It’s time we were honest about obesity and Covid-19

Difficult facts can be conveyed in a sensitive, non-judgemental and compassionate manner; indeed, this describes the daily practise of medicine. When obesity rears its head, however, a significant number of my colleagues in the health professions display a cognitive dissonance and determination to deprive patients of the unvarnished facts that they would not dare hide with conditions such as cancer.

Prioritising their own “feelings”, they patronise the obese by taking offence on their behalf, preferring to virtue-signal, accusing those “ insensitive “ enough to want to state the facts of “fat shaming” or victim-blaming. Then, in an apparent coup de grace, they triumphantly declare that obesity is complex and multifactorial, as though such a declaration signalled that the discussion was over.

Normalising obesity does nothing to lessen its impact on our health; it is not desirable that 67 per cent of the UK adult population is obese or overweight. Obesity is a risk factor for coronary heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, heart attack, stroke, 11 forms of cancer, adverse pregnancy outcomes and complications from routine surgery.