The big issue: how should we fight the flab?

In the summer of 1998, Julia Phillips hobbled – with the aid of two sticks – to Palisades Park in Santa Monica, California, to participate in what she sees as "the beginning of the biggest civil rights campaign since Martin Luther King." She was not fighting to end racism or sexism; she and over a thousand other participants in this "million pound march" were crusading for "size acceptance" and the "right" to be obese.

The National Association for the Advancement of Fat People (Naafa) and the "fat pride" movement have become a force in US politics. They were key players in steering onto San Francisco statute books a law forbidding discrimination on the basis of weight or height, and all across the States – thanks to their pressure – cinemas and airlines are providing much larger seats. The only legal exemptions are for the police, fire service and strip-clubs, a rule which has sadly deprived the world of the phenomenon of morbidly obese strippers.

It's easy to joke about this subject, but it is deadly serious. A report issued this week by Dr José Banegas revealed that Brits are the fattest people in Europe, and are nudging close to the staggering US levels of flab. Of all deaths in this country, 8.9 per cent are due to obesity, compared to just 5.8 per cent in France. Half of all British adults are overweight, and one fifth are obese. How will we deal with this new sea of flesh? Should we embrace obesity – even become proud of it – and fight to make life easier for the seriously overweight? Or should we chastise the fat for their gluttony, which is eating up a growing proportion of NHS resources – £2.5bn for obesity-related illnesses in the last year alone?

As you can tell from my byline picture, I am not exactly afflicted by anorexia myself. (The number of you who begin your e-mails "Dear fat bastard..." would indicate that this fact has indeed been registered.) A friend of mine texts me every time a new picture of me appears in this paper telling me the results of his latest game of "Count Johann's Chins".

But why am I fat? A question at the core of the argument about "fat pride" is that of personal responsibility. Racism is wrong because it condemns somebody because of their skin colour, for which they cannot be held responsible. Do we really have as little control over being fat as we do over being black or white? Aren't fat people fat because – well – we eat too much and don't exercise? Isn't the comparison with Martin Luther King offensive? I know perfectly well – because I have tried it – that if I trim back on the kebabs and MegaMacs and spend 10 minutes a day exercising, the weight falls away.

But the problem isn't as simple as that. Obesity is, in the West, disproportionately a problem for the poor. In an unexpected reversal of the old Marxist imagery, it is now the workers who are weighty and the rich who have flat, toned stomachs: people in the lowest economic decile are five times more likely to be obese and nine times more likely to be morbidly obese than people in the highest. Some neoliberal writers see this as an achievement of Western capitalism: not only do we let them eat cake, they eat an awful lot of it. I agree that it is better than the alternative, where the poor starve – but we also need to be aware that it is the excesses of unfettered capitalism that are causing this problem.

In her new book, Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health, Marion Nestle of New York University explains how the food industry in the US promotes obesity. Far more food is produced in the US than its citizens actually need. If every citizen ate an equal portion of the food created, they would ingest a whopping 3,800 calories a day – twice the recommended amount for an average woman and a third more than an average man needs.

Rather than redeploy these resources – and the money – elsewhere, the food industry is encouraging consumers to eat far more than they need. Advertising for fatty food bombards Americans – and, increasingly, us – at every turn. The food industry "works with" health officials who draw up nutritional guidelines, and increasingly their lobbying is turning into outright bribery.

This blitz is working: the average American consumes 12lb more red meat a year now than they did in 1970. The food industry has adopted a covert strategy of creating fatter individuals who need more calories to feel full. They are literally growing their market. They have crafted a whole genre of advertising described as "diet-breakers": ads targeted to make people who are trying to lose weight give up and head down to the nearest burger bar.

But how does this afflict the poor more than the rich? Partly it is because the poor watch more television and are therefore exposed to more of this stuff. But mainly it is because many poor people live in "food deserts", where they have plenty of food but none of it healthy. Tessa Jowell, when she was Health Minister in the early years of the current government, was one of the first to identify the problem, which she defined as living in an area "where people do not have easy access to healthy, fresh foods, particularly if they are poor or have limited mobility."

One of my relatives, who lives on a council estate near Glasgow, simply cannot get to anywhere which sells good, fresh, low-fat food. There is only one, rather unpleasant little shop on the estate, where prices are high and everything is tinned or frozen (and much more expensive than in a big store). She doesn't drive, and would have to take three buses to get to the out-of-town supermarket; it would be impossible to carry much shopping back, especially with two young kids and no money for a babysitter. Millions of poor people are trapped in this situation: they are getting fatter because they simply cannot get to affordable good food. The rise of out-of-town supermarkets, which are causing many local, easier-to-access supermarkets to close down, is only exacerbating this problem.

There are ways to tackle this, some of which are being implemented (albeit slowly) by the current government. We can refuse planning permission for out-of-town supermarkets, or make permission contingent on providing regular bus services to even distant council estates and poor areas. We can much more tightly regulate food advertising, and start putting health warnings on high-fat food just as we do with cigarettes.

But the most disastrous thing we could do, I'm afraid, would be to normalise obesity. I like the "fat pride" people, and I have instinctive sympathy for them. Fat people are discriminated against in irrational and offensive ways, and many of the claims that "it's only your health we're worried about, dear" are totally undermined by the fact that we live in a culture saturated with images of horribly undernourished women, and those same people rarely nag at them.

But glorifying obesity is really no better than the frightening pro-anorexia movement in the US, where websites about how to starve yourself efficiently are proliferating, and several young girls are trying to sue their mothers for depriving them of their "right" to starve themselves to death.

Instead of acting as though being overweight were harmless or even good, fat people need to fight to create a culture where it is easier to take personal responsibility for eating and living healthily. Once poor people have access to healthy food and we have ended have a culture which tries to break people's will to diet, then those of us who are left will have to admit, as I do, that we are fat because we like greasy, calorie-heavy food and don't like tedious activities like climbing stairs and doing sit-ups. One thing is certain: ever-expanding cinema seats are not the answer.

johann@johannhari.com