Fat is worse than war

YEAH RIGHT.  I'm sorry, my eyes hurt because I'm rolling them so hard.

Ok, so here's what happened.  Yesterday, a 'report' comes out from this global consulting firm McKinsey & Company. It's picked up by the BBCFortune, The Washington Post, Vox, The Economist, The LA Times, and on and on.

So, I wonder-- who is McKinsey & Company?  I wonder if they might have some vested interest in making up a completely ridiculous number like 2 trillion dollars and saying fat people are worse than WAR and TERRORISM.

And lo and fucking behold-- look what 5 minutes of googling brought up--

Well, what do we have here?  It looks like a Michael Echenberg- the Chief Strategy Officer at Weight Watchers used to work for McKinsey & Company. 

From the Weight Watchers website. Jonas M. Fajgenbaum, director at Weight Watchers, also worked for McKinsey.

Peter Attia used to work at McKinsey and now he's flogging the keto diet. He's also a cofounder of the Nutrition Science Institute, which the linked NPR article creepily calls a 'Manhattan Project for Nutrition and Obesity'.

Murali Naidu worked for McKinsey and was also a director of a bariatric surgery

I found these these guys with about 5 minutes of googling. What does this mean? It means that the so-called journalism around 'obesity' is disgustingly incompetent.

This consulting company-- who they fuck are they? 

Well, here's an article about how this company signed off on Enron being super duper ok! right before they collapsed. 

"McKinsey, the global consulting firm, has created dubious strategies for all manners of companies ranging from Enron to General Electric. Indeed, where ever there has been a financial disaster in the world, if you look around, somewhere in the background, McKinsey & Co. is nearby."

Do I need to keep digging through Google, or are we all on the same page now?

The diet industry is a over 60 billion* dollar industry, per year, in the US alone. 

Please read media articles about the SCARY FAT PEOPLES with a little skepticism, because unfortunately, what passes for journalism these days is pretty shitty.

*Edited to correct the per year annual income of the diet industry in the US from $20 billion to over $60 billion. Thanks to Marilyn Wann for the updated information!