Welp.

[Content Note: Fat hatred; "headless fatties" imagery.]

Shaker nefernika sent this along by email, which I am sharing with hir permission (emphasis original):

Everything about this terrible article is terrible, from the "headless fatty" photo (of "two overweight women in New York"), even though the article is about the midwest, to the lede ("Want to shed the love handles? Put down the doughnut and go for a walk. Or, perhaps, think twice about pressing your doctor for antibiotics.") which places the blame for antibiotic overuse squarely on the patient and within the narratives of uncontrollable gluttony attributed to fat people, to the rest of the article. The whole article is about something outside of personal eating habits that may affect weight, and yet the way it's written is designed to maintain all kinds of fat hate. Definitely a candidate for "worst thing you may read all day."

This is, genuinely, one of the worst pieces of mendacious fat-hating shit I've read in awhile. Which is really saying something.

One of the things I love most about this article is how Martin Blaser, a physician and head of the human microbiome program at New York University, is quoted drawing a comparison between antibiotics and fattened livestock, in order to suggest that fat people are taking too many antibiotics, but there's not even a passing observation about how the corporate farms that pump livestock full of antibiotics contribute to the contamination of 40 million USians' drinking water. All of which is supposed to be from people (FAT PEOPLE, NO DOUBT!) flushing drugs down the toilet and otherwise inappropriately disposing of them. Please don't look at the corporate farm behind the curtain!

This is also terrific:

[T]he Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urges patient and physician alike to use antibiotics prudently. But doctors still prescribe antibiotics for people with colds or the flu — although the drugs are toothless against viruses — to appease insistent patients.

...Guidelines published this month give pediatricians the clearest advice yet about when to use the drugs and when to pass. They include a cheat sheet to better diagnose maladies and to better match the right antibiotic with a particular form of infection.

So...doctors are inexplicably prescribing antibiotics to "appease insistent patients" (and we all know how inclined most doctors are to indulge the whims of their fat patients), and doctors need advice and guidelines about how to correctly prescribe antibiotics. (That is understandable! There is a lot of information for doctors to keep track of!) But somehow it's still fat patients' fault.

So nix the pastries. Go for a stroll.

Perfect.