Dr. Arya Sharma on how The Biggest Loser promotes weight bias

[iamom]

Dr. Sharma, an Edmonton, Alberta-based obesity researcher (and I think bariatric surgeon?) posted a short but excellent entry about the pernicious effects that weight-loss reality shows like The Biggest Loser promote negative and incorrect attitudes about the obese.

http://www.drsharma.ca/how-the-biggest-loser-promotes-weight-bias.html

He describes one of the conclusions reached by researchers who conducted a study on this show as follows:

Interestingly, amongst the participants, those who had lower BMIs and were not trying to lose weight had significantly higher levels of dislike of overweight individuals following exposure to The Biggest Loser compared to similar participants in the control condition.

These results clearly indicate that anti-fat attitudes increase after brief exposure to weight-loss reality television, especially perhaps in people with lower BMI.