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Building Trust in Tackling Obesity?



Yesterday, at the 2nd National Obesity Summit, one of the workshops was on the issue of building trust.

As regular readers may recall, I have been part of this initiative in the past, as I firmly believe in the value of dialogue – whether in the end you agree or agree to disagree.

At yesterday’s workshop there was again good representation from industry (mainly Big-Food/Beverages, government and non-government organisations as well as health professionals and academics – sectors that not only mistrust each other, but also, interestingly, often display significant inter-sectoral mistrust.

Rather than go through some of the discussions or outcomes of this workshop, I post this video that was taken following the last Building Trust in Obesity workshop and nicely reflects why this dialogue is so important and useful, if as a society we hope to in the end all work together to address some of the pertinent issues.

I guess the video speaks for itself.

AMS
Montreal, Quebec

7 Comments

  1. That was a whole lot of huey, people feel more comfortable with bariatric people when they don’t preach, have gone through the process at sometime in their life it is easier to believe or trust some who isn’t a size 4, and has been small person her whole life. How can she say I know what you are saying or going through I have been there when she hasn’t. My case is different I was active my whole life but still gained weight. PLayed hockey, baseball, football, rugby, baseketball my doctor couldn’t understand how I put weight on as I ate the same as normal children. I was on a diet by 10 years old lost the weight but would put it back on again I was still always active until I had to retire from football because of tarsal tunnel syndrome. The aches and pains of playing 16 years of football, Next week I am having an MRI of my spine as I am disabled due to numerous encrouchments on my spinal cord, The Tarsal tunnel, Lumbar, thorasic, and cervical as well. I was called by my neurologist morbidly Obese, my first response if I said anything was Quack how demeaning to be called that when you were a world class athlete but can’t workout or walk to do no form of exercise without severe pain. He had not even heard my story. Trust HMMM!
    Alan Moffat

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  2. Terry O’Reilly
    CBC radio program “The Age of Persuasion”

    Excellent show on the interaction between advertising and society.

    Has he done a program on food advertising?
    It would be beneficial to hire him as a consultant to help understand the food industry goals, how advertisers sell the ideals (not just individual foods, all aspects of food consumption), and how society changes behavior significantly affected by advertising, product placement, etc.

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  3. Lovely. Big Food (the foxes) building trust with Health organizations (the Farmers) to decide what to do about the chickens. Great. Anybody think to include the chickens? Where’s ISAA, ASDAH, the National Eating Disorders Information Centre or NAAFA?

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  4. And what about the HAES (health at every size) people?

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  5. And what about the HAES (health at every size) people?

    Good point – working on that too 🙂

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  6. Big food? Are you kidding? Does this mean that you’re assuming that they’re behind the fat acceptance movement and the HAES paradigm? No. These are grass roots movements headed by volunteer activists and by exceptionally far-sighted and intelligent health professionals. As NewMe and Debra have said, other than allowing us to post on your blog, you are not engaging with us. Where was Linda Bacon? Where was Glenn Gaesser? Where was Paul Campos? Where was Marilyn Wann?

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  7. Even if we assume they are wellmeaning, its unlikely they understand much about obesity. At best, they’ll agree on more ELMM. Which isn’t helpful. I guess I’m wondering if they need to bother with this. How much direct influence do these interests have on obesity specifically? I mean, everyone should eat less McDonalds not just obese people. And I’m sure McDonalds would never support that. What is the role of multinational food companies and obesity specifically? Its not clear to me.

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