Equally worrying is fat shaming. Research shows that the widespread belief that shaming people is going to help them lose weight by motivating them is just flat out wrong. In fact, people who are shamed are more likely to gain, not lose, weight. Shaming does real harm. Be careful with “unsolicited gentle advice,” as it is often neither gentle nor advice; it’s biased judgment.

JOE NADGLOWSKI

TED KYLE

Tampa, Fla., June 26, 2014

The writers are chief executive and chairman, respectively, of the Obesity Action Coalition.

A no-body-talk zone certainly doesn’t eliminate all that gets said in the “real” world, but it absolutely makes one better equipped to deal with the real world. Once you have experienced a world where what you look like doesn’t matter, you learn what you are capable of regardless of what you look like. You no longer think, I can’t do that because I’m fat or short and people will laugh.

Fat people hear that they’re ugly and lazy and unhealthy all of their lives. How well has it worked thus far in making them thin? Not so well. What it has done is made people hate themselves, feel ashamed, feel afraid to put themselves out there.

Does being fat have health risks? Maybe, though the jury is out on whether it is weight or lifestyle that matters. Clearly a fat fit person who eats healthfully is in a much healthier place than a thin couch potato with an unhealthy diet.

STACEY MARTIN

East Hampton, N.Y., June 25, 2014

I’m 16 years old and not obese. I am not the one in three kids. I go to a private school and get shuttled from sports practices to Whole Foods (where girls of my socioeconomic class pick up Luna bars and Vitaminwaters). Even so, there are Chipotle runs before soccer practice, and prom dates pick up McNuggets in tuxedos and $500 dresses. Yet they are not obese.

Affluent kids go home and eat kale chips and a healthy dinner from Whole Foods, and get plenty of exercise daily because they can afford thousands of dollars’ worth of sports equipment, and have parents with flexible schedules and multiple cars to take them to a plethora of activities.