Today show obesity expert: "There were no overweight people in concentration camps."

“Now here’s the controversial thing.”

How’s that for an understatement.

This morning on The Today Show, Karl Stefanovic interviewed Dr Ric Gordon about the new report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, which highlights this country’s problems with obesity, and related health issues.

Dr Gordon suggested that combating obesity is less about promoting physical activity, and more about “what you eat.”

The suggestion that diet plays a part in weight loss is neither new, nor extreme.

But this was:

“Now here’s the controversial thing,” he said, in an impressively understated way.

“There were no overweight people in the concentration camps. Now they weren’t exercising a lot. They just weren’t eating.”

No. They weren’t. Because they were being imprisoned and starved in the type of conditions that would unfit for an animal.

Ignorance and poor thought aside, let’s talk about how incorrect Dr Gordon’s statements were. Yes, many Nazi controlled concentration camps were specifically for ‘extermination’ and imprisonment, there was also an extensive labour force- Arbeitslager.

“Now I’m not going any further with that except to say – What you put in your mouth, ends up on your hips.”

“Righto,” said Stefanovic, moving swiftly on from the doctor’s inflammatory comments.

“He said it, not me Lisa.”

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