onlinethinktank  

I was never as interested in food as when I decided to go on a diet.  After starting my diet every conversation related to food.  If someone talked about a car, I might think about the toys that you get in McDonald's Happy Meal. 

Now I am not a conspiracy theorist - all of the time- but I think that the interest in obesity is not honorably to everyone.  I suspect that there are those who see dollar $igns more than they are truly concerned for the health of others. But the greed of others is no reason to avoid checking out any evidence regarding the potential health risks of obesity.

Wikipedia defines the diet conspiracy theory as follows: This type of theory posits that, with the help of the food industry and the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the medical industry is generating billions in drug and treatment revenue from consumers who have become unhealthy as a result of poor or incomplete diet guidelines from the FDA. It is claimed that as long as the medical industry's dietary research studies are accepted and enforced as the measure, they will continue to suggest a minimum calorie intake above the actual healthy level, and will also continue to suppress any findings of the greater benefits of fasting and other calorie restriction type diets, and as long as the consumer continues to eat at the level suggested by the FDA, the incidence of obesity will continue to rise and the medical industry will continue to profit. Thus, it would be self-defeating for the medical industry to produce a cure for the many services that they depend on to generate revenue from unhealthy dietary practices of their customers.  

Still, there is also an issue of who gets to decide what is considered obese.  This has changed over the years with no satisfactory reason to justify it.  Is obesity based upon the amount of fat that would lead to heart attack or that would lead to diabetes?  If this is the case wouldn't this level vary for different people based upon their amount of activity, etc?

One of my chief concerns is how the fat police even qualify to legislate obesity. 

There is an interesting blog posted by Linda Rodriguez the rosters different dieting practices.  In her blog entry titled, "A Brief History of Dubious Dieting", she writes that, "Some historians credit William the Conqueror with starting the first fad diet. Having grown too fat to ride his horse, William went on a liquid diet in 1087—or, rather, a liquor diet, since all he did was drink booze. The story might be apocryphal—William, still fat, actually died after falling from his horse and there was no word on whether he was drunk at the time—but it’s a good one, and it sets the tone for the next 1000+ years of dieting."
Read more...http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/21998