Don't call people fat, even if you do it because you care

I would just love to see the IRB proposal for this one. An excerpt: "so we're going to randomly tell some fat little girls that they are too fat and then... in 8 years... we're going to check if they are - on average - fatter than the control group of little girls who we did not call fat."

Not an RCT you say? Then I call bull**** on this. I'm not saying it doesn't make sense... I'm just saying it doesn't count as a scientific study.

:laugh: Fortunately that isn't how they did it.

"When the participants were 10 years old, they were asked if they had been called too fat by any one of a list people that included father, mother, brother, sister, best girlfriend, boy you like best, any other girl, any other boy, or a teacher."

I would just love to see the IRB proposal for this one. An excerpt: "so we're going to randomly tell some fat little girls that they are too fat and then... in 8 years... we're going to check if they are - on average - fatter than the control group of little girls who we did not call fat."

Not an RCT you say? Then I call bull**** on this. I'm not saying it doesn't make sense... I'm just saying it doesn't count as a scientific study.

:laugh: Fortunately that isn't how they did it.

"When the participants were 10 years old, they were asked if they had been called too fat by any one of a list people that included father, mother, brother, sister, best girlfriend, boy you like best, any other girl, any other boy, or a teacher."

As a social scientist I can say that this isn't a great way to go about drawing causal conclusions... these are the kinds of methodological concerns I deal with every day

I'm not a scientist at all, even so, I can see your point. What if the other ten year old girls were called fat at some point, too, but didn't remember it? What if the ones who did remember only remembered it because they were more sensitive anyway, not just to being called fat, but to other life stressors that can lead one to overeat and comfort eat, therefore maybe correlation, not causation? What if people who called their family members fat treated them differently in other ways? What if the personalities of the girls who became obese were such that gentle hints were tried first, failed, and the family members resorted to bluntness, leading to a possible personality issue rather than self-esteem due to one or more remarks?

I would just love to see the IRB proposal for this one. An excerpt: "so we're going to randomly tell some fat little girls that they are too fat and then... in 8 years... we're going to check if they are - on average - fatter than the control group of little girls who we did not call fat."

Not an RCT you say? Then I call bull**** on this. I'm not saying it doesn't make sense... I'm just saying it doesn't count as a scientific study.

:laugh: Fortunately that isn't how they did it.

"When the participants were 10 years old, they were asked if they had been called too fat by any one of a list people that included father, mother, brother, sister, best girlfriend, boy you like best, any other girl, any other boy, or a teacher."

As a social scientist I can say that this isn't a great way to go about drawing causal conclusions... these are the kinds of methodological concerns I deal with every day

I'm not a scientist at all, even so, I can see your point. What if the other ten year old girls were called fat at some point, too, but didn't remember it? What if the ones who did remember only remembered it because they were more sensitive anyway, not just to being called fat, but to other life stressors that can lead one to overeat and comfort eat, therefore maybe correlation, not causation? What if people who called their family members fat treated them differently in other ways? What if the personalities of the girls who became obese were such that gentle hints were tried first, failed, and the family members resorted to bluntness, leading to a possible personality issue rather than self-esteem due to one or more remarks?

You may not be a scientist but here you are exercising the kind of critical thinking about correlates & confounders that marks a scientific mind.

Hey, thanks, I try to keep my brain from rusting out of my head! I actually wish I'd gone into the sciences. I encourage just about every young person I meet with an IQ higher than a lamppost to do so.

But thanks to you I now have a horribly hysterical mental image of a bunch of scientists in lab-coats calling chubby ten year old kids into a room one by one, writing down their names on a clipboard, calling them fat, and sending them back out into the world again.

I also feel like the stigmatization that came with being called out in a negative sense had a hand in my weight. Trying to avoid exposure to the labeling and hurtful comments did determine what things I gave myself permission to enjoy. No matter how much I wanted to do something-- the anxiety around the bullying and name calling would often win out. This is a behavior I've carried into my adult life that I'm trying to address. I can rationalize how little it means, hurtful people mean etc. but the reactions still can hit me in the gut. I'm sure temperment and personality have a say in this, but for me as a child you hid what you were ashamed of...

I can sympathize. I wasn't bullied at home and I wasn't overweight as a kid, but I was horribly bullied at school. I do wonder if my binge eating stems from that. Two of my three siblings struggle with weight and a sweet tooth right along with me, but neither of them, as far as I know, will polish off half a gallon of ice cream in a day, then go back for cookies. So maybe that is the difference.