New Word of the Month
Supersizing the lexicon – new words and (un)healthy eating
by Kerry Maxwell

globesity noun [U] /glbisti/
the worldwide health problem of being dangerously overweight

February, the second month of the year, and how are those New Year’s resolutions going? Many of us (including me!) will doubtless be having various degrees of success with the most common of these, a.k.a ‘get fit and lose weight’. If junk food temptations are becoming unbearable and we’re already beginning to lose heart, then taking a few moments to consider the new concept of globesity might be one way to motivate ourselves again.

According to suggestions made by the World Health Organization, the worldwide epidemic of obesity (being overweight) represents a more serious health risk than that posed by smoking. Excessive weight gain can lead to heart disease and many other serious health problems, but it is only more recently, with the observation that the number of obese people has steadily increased and is now reaching alarming proportions, that we are beginning to view the matter more seriously. The term globesity (a blend of global and obesity) was first coined by the World Health Organization in 2001, and has steadily gained currency in tandem with the escalating problem it represents.

If the concept of globesity seems too general and remote to affect you personally, then there’s a related term which might just shock you into decisive weight-loss activity. People who are overweight are at a much greater risk of contracting diabetes. This fact, coupled with a marked increase in the number of people suffering from what is known as Type 2 (or adult onset) diabetes, has led to the coining of the term diabesity. A blend of diabetes and obesity, the word diabesity is now used to describe diabetes caused by excessive weight gain - a linguistic by-product of a worrying increase in the disease, especially among children and younger adults.

So, people worldwide - especially in the developed nations - are getting fatter, and consequently unhealthier, a fact undoubtedly related to changing lifestyles and 21st century diet. We might drive to work, sit at a desk all day (and be too busy to eat anything but conveniently packaged snacks), drive home and, exhausted from the day’s efforts, slump in front of the TV with a takeaway dinner. We might not be able to resist that extra slice of pizza or extra large portion of fries, but unrealistically console ourselves by washing it down with sugar-free cola. These kind of habits have led to 21st century diet and lifestyle being described as obesogenic, or in other words, likely to cause people to become excessively fat. This term is formed from a blend of the adjective obese and suffix -genic meaning ‘tending to create’ (c.f. carcinogenic =causing cancer). The noun obesogen is also now used in medical contexts to refer to foods which are likely to cause obesity because they contain excessive sugar and fats.

A recent survey in the UK revealed that in 1951, the average British woman’s waist measurement was 70 centimetres, but by 2004, her waist had grown to 86 centimetres. And alongside our expanding waistlines, our vocabulary is expanding too, as we need to find new ways of describing our changing shape, and our attitudes towards it. Take the expression muffin top, for instance. Though it may sound like a layer of icing on a sponge cake, it in fact refers to the unsightly roll of fat which spills over the waist of low-cut jeans (taking inspiration from the way sponge spills over the paper casing on a muffin). Allegedly first used as Australian slang in 2003, this informal expression has been popularised all over the English-speaking world, and has now made it into the most recent edition of the Collins English Dictionary. Also honoured with an entry is the new word cankle, a blend of calf and ankle, which is used to describe a large calf connected to a chubby ankle (basically, an ankle and calf which are both so wide that it is difficult to work out where one ends and the other begins!).

If any male readers are beginning to feel that all this talk of waistlines and chubby legs is only really an issue for the girls, then they should remember that both muffin top and cankle are in fact gender-neutral, with plenty of evidence to show that they’re used in descriptions of both sexes. What’s more, they should be aware that excessive weight gain puts them at risk of developing moobs. Formed from a blend of man and boobs (a slang term for women’s breasts), moobs is a word now used to describe a build-up of fat on the upper part of a male chest, which looks similar to female breasts. A less informal equivalent is man breasts. Though moobs can sometimes be the result of hormone imbalances, the sharp increase in the number of men turning to cosmetic surgery to sculpt away this excess fatty tissue suggests a direct link to rising obesity. The girls meanwhile, need to beware the potential for developing orange-peel thighs, a tongue-in-cheek expression used to describe cellulite on women’s hips and upper legs. In fact the word cellulite (referring to subcutaneous fat which causes a dimpling of the skin) is a relative newcomer to the English language. Although now firmly embedded in the vocabulary of anyone with at least some concern for their body shape, cellulite didn’t make its first appearance in English until the 1960s.

In the United States, generation X, (the generation of people born between the mid-sixties and the early eighties, i.e. today’s young and middle-aged adults) are now being sarcastically referred to as generation XL (XL refers to the abbreviation for ‘extra large’ used on garment labelling). This is the generation which has grown up in an evolving digital age, during the dot com boom; a generation which is perceived to have taken less exercise and eaten more unhealthily than those born ten or twenty years earlier. The problems of generation XL are the result of a mentality some perceive to be endemic in 21st century society – the idea that things need to be extravagantly large or supersize. This expression, also sometimes spelt supersized, began life in a well-known fast food restaurant, but has quickly caught on in many other contexts. Supersize portions lead to supersize people, and the alarming consequences are captured in the following citation from the UK’s Telegraph newspaper:

Hospitals have doubled their spending on 'supersize' beds, trolleys and mortuary fridges to cope with increasingly obese patients . . . Data collected by the Liberal Democrats under the Freedom of Information Act shows the average hospital spent £60,000 on supersized equipment this year, compared with £30,000 spent three years ago. (The Telegraph, 15th October 2007)

And so it seems that along with climate change and the war on terrorism, globesity is an issue firmly on the 21st century political agenda.

Galvanised by the shocking realisation that heart disease has overtaken cancer as Britain’s biggest killer, the UK government has in recent years hotly debated the imposition of a fat tax, a tax on sweet and fatty foods and fizzy drinks. Over in the US, such a measure has become known as the Twinkie tax (based on Twinkies™, the finger-shaped sponge cakes with a cream filling and a reputation for being unhealthy). Back in 1999, the US Food and Drug Administration announced plans to enforce specific labelling of trans fats on food products. Trans fats or trans fatty acids − often found in margarines and baked foods − are sometimes now referred to as stealth fat because they do not always appear on food nutrition labels and yet are linked to an increased risk of heart disease.

If, as you read this, you’ve already been sitting at a computer for several hours and succumbed to the horrors of stealth fat by eating one or two Twinkies™ or something equally unhealthy, then remember that there are always two sides to every argument. Other recent expressions in English represent the opposite end of the spectrum in the size debate − in other words, being too thin, rather than too fat. In 2006, the organisers of the Madrid Fashion Week banned any models they deemed to be excessively thin. A person’s body mass index, often abbreviated to BMI, is a measurement of weight in relation to height. Models with a body mass index of less than 18.5 − a figure classified as unhealthy by the World Health Organisation − were prohibited from taking part. This decision catapulted the expression size zero (also sometimes written size 00) into mainstream use, and sparked a high-profile debate on the potentially harmful influences of the fashion-industry’s preference for skinny models. In the same context the words thinspiration and thinspirational (blending thin and inspiration / inspirational) have been coined to describe skinny models and other celebrities who influence impressionable young women wanting to be ultra-thin and able to fit into size zero clothes. In the online world, a more disturbing development has been the popularity of so-called pro-ana (=pro anorexia) and pro-mia (=pro bulimia) websites. These sites actively promote anorexia nervosa and other eating disorders as lifestyle choices, giving suggestions on how to stay excessively thin − often through tips on avoiding eating and how to disguise the obsession from family and friends.

On that sombre note, it’s time for me to convince myself that I’m striking the appropriate balance – I’m off for a swim, and later I’ll be sitting at my desk with a packet of biscuits, though not Twinkies™, I hasten to add.

For more information about new and topical words and phrases, read Kerry's Word of the Week articles on the MED Resource Site.