Companies that are hawking diets and other weight loss products claim to be interested in your health. Really? They're interested in your wallet. Ditto for "reality shows" that feature competitive weight loss. And there is a growing awareness that these products and programs are futile at best and dangerous at worst.

A great editorial titled "Weight-loss industry masks its economic interests with bogus health concerns," writes about the realities of our thin-is-in culture, with a focus on the new academic field known as fat studies.

For several decades, scholars in the social sciences have shown that when it comes to people’s attitudes about weight in the United State, thin is good and fat is bad. Fat people suffer from harassment and discrimination; thin people live in fear that they will gain weight and lose status...Fat studies scholars ask why we oppress people who are fat and who benefits from that oppression, arguing that weight, like height, is a human characteristic that varies across any population. Fat studies, then, resembles other academic disciplines that question discriminatory practices based on race, ethnicity, gender or age.

Essays like this have helped open my eyes to the fact that most diets really aren't about health, they're a form of status-seeking. And this status-seeking can only exist if larger people are considered second-class citizens. It's no different than discrimination based on gender or skin color.

Of course, there's a lot of money to be made in keeping people as second class citizens, as long as they can strive to become like the "rest" of us. And one of the most onerous examples of this is the show "The Biggest Loser." I've never seen the show and have no real desire to see the show- I've lived it. Basically, the show is based on the notion of "competitive weight loss," and shaming and starving people into losing weight. A great article in the New York Times took a long, hard look at whether this show was endangering the health of the contestants.

The series also highlights the difference between the pursuit of engaging television and the sometimes frenzied efforts of contestants to win, perhaps at the risk of their own health. Doctors, nutritionists and physiologists not affiliated with “The Biggest Loser” express doubt about the program’s regimen of severe caloric restriction and up to six hours a day of strenuous exercise, which cause contestants to sometimes lose more than 15 pounds a week.

At least one other contestant has confessed to using dangerous weight-loss techniques, including self-induced dehydration. On the first episode of the current season, two contestants were sent to the hospital, one by airlift after collapsing from heat stroke during a one-mile race.

{snip}

Medical professionals generally advise against losing more than about two pounds a week. Rapid weight loss can cause many medical problems, including a weakening of the heart muscle, irregular heartbeat and dangerous reductions in potassium and electrolytes.

“I’m waiting for the first person to have a heart attack,” said Dr. Charles Burant, a professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan Health System director of the Michigan Metabolomics and Obesity Center.

“I have had some patients who want to do the same thing, and I counsel them against it,” Dr. Burant said. “I think the show is so exploitative. They are taking poor people who have severe weight problems whose real focus is trying to win the quarter-million dollars.”

The contestants were also required to sign waivers that said "no warranty, representation or guarantee has been made as to the qualifications or credentials of the medical professionals who examine me or perform any procedures on me in connection with my participation in the series, or their ability to diagnose medical conditions that may affect my fitness to participate in the series."

What perhaps absolutely gobsmacked me (though really isn't that surprising, when you think about it) is how the show essentially muzzles any prior contestants who might criticize the show.

Shortly after a reporter started contacting former contestants to interview them about their experiences, a talent producer on the series sent an e-mail message to many former contestants reminding them that “serious consequences” could ensue if they ever talked to a reporter without the show’s permission.

To do so could subject them to a fine of $100,000 or $1 million, depending on the timing of the interview, according to the e-mail message, which was obtained by The New York Times. The show’s producers did provide an opportunity to interview several former contestants, but the interviews were conducted with an NBC publicist listening in.

I don't know about any of you, but this sure sounds like a cult to me. Each time we watch the show or buy the products, we're encouraging such insanity. And I think it's high time that we stopped.