Weekend: HEALTH: A Fat Lot of Good Abusing Us Will Do; It Has Been a Hot Topic for Months. Now Heather Pollitt Has Taken a Rare Look at the Issue of Obesity through the Eyes of the Obese

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Byline: Heather Pollitt

The subject of obesity is never far from the media eye. In fact, you would be hard pushed to find an adult in the UK who has not seen or read a story relating to it.

Daily articles in newspapers attempt to cover every angle. We are regularly told that more and more people, regardless of age, are getting bigger and being told they are obese in terms of their body mass index.

My initial objective was to research obesity in relation to ethnicity, interviewing Caucasian, Afro-Caribbean and Asian men and women specifically for this piece. The research showed that the real burning issues are victimisation and limited resources in the health service, both of which are blind to the colour of people's skin.

I found an increasingly intolerant attitude towards people who are overweight and obese, coupled with increasing levels of abuse aimed at people who are. And this is having a very real and negative effect on people's lives.

The central question is: should this be tolerated in a civilised society?

In 2005, it is clear is that obese or …