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When Jess Zimmerman reported for her annual gynecological exam last February, her doctor was interested in assessing more than just her vaginal health—he wanted to talk about her weight. "He asked what I ate, but he didn’t wait for an answer," Zimmerman writes. "I had to exercise more, he said, having no idea how much I was exercising. I also needed to eat less [of] whatever it was I was eating." When it came time for another checkup, her experience of being bullied by a doctor who "made incorrect guesses about my habits based on my body" made her think twice about making another appointment. "Something as mild as a pre-smear dressing-down can seriously wreck your trust in doctors for a while," Zimmerman says.
In 2007, researchers from Yale University asked more than 2,000 men and women to report the weight-related stigma they've experienced in their everyday lives. Across a range of BMIs, women were more than twice as likely as men—10.3 percent to 4.9 percent—to report “daily or lifetime discrimination due to weight/height." This discrimination comes from all sides—employers, teachers, family members, even doctors. And heightened health care discrimination against overweight women has been shown to deter them from seeking needed medical help.
Cut the cake! Both men and women are likely to pack on a few extra pounds after they get married. That modest figure is an average—it also includes married folks who gain or lose a significant amount of weight upon tying the knot. And according to a new study, marriage is linked to a heightened risk for major weight gain among women. For men, the pounds come a little bit later: after the divorce.
Add a steady waist measurement to one of the many social perks of marrying as a man. Married men make more money and get more promotions than single guys. They live longer, have less heart disease, drink less, smoke less weed, and experience less stress. Meanwhile, married women have less fulfilling sex lives and less free time than their husbands. They also have smaller paychecks. (They do get to keep smoking the same amount of weed). These factors help explain why women are less into marriage than men are. And they may also contribute to the gendered risk of gaining weight after getting hitched.
Claus Meyer once started a one-man business delivering lunches around Copenhagen on his Raleigh bicycle. He has since expanded, creating a center for cooking classes, developing cafeterias that serve 13,500 office workers, and opening the restaurant Noma, which was recently ranked as the world's best. He helped write the Manifesto for New Nordic Cuisine, a set of commandments calling for a return to regional and traditional foods endorsed by many Scandinavian chefs. He has a television show, where he bicycles around eating oysters and catching halibut. Behind his house in Copenhagen, he ages his own line of vinegars. All his projects veer towards the quixotic and the genial ambassador of Nordic cuisine can come off a bit like a heady-sounding Werner Herzog of cooking, given to sweeping profundities.