Through the ages, humanity’s perception of weight has shifted drastically. In the 18th century, circuses brazenly boasted obese individuals as “attractions,” while later etiquette advised more tact, famously instructing: “never tell a lady she’s fat.” Today, obesity has been recast as a social justice issue, with the left treating body size as a symbol of oppression and shielding it from criticism under the banner of “body positivity.” The catch? Body-positivity ideology has gone so far that even medical schools are now teaching anti-scientific approaches to weight management.
Last week, Do No Harm exposed a presentation given during the “Doctoring 1” course for first-year med students at Temple University. Considering that it was designed for future doctors and nurses, its contents were saturated with ideology and displayed an alarming lack of science.
On one slide, the presentation juxtaposed “Weight Centric” and “Weight Inclusive” approaches to healthcare. According to the chart, a “Weight Centric” approach is one that includes an “emphasis on personal responsibility in maintaining a healthy weight,” and leads to “harms” like “heightened weight stigma,” and “risk of eating disorders.” In contrast, the “Weight Inclusive” column posits that health is “achievable for all regardless of weight,” adding that “weight [should not be] a focal point for [medical] treatment or intervention.”
The presentation goes a step further by posing the question, “What if obesity is another problematic social construct?” It lists “fatphobia” alongside other “implicit biases” like sexism and racism as major contributors to social determinants of health (SDOH) such as health behaviors, food access, and more, which then lead to positive or negative “health outcomes.” In short, it is, the accredited research university claims, the aversion to obesity, or “fatphobia,” that is the cause of health issues, not biology, diet, or exercise.
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In their “historical review,” Temple University claims that “Anti-fat attitudes originated not with medical findings, but with Enlightenment-era belief that over-feeding and fatness were evidence of ‘savagery’ and racial inferiority.” The absurdity continues: “Fatness denoted a new articulation of racial identity due to intermixing during the slave trade, by which “[f]atphobia becomes a direct consequence of the attempt to rule over Black bodies,” the source reads.
To be clear, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared obesity a global epidemic back in 2021, citing its link to a variety of health problems, most especially chronic disease. Yet, at the peril of scientific fact, the left has begun to turn anything remotely uncomfortable or distressing to humanity—including medical conditions—not into an appeal for change, but into a point of “oppression.” Once again, physical realities are exchanged for pathos, and future medical professionals are indoctrinated in ideology, not data-backed science.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison echoes Temple, claiming that “In most contexts, it is inappropriate to comment about someone else’s body, especially when doing so is disguised as being concerned for someone’s health and wellbeing.” The source concludes that “[e]quating weight loss with health is dangerous.”
Northwestern University even banned weight-related jokes, calling them “harassing conduct that may create a hostile environment.”
Meanwhile, courses like “Fat Studies” at the University of Maryland, “Fat Talk and Thin Ideals” at Harvard, and “Fat Fashion” at New School all debuted at accredited—and federally funded, I might add—universities in the last calendar year.
This Fall 2025 semester, one doctoral candidate from the University of Colorado is conducting research on “historic and present day fatphobia and ableism in nature spaces” to make them “more inclusive.”
The absurdity of topics approved for academic study is astounding. So astounding, in fact, that in 2018, three dissenters wrote a series of ideologically saturated articles and presented them as “academic research” to see if any scholarly journals would take the bait. In what is now known as the Grievance Studies affair, seven out of the 20 articles submitted were accepted for publication. Among the approved theses were claims that dog parks were “rape-condoning” spaces, that men should use dildos on themselves to reduce transphobia, and a third that contained an excerpt from Hitler’s Mein Kampf, with the word “jews” replaced with “white men.” This hoax was designed to prove how far academia had fallen into the pit of ideology—and it succeeded.
Last month, I reported how university inclusion writing style guides have taken to reframing reality for the sake of others’ feelings, to the degree that they’ve even attempted to rework criminal convictions in a positive, “empathetic” light. Obesity, now, is being transformed in a similar fashion, to the apparent detriment of Americans’ health.
How far will this charade extend? Will we be told next that pedophiles are victims of ageism—a recognized “identity” by the World Health Organization—and thus blameless of their vile tendencies toward innocent children?
[RELATED: Top Medical Schools Teach Weight Inclusivity, Racial Justice, Report Says]
The left would like us to believe that they care about “empathy” and “acceptance,” but the lies they sell to the American public tell a different story.
Compassion does not require deceiving people about the consequences of their choices. Human beings are inherently fallible, but we grow and improve by confronting reality, not by masking it. Treating obesity as politically untouchable—or framing it as a matter of identity rather than a serious health concern—does more than lower quality of life; it prevents individuals from achieving their full potential.
This is not mere theory. Leading medical schools, including Temple University, now teach so-called “weight-inclusive” approaches that downplay the connection between body weight and health outcomes. If future doctors are trained to ignore or dismiss evidence linking obesity to chronic disease, heart problems, diabetes, and premature death, the epidemic will worsen—and the consequences will be measured in illness and lives lost.
The academic left’s impulse to prioritize feelings over facts is well-meaning in intention but deeply misguided in effect. Policy and pedagogy should be rooted in evidence, not ideology. Acknowledging the biological and medical realities of obesity is not cruel; it is necessary to equip students, patients, and the public with the knowledge to make healthier, more informed decisions.
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