Slate's Dan Engber has attempted to take down Wall-E in classic Green Room style with a piece slamming the film's connection between obesity and environmental destruction.
Engber's critique is flawed in so many ways that it's hard to know where to begin ... For instance, he doesn't seem to believe that obesity really has much to do with being too sedentary or eating too much. To support this, he cites research saying that 80 percent of the variation in body weight can be explained by DNA. But what the research actually shows (and what his own colleague, William Saletan, has recently gotten right) is that 80 percent of the variation can be explained by DNA among individuals living in the same environment. If fatness is determined so strongly by genes, as Engber would have us believe, how in the world, then, is it possible to explain skyrocketing obesity rates in the past several decades?
In sum, Engber thinks the Nalgene-toting eco-liberals are ridiculous (and disingenuous) in their linking of the expanding waistlines and climate change. It's a too-easy analogy, he says.
Granted, I (most likely, we) are among those people Engber loves to loathe and could scarcely be dissuaded from doing so, but just in case -- in case there's been a fundamental oversight, a gap in education -- I feel like sending him a copy of Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food or Paul Robert's The End of Food. It's impossibly hard to argue, after reading either one, that agriculture, ecological degradation, and obesity aren't closely intertwined.
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Comments
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Biodiversivist Posted 1:50 pm
11 Jul 2008
We eat too much because food is inexpensive and convenient and exercise too little because we pay others to do all our manual labor for us.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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Jason D Scorse Posted 1:48 am
12 Jul 2008
I teach environmental economics and blog at http://www.voicesofreason.info.
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sunflower Posted 2:28 am
12 Jul 2008
The Romans during the empire were obese on the labor of other poor souls.
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Tasermons Partner Posted 11:58 am
12 Jul 2008
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engber Posted 2:24 am
13 Jul 2008
A couple of quick thoughts. I know what heritability means, and in my piece I state outright that our environment can make us fatter. Even if we're talking just about variation, to say that obesity is 80% heritable leaves 20% to other causes. I didn't mean to imply otherwise.
Even if the mean body weight has shifted by a few pounds over the last few decades, it's still true that in a given population (in America or on board the Axiom), genetics will have a significant effect on where people end up on in the normal distribution of body weights. That's why it's wrong to use fatter people as metaphor for widespread social problems... We're all pushing the mean together.
As for the Pollan book, thanks for the offer, but I've read it (and written about it) already and I'm not sure how it addresses any of my points.
In the meantime, I've addressed a few of the criticisms of my article here:
http://fray.slate.com/discuss/forums/thread/1494387.aspx? ...
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Wolverine Posted 10:40 am
13 Jul 2008
What Dan Engber, and anyone else who analyzes this movie the way he does, fails to get is that fictional movies generally use symbolism and metaphor. "Fat" symbolizes overconsumption. It doesn't necessarily have to be overconsumption of food, and overconsumption of other things is probably more responsible for ecological devastation. That said, the attitude that being overweight is not caused by the eating and exercise habits of the affected individuals, however, is ludicrous.
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marcus goodfellow Posted 1:46 am
14 Jul 2008
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John former Marine Posted 2:04 am
14 Jul 2008
I think George made a very convincing argument that obesity and the environment are linked. Unless there are people out there who doen't believe that obesity is linked with consumption, and consumption is linked with the environment. Factory-farmed meat (with growth hormones), soft drinks, refined carbs from cheap grain, and dairy products (with growth hormones) are all linked to an expanding waistline...and to a bigger ecological footprint.
Il faut cultiver notre jardin.
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John former Marine Posted 2:10 am
14 Jul 2008
We need to quit being hypochondriacs and worrying that our genes are going to make us succeptible to disease. Get the crap out of your body/environment.
Il faut cultiver notre jardin.
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John former Marine Posted 2:46 am
14 Jul 2008
or corruption and obesity?
or No Child Left Behind and obesity?
how about ToysRUs and obesity?
Il faut cultiver notre jardin.
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sindark Posted 2:53 am
14 Jul 2008
It isn't their genes that have changed, but their health outcomes certainly do.
a sibilant intake of breath
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sindark Posted 2:56 am
14 Jul 2008
Even if true, this doesn't mean that overconsumption of the wrong foods does not relate to obesity. Rather, it might be stretching the normal distribution off to the right, increasing the weight of those at all high percentiles. Whereas someone in the 99th percentile might have been X pounds in 1950, they may well be 1.5X or 2.0X now.
Ultimately, relative weight isn't hugely important. Being 'normal' weight in a village of emaciated people is unhealthy; likewise, in a population of severely obese individuals. Comparative measures of weight within a population are thus less meaningful than individual characteristics, such as ratio of height to weight or muscle to fat.
a sibilant intake of breath
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Wolverine Posted 6:07 am
14 Jul 2008
The issue of personal responsibility is second only to giving the natural environment priority in where I part ways with the left. While I think any fair person would agree that personal responsibility should be commensurate with the amount of money/power one has, EVERYONE has some amount of it.
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Jon Rynn Posted 6:48 am
14 Jul 2008
And of course they were taking liberties with everyone looking ridiculously "buttery", in the real world, plenty of people would be skinny no matter how much they ate -- but they would still have trouble walking if they didn't exercise.
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Tasermons Partner Posted 11:43 am
15 Jul 2008
...however, a more obese population also usually has a more limited average lifespan. In other words, they die sooner. So though their immediate ecological impact is greater, I wonder how it compares to someone who has a smaller current impact, but ends up livin' a third or maybe even twice as long as the more overweight person, and thus consumes resources over a longer period?
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Wolverine Posted 1:22 am
16 Jul 2008
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