Jessica

Vozel

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April 27, 2009

What The Biggest Loser and the Bush Administration Have in Common

A footnote that was included as part of the Bush torture memos uses this justification for starvation techniques employed for the purpose of information gathering: “. . . we note that widely available commercial weight-loss programs in the United States employ diets of 1,000 kcal/day for sustained periods of weeks or longer without requiring medical supervision. While we do not equate commercial weight loss programs and this interrogation technique, the fact that these calorie levels are used in the weight-loss programs, in our view, is instructive in evaluating the medical safety of the interrogation technique.”

This quote is a flawless example of two things: One, the way the Bush Administration viewed torture, and two, the way our society has been conditioned to think about dieting.

First – and this seems strikingly obvious – people do a lot of things voluntarily that could hurt their bodies, and do it without medical supervision. They shoot heroin, they inflict self-harm in the form of cutting, they have unprotected sex, they go to tanning beds and fry their skin. Does this mean raping prisoners, injecting them with drugs, forcing them into casket-like devices and blasting them with UV rays is an ethical way to torture, too? Voluntary self-harm is problematic in its own way in terms of one’s mental health and well-being, but when detainees are forced into it, another dimension is added that cannot be overlooked.

The Bush Administration hoped to trivialize their torture techniques by looking to commercial diet plans, but such a comparison also leads one to consider that, because 1,000 calories a day was employed as a means of torture, the human body will suffer if it is subjected to such methods, even if voluntarily. Mentally, it’s not the same as being forced to starve. But physically, the effects are likely quite similar. And yet we do it all the time. In fact, fat people are told that if they don’t do it, then they are killing themselves, or at least “letting themselves go.”

Never mind that no conclusive study has ever proven that fat people eat disproportionately more than thin people and thus need to drastically reduce the amount of food they take in, or that fat is invariably unhealthy and thin healthy. Additionally, no study has ever proven that dieting works for more than 5 percent of dieters, and more often leads to the dieter gaining back additional weight because of the body’s survival responses. Deprive the body of calories long enough, and it will begin to more readily store those calories as fat.  

The conventional wisdom, of course, suggests otherwise – that failing to lose weight and keep it off is a failure of personal motivation, not genetics. But think about yourself or people around you who have lost a noticeable amount of weight. How many of them have kept it off for more than five years? If you don’t know anyone personally, think about the contestants on the television show The Biggest Loser, who are subjected to torture-like conditions – severe calorie depravation and four-to-six hours a day of exercise. Once returning home, many regain, including winner Erik Chopin, who went on Oprah to tell his story (although he didn’t blame the Biggest Loser’s conditions for his inevitable regain).

During World War II, Dr. Ancel Keyes of the University of Minnesota conducted a study about the effects of starvation on the human body to better determine how to aid the millions around the world affected by war-time food shortages. The study was called the Minnesota Starvation Study and followed 40 male volunteers who subsisted on 1,600 calories a day for three months. That’s right – 1,600 calories, more than many diet plans subscribe. The effects were plenty – diminished reflexes, metabolic rates and heart volume; impaired judgment and comprehension; dizziness; ringing in the ears; their pulses slowed and their body temperatures dropped.

Perhaps most significantly, the participants became obsessed with food and eating: They hoarded things, they talked amongst each other about food all the time, and hunger became the most important part of their lives, at the expense of social relationships and careers. Once they returned to normal eating patterns, their appetites had increased dramatically and many claimed they did not feel full no matter how much food they consumed. All after three months of dieting.  

The truth is that the “commercial weight loss programs” the Bush Administration cited (as if, because something is commercial, it must be ethical) thrive on insecurity, and that insecurity must be perpetuated to keep selling the product. No human body deserves starvation. Not detainees, and not the rest of us.

© 2009 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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