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More Americans Finding New Ways To Be Obese
I don't want to offend anyone who is sensitive about weight issues so I will try to put this as gently as possible: Jesus Christ, America, get your lard-ass off of the couch and go take a walk or something. You fat fuck.
The Metal Militia thinks you meant #SEASONING THE OBESE, sir.
I remember when it was unusual to see a really overweight person (especially a kid). Now the ones who stand out as different are people who are thin. A big part of the problem IMHO is that now every experience is seen as an opportunity to eat: there's a goddamn junk food stand outside Home Depot and there's a snack bar at the nursery where I went to buy PLANTS, NOT A CHEESEBURGER. And people line up for it like they haven't eaten in days!
That was not very punny.
It was lite on puns, true.
Jesus Christ, America, put down those Bugle canapés and pick up some Pretzel Crisps!
Have you had the Trader Joe's kind that taste like an 'everything' bagel??
This is why we walk laps around Costco whilst eating snack-sample handouts. OOOOH LADY OVER THERE GOTZ CHICKEN NUGGIEZ
Jolie, this comment was before its time.
@garge: I so hoped that this conversation would get hijacked into peoples' recipes for lemon squares and bourbon-soaked chocolate truffles. In moderation of course. It was a nice try.
I just got back from Disney World, the place where America's obesity epidemic and America's willingness to rent scooters to fat people otherwise unwilling to walk around an amusement park collide. The eyes cannot unsee what has been seen.
It's a morbidly obese world, after all.
we just thin in it
@Miles: dvde, stop making fun of our overlord Bieber.
So, there's a Disney World in the Bronx?
WHAT IS THE FUCKING NUMBER
Americans lead the world but the world is catching up: a few days ago the 528 lb 25 yr old Romanian woman who became a mother 5 months ago died of a heart attack. 25 YEARS OLD and a NEW PARENT.
Obesity is just a first world disease, that's all. The US got there before everyone else, but they'll all much us soon. I'm looking at you, England and Australia.
something seems wonky and overly general about that BMI calculation. From a personal stand point, Damn if I'm dropping muscle mass I don't have to work that hard to maintain so I can look like a bird chested Nancy Boy just to avert a heart attack… So that Fat piece of shit Arnold Schwarzenegger was a hypocrite the whole time? In his prime, at competition weight he had a BMI of 30.2 non comp was 33.4…
I just read a paper about how China's economic development has led to more Western-style eating habits and sedentary jobs. Unfortunately for them, the higher health care costs that are a consequence of pizza for breakfast and sitting on your ass all day will then serve to hamper China's continued economic growth.
Moral of the story: maybe our enfattening is just a ploy to psych China into larding up and getting them off our collective economic backs? Is that plausible?
It'll be a sad day when the chavs can't extend their arms past the flab to knife someone.
@deepomega I was watching "Big Corn" the other day and I was thinking about the obesity epidemic as a distinctly modern thing: that really unhealthy food was never as cheap or as abundant as it became in recent decades and people just werent prepared for the change in environment.
@deepomega actually it's quickly becoming an every-world disease. The poor's obesity rate is increasing far faster than the first world's at the moment. Turns out when you finally get food in the form of corn sludge to starving people, it turns them fat.
@Rw — yeah, BMI is really just the old MetLife height/weight table put through a metric-system equation and dressed up with a decimal point to appear more scientific. It's an imprecise tool, and bodybuilder types are going to get a skewed result (but then they're probably clear about their non-obesity).
@AOL — sounds like they'll have to start using longer knives.
Did anyone watch this…you only lose, on average, 64 DAYS OF LIFE for being obese or smoking? That's like two months, who cares! I'm off to Panera.
And my takeaway was that I won't quit smoking until I become obese. Objectivity is a relief!
@shelven: get me an egg and cheese ciabatta, pls.
I'm a relative Awl newbie, so maybe this has been covered already. But! Are you all aware of the (rather terrifying) recent research about "obesogens?"
http://www.uci.edu/features/feature_obesogens_091019.php
Apparently all the wonderful pesticides and plastic-related chemicals we bathe in daily make us fat by screwing up our endocrine systems. (In addition to their other health benefits, of course.) This has created a surge of obese infants! Fisher-Price needs to start making treadmills.
Wall-E FTW.
Is there any actual data backing this up? Because everything I'm finding with some googlery is saying that it's a hypothesis built largely around the idea that only Americans are obese, which is becoming less and less true.
I'm not a scientist or a medical professional, so ultimately I'm just reading things and choosing what to believe. What I can say is that this does seem based on legitimate scientific research — the relevant chapter of Stephen Perrine's "The New American Diet" is peppered with references to studies in The Journal of Andrology, Molecular Endocrinology, Environmental Health Perspectives, and other medical journals. There's also a list of footnotes at the end of this online article:
http://www.alsearsmd.com/obesogens-invisible-menace-that%E2%80%99s-making-us-fat/
It might still be BS, but the idea that petrochemicals are harmful in previously unforeseen ways doesn't seem like that much of a stretch to me.
I'm sorry, but can you set the volume on these videos higher? I can't here the announcers over the cheez doodles crunching in my mouth. I'd do it myself, but I can't actually find my keyboard. I am either sitting on it or it has been subsumed.
my bad.
[shifts weight]
lkkdgiuhrli&*$G$UGMHB
I do love watching people cutting through the farmer's market downtown, on their way back to work, with a McDonald's bag in tow.
Yes, walk farther in the heat that you complain about to get a double Quarter Pounder with Cheese, a Large Fry and the requisite Diet Coke.
Walk right past the green beans and fresh berries…more for me, fatty!
Nah, y'all keep on sitting and eating. Eventually, as everyone else gets fatter, I'll look thin by comparison! (I call this "the Disney World" situation.)
It's like escaping a bear. You just have to be thinner than everyone else!
But are we as a nation fit enough to escape the Mama Grizzlies?
Telling people to lay off the Cheetos is socialism.
Newt Gingrich told me so.
Telling people to anything that might remotely improve their quality of life is the sign of a socialist nanny state.
I biked to work today! I'm still fat though…
But fat and sweaty is an acceptable combo. Shows us you are trying to join the ranks of the skinny. Keep up the good work!
@Tuna – Based on the glares I frequently get when at the gym, fat and sweaty is far from acceptable.
Sweating while eating on the other hand. . .
I enjoy sweaty people of all sizes! Hot yoga, arms wide open.
Though we are collectively self-indulgent and decadent, defining ourselves as consumers rather than agents and citizens, a few aggravating factors come to mind: auto-based urban and suburban design, urban food deserts, unsafe neighborhoods that keep people inside, and agricultural policies that lead to incorrect pricing of food and people loading up on cheap junk.
So what you're saying is that even though the thought of walking 100 yards to my van, driving it a mile and a half to the mechanic, being driven back by the courtesy ride is wearing me out to the point of exhaustion…
To help out the economy I should still buy that kegorator?
I'm having a hard time finding something I can use to make fun of others or judge them in your post? Can you rethink?
@Smitros: And the drugs. Let's not forget the role prescriptive medicine plays in contributing to weight gain.
How about unstable to non existent work schedules which leads to an inability to plan ahead and thus the reliance on fast food?
I hadn't thought of thought. There are quite a few pharmaceuticals that do, I've heard.
There are three times as many comments on the LARDASSITUDE post as there are on the Krucoff online dating ad. Just sayin'.
Quit thinning the herd, dude.
YouTub.