Rethinking Weight By Amanda Spake Summary

“Rethinking Weight,” by Amanda Spake was featured as a cover story in the February 2004 edition of U.S. News and World Report. The article brings a critical debate among obesity researchers into question: whether or not obesity should be classified as a disease. This dispute is significant to the future of America, and many Americans themselves. The positions of the government and insurance companies on the classification of obesity as a disease will determine the assistance granted to obese and overweight Americans, which have become the majority of the population: 68.5% of Americans, according to the Food Research and Action Center (Overweight and Obesity in the U.S.) Spake states that insurance companies should pay for medical expenses caused by obesity due to it being a biological “disease” and due to the fact that most obese Americans are unable to cover medical expenses themselves. She goes on to discuss the reluctance of the government and insurance companies to classify obesity as a disease; she also includes statistics relating to the high cost of treating obesity and obesity-related diseases. While Spake communicates her …show more content…
She includes testimonies from Xavier Pi-Sunyer, the director of the Obesity Research Center at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital. She also mentions the fact that both the National Institutes of Health and the World Health Organization agree with Pi-Sunyer in thinking that obesity is a disease. The World Health Organization has listed obesity as a disease in its International Classification of Diseases since 1979 (155). Spake continues to discuss the studies of twins, referencing studies that show BMI, body composition and other measures of “fatness” to be 20 to 70 percent inherited. Spake’s use of sources is adequate; however, she contradicts herself later in the article by stating that not all scientists agree on labeling obesity as “a