POSITION PAPER
EATING
HUNGER
Basic justice requires that all people have enough to eat, and basic dignity demands that people be allowed to
decide for themselves what is enough.
Social systems that withhold food from people are oppressive. Poor people who starve because they lack money to
buy food, when food is available, are the victims of economic injustice. Fat people who starve because it is the
only way they can become socially acceptable are the victims of social injustice.
Arguments that people ought to be deprived of food, without their totally free consent, for any reasons--medical,
economic, or moral--offend human dignity. On the medical count, it should be obvious that prolonged starvation
is not a route to health. Nor may the ideal of health interfere with a person's basic right to control her own
or his own body.
FOOD
Today's markets are filled with foods that are not food. Produce and processed foods are loaded with antibiotics,
preservatives, dyes, flavorings, etc. which mask the basic lack of flavor resulting from inferior nutritional value,
while increasing their profitability to the manufacturer. A whole category of foods are sold whose expressed purpose
is not to nourish--synthetic low-calorie foods and food substitutes. These are sold on the promise that one can
eat all one wants of them and not look as if one is eating all one wants!
The Fat Underground opposes this phony asceticism. We call for an attitude toward food and eating that is honest,
indulgent and compassionate.
Originally Published in 1974 by the Fat Underground,
Los Angeles, California USA
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