Scientific American: The Racist Roots of Fighting Obesity
A 2018 opinion piece co-authored by psychologists, sociologists, and behavioral scientists in the journal BMC Medicine argued that bias against fat people is actually a larger driver of the so-called obesity epidemic than adiposity itself. A 2015 study in Psychological Science, among the many studies supporting this argument, found that people who reported experiencing weight discrimination had a 60 percent increased risk of dying, independent of BMI (and therefore regardless of body size). The underlying mechanisms explaining this relationship may reflect the direct and indirect effects of chronic social stress.