The Associated Press Stylebook is the guide for how journalists in digital, broadcast, and print media handle complex social subjects, and it’s updated regularly. In early April, The AP added new entries about obesity. This is a game-changer: How journalists talk about obesity and the people who have it has a significant impact on the public perception and conversation about obesity.

Here are highlights:

• The Stylebook recognizes obesity as a chronic disease: “The World Health Organization, the American Medical Association, and other health groups say obesity is a chronic disease resulting from factors that can include genetics and a variety of social and environmental factors.”
• It acknowledges that body mass index (BMI) is flawed. (For the record, Good Housekeeping and Prevention stopped using BMI years ago.)
• It offers guidance to use the words obesity and obese to describe the disease—not people.
• It tells journalists not to use the term morbidly obese.
• It also encourages journalists to take care not to perpetuate harmful stigmas, and to ask people how they want to be described.

These are updates worth celebrating, especially in light of how powerful media is and how harmful weight bias and stigma are (in fact, they can make health worse for people who have obesity). The next thing I’d love to see change in media: No more headless torsos.

(Originally posted on LinkedIN in April 2024.)