Fat Propaganda Roundup: Oprah’s Triumph

Fat Propaganda Roundup: Documenting the meatiest, juiciest cuts of “fat acceptance” propaganda from corporate and social media.

Oprah declares victory over ‘obesity gene’ with Ozempic

The public, vicious jihad that Oprah Winfrey has waged against her own corpulent body mass for many decades has finally concluded, with the pop culture icon as the undisputed victor.

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Looking svelte, as she relays to the visceral satisfaction of The View audience and panelists desperate for affirmation that their own obesity is anyone or anything else’s fault other than their own, she’s got GLP-1 drugs to thank for the win:

“All these years, I thought I was overeating. I was standing there with all the food noise — what I ate, what I should eat, how many calories was that, how long was it going to take — I thought that that was because of me and my fault,. Now I understand that if you carry the obesity gene, if that is what you have, that is what makes you overeat. You don’t overeat and become obese; obesity causes you to overeat. Obesity causes you to have all of that food noise. And what the GLP-1s have done for me, and I know a number of other people, is to quiet that noise.”

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If you will permit me, kind reader, an indulgent aside, I am reminded of a joke my uncle told me as a young lad, knee-high to a grasshopper.

“Did you hear Oprah got arrested?” he asked me.

“No,” I answered, taking the question literally.

“They caught her with fifty pounds of crack at the airport.”

He laughed uproariously.

I didn’t get it then, because I didn’t yet know, in my tender innocence, what crack cocaine was, but I knew by the disapproving look my mother flashed that it must have been a good joke.

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Anyway, one could not, if one tried, find a more sympathetic or receptive audience for the above message from Oprah Winfrey than The View, the panelists and audience being comprised of large women with a deadly allergy to personal responsibility — the hostess’ paychecks, like Oprah’s, courtesy of the advertisers who deluge the viewers in pharmaceutical propaganda every commercial break.

To the substance of her claim, though, does such a thing as the “obesity gene” actually exist?

If that “food noise” and “obesity causes you to overeat” talk strikes you as a bunch of self-help gibberish to soothe the egos of the buffet-mongers, you’re not alone.

As inclined as I was to chalk up the “obesity gene” talking point to a psychological coping mechanism for the salad-dodgers and an excuse to demand free seats on airplanes and all manner of other set-asides, being the honest journalist that I am, even as a committed fatphobe, I had to set aside my prejudices in order to dive down the “obesity gene” rabbit hole.

Related: Southwest Airlines Caves to Fat Mob, Gives Away Free Seats to Obese Passengers

As eager as I was to disprove their existence, however, there is some speculative scientific literature to back up the claim.

Via Trends in Genetics:

“In 2007, an association of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the fat mass and obesity-associated (FTO) gene region with body mass index (BMI) and risk of obesity was identified in multiple populations, making FTO the first locus unequivocally associated with adiposity. At the time, FTO was a gene of unknown function and it was not known whether these SNPs exerted their effect on adiposity by affecting FTO or neighboring genes. Therefore, this breakthrough association inspired a wealth of in silico, in vitro, and in vivo analyses in model organisms and humans to improve knowledge of FTO function. These studies suggested that FTO plays a role in controlling feeding behavior and energy expenditure. Here, we review the approaches taken that provide a blueprint for the study of other obesity-associated genes in the hope that this strategy will result in increased understanding of the biological mechanisms underlying body weight regulation…

Multiple processes could plausibly contribute to the risk of obesity, including neurological circuits governing appetite and whole-body energy expenditure, as well as peripheral pathways involved in energy expenditure. Loss-of-Fto function appears to reduce fat mass in mice, at least in part, through increased energy expenditure but not decreased energy intake. However, the study of intermediate phenotypes in humans showed that FTO SNPs are associated with appetite and food intake but not energy expenditure (Table 1). Interestingly, data from rodents suggested that Fto might affect neuropeptide Y expression in the hypothalamus, which in turn is known to impact feeding behavior.”

Can a thing such as an “obesity gene” be really said to exist? And, if they are real, do they really override the ability to control weight through diet and exercise?

I still don’t know the answer, but I assure you it’s not going to assuage my visceral disgust at the fats’ aesthetic unseemliness; I’ve been in this game far too long to turn back now.

Benjamin Bartee, author of Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile (now available in paperback), is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs.

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