The new film Wall-E gets it right

The link between obesity and the environment 16

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.

Maywa Montenegro is an editor and writer at Seed magazine, focusing mainly on ecology, bidiversity, agriculture, and sustainable development.

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  1. Biodiversivist's avatar

    Biodiversivist Posted 1:50 pm
    11 Jul 2008

    Not to defend Engber, butI also don't see the connection between agriculture, ecological degradation, and obesity. We are obese because we eat too much and exercise too little, no?
    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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  2. Jason D Scorse's avatar

    Jason D Scorse Posted 1:48 am
    12 Jul 2008

    Glad you posted this...Engber's piece was garbage- did America's DNA simply morph and mutate over the past 20 years to turn us into the most obese people in the world? Please, that is ridiculous. We have become a nation of couch-potato gluttons, whose diets rank #1 in environmental damage- that's the story, period.

    I teach environmental economics and blog at http://www.voicesofreason.info.

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  3. sunflower's avatar

    sunflower Posted 2:28 am
    12 Jul 2008

    Gotta love EvaShe is hot.  Delightful misanthropic film.
    The Romans during the empire were obese on the labor of other poor souls.

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  4. Tasermons Partner Posted 11:58 am
    12 Jul 2008

    This was Pixar's best movie yet......I absolutely loved it!

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  5. engber Posted 2:24 am
    13 Jul 2008

    My Slate articleHi, Daniel Engber here.
    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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  6. Wolverine Posted 10:40 am
    13 Jul 2008

    Fat SymbolismBiod,
    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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  7. marcus goodfellow Posted 1:46 am
    14 Jul 2008

    two sides of the same coinSeems like the key phrases in the critique and Dan Engber's rebuttal are "in the same environment" and "in a given population". So some people in America will be fatter than others and that will be due to heritable DNA oriented differences. Comparing obesity levels between our American population and most other populations on the planet would pretty obviously show that our mean level of fatness is higher than most of the other populations. Given the dramatic shift towards chubbiness and beyond over the last few decades it would be hard to say it's DNA driven. We eat more, and much of what we eat is crap.  

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  8. John former Marine Posted 2:04 am
    14 Jul 2008

    If this movie didn't convince you of the link...I suggest you go to youtube and check out George Carlin's skit on "Fat People."
    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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  9. John former Marine Posted 2:10 am
    14 Jul 2008

    Genes are the new germs....Hypochondriacs are nuts about germs...always scrubbing down with antimicrobial soaps, sterilizing their bodies, and constantly convinced that they've got some malady or other.  I've seen this whole gene thing working out to the same type of mentality over the last few years....everybody is scared that their genes cause this or that.  It's a lot of BS.  Genes are not an excuse for a rediculous lifestyle.  My grandmother lived the last twenty years of her life hooked up to an oxygen tank because she smoked....should we say that smoking isn't bad but that certain people have a genetic disposition to lung disease?  BS!  The reason why genes get switched on to cause disease is because we're putting something into the human body that doesn't belong there...cigarrette smoke, pesticides, growth hormones, trans-fats, chlorine, fluoride...
    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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  10. John former Marine Posted 2:46 am
    14 Jul 2008

    has anyone thought about...the link between bad government and obesity?
    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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  11. sindark's avatar

    sindark Posted 2:53 am
    14 Jul 2008

    Gene explanation dubiousI agree that the 'obesity is caused by genetics' argument is difficult to square with rising rates of obesity and diabetes. Arguably, this is especially true in situations where people eating traditional diets have suddently been exposed to supermarkets and 'fast food.'
    It isn't their genes that have changed, but their health outcomes certainly do.

    a sibilant intake of breath

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  12. sindark's avatar

    sindark Posted 2:56 am
    14 Jul 2008

    Statistics"[G]enetics will have a significant effect on where people end up on in the normal distribution of body weights."
    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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  13. Wolverine Posted 6:07 am
    14 Jul 2008

    Failure To Take ResponsibilityOut here, the gene BS is used to avoid personal responsibility for overeating/bad eating and lack of exercise.  In Berkeley, some people have gone so far that they consider calling on people to take this responsibility prejudicial.
    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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  14. Jon Rynn's avatar

    Jon Rynn Posted 6:48 am
    14 Jul 2008

    Lack of exercise made them obese......in Wall-E, that's at least what I got out of it -- everybody was on a moving bed all the time, and they didn't move except to put the straws to their lips.  Warning -- a bit of a plot twist here -- but when they actually get up and try to walk, it's a big deal, and I don't think it was just the fatness, it was that their muscles had atrophied.
    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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  15. Tasermons Partner Posted 11:43 am
    15 Jul 2008

    On the other hand......a more obese population has a larger ecological footprint in that they consume more(thus more industrial agriculture), and that what they consume is generally unhealthy (and thus more chemicals) and more likely to take cars than walk of bike...
    ...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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  16. Wolverine Posted 1:22 am
    16 Jul 2008

    Good Point TasermonThe current human path of increased technology and decreased living naturally is an evolutionary dead end.  Not only is it destroying the Earth and all other life on it, it's not good for humans, either.

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