statistics from Harvard University’s TH Chan School of Public Health show that 43 million preschool-age children worldwide were obese in 2010, and the numbers have been rising steadily since the 1990s.
“Unless action is taken to reverse the epidemic, more than 1 billion adults are projected to be obese by 2030,” the site reads.
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dr Fatima Cody Stanford attends the panel discussion during the Media Empathy Foundation’s Spotlight Series: Weight Stigma In Popular Culture at the Whitby Hotel on June 29, 2022 in New York.
(Photo by Craig Barritt/Getty Images for Media Empathy Foundation)
The Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee is made up of 20 “nationally recognized” physicians, according to the USDA, and was announced last Thursday by agency secretary Tom Vilsack and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra.
“The committee will be tasked with reviewing the current state of science on important nutritional issues and producing a scientific report that includes its independent review of the evidence and recommendations for HHS and USDA as they develop Dietary Guidelines for Americans”, says the USDA’s press release on the committee.
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Moving on, the report focuses on an equity perspective on health and claims that the committee will focus on socioeconomic status, race and more to better determine how to manage obesity.
“The 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee will examine the relationship between diet and health at all stages of life and will use a health equity lens during its evidence review to ensure that factors such as socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity and culture are described and considered to the greatest extent possible based on the information and data provided in the scientific literature.”
The committee updates federal dietary guidelines every five years and acts as a cornerstone in public health perceptions.
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