The Woman Who Wants To Be World’s Fattest Closes In On 1,000 lb
To counterbalance the articles on this site bemoaning the increasing rates of obesity, here’s one from the Daily Mail (where else?) about Donna Simpson, the New Jersey woman who is already gargantuan and wants to become even fatter to set a new world record:
Donna Simpson already weighs 43st, but she is determined to nearly double her size to become the world’s fattest woman. The 42-year-old from New Jersey, U.S, is set on reaching the 1,000lb mark (71st) in just two years. Remarkably she insists she is healthy, despite now needing a mobility scooter when she goes shopping.
Donna Simpson already weighs 43 stone but is consuming an astonishing 12,000 calories a day in a quest to become the world’s fattest woman. ‘My favourite food is sushi, but unlike others I can sit and…
Modern Food Is Changing Our Minds As Well As Our Bodies
David A. Kessler, a former commisioner at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, says our favorite foods are making us fat, yet we can’t resist, because eating them is changing our minds as well as bodies. It’s something the producers of the disinformation® documentary Killer At Large also discussed, but coming as it does from someone with as much credibility and influence as Mr. Kessler in his book The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite, perhaps we’ll actually start to listen to his advice, dispensed here in the Guardian:
For years I wondered why I was fat. I lost weight, gained it back, and lost it again – over and over and over. I owned suits in every size. As a former commissioner of the FDA (the US Food and Drug Administration), surely I should have the answer to my problems. Yet food held remarkable sway over my behaviour.
The latest science seemed to suggest being overweight was my destiny. I was fat because my body’s “thermostat” was set high. If I lost weight, my body would try to get it back, slowing down my metabolism till I returned to my predetermined set point.
But this theory didn’t explain why so many people, in the US and UK in particular, were getting significantly fatter. For thousands of years, human body weight had stayed remarkably stable. Millions of calories passed through our bodies, yet with rare exceptions our weight neither rose nor fell. A perfect biological system seemed to be at work. Then, in the 80s, something changed…
NYC Schools Prohibit Sale of Home-Made Food and Allow Junk for Fundraising?!?
From NYC Green Schools:
Regulation A-812 prohibits home-baked foods from being sold at school fundraisers, while permitting Doritos and Pop-Tarts instead! Yes, this regulation mandates that if we want to raise money for our schools, we have to buy and sell junk food to our children!
VOICE YOUR OPPOSITION TO REGULATION A-812!
— Our schools cannot become venues for big food corporations, like Pepsi Cola and Kellogg’s to advertise and sell their processed foods to our children!
— Our children must not receive the message that junk food is healthier for them than foods cooked at home!
— We, as parents, must be allowed to participate in the discussion about our children’s health and nutrition!
Childhood Obesity Linked To Heart Disease
One more reason not to let your kids eat junk food, drink soda and so forth (see the disinformation® documentary Killer At Large for more on that), reported by the BBC:
Obese children as young as three years old show signs of future heart disease, say US researchers.
A study of 16,000 children and teenagers showed the most obese had signs of an inflammatory marker which can predict future heart disease.
In all, 40% of obese three-to-five-year olds had raised levels of C-reactive protein compared with 17% of healthy weight children, Pediatrics reported. But more work is needed to prove the link with heart disease in later life. The study, carried out by a team at the University of North Carolina (UNC), looked at children aged one to 17.
Overall, nearly 70% were a healthy…
Woman Says Her Love Handles Saved Her Life
Via AP via Yahoo News:
ATLANTIC CITY, NJ — A Florida woman said her love handles saved her life when she was shot entering an Atlantic City bar. Samantha Lynn Frazier said she heard two pops when she walked into Herman’s Place early Saturday. The 35-year-old then felt pain and saw blood on her hand after she grabbed her left side. Atlantic City police said Frazier was an innocent bystander.
Detective Lt. Charles Love said the gunman was aiming for a man who escaped with a bullet hole in his down jacket. The suspect remains at large.
Frazier told The Press of Atlantic City that ‘I could have been dead. They said my love handles saved my life.” Frazier also told the newspaper that she had been “hollering” that she wanted to lose weight.…
Obesity? Big Feet? Blame Darwin
From the Wall Street Journal:
Evolution, the theory goes, guarantees survival to the fittest. But we can blame evolution for some of today’s most pressing health problems, such as cancer, obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
A 2009 Gallup poll found that 44% of Americans believe that God created human beings in their present form within the past 10,000 years. Many of them also think the human body is perfectly designed.
But most scientists—including biologists, anthropologists, paleontologists and geneticists—see the 21st century human body as a collection of compromises, jury-rigged by evolution as our ancestors adapted to changing conditions.
“In many ways, we are maladapted for modernity,” says Stephen Stearns, a Yale evolutionary biologist. He and others in the field are urging medical schools to include more evolutionary thinking when teaching doctors about modern diseases.
For…
80% of Englishmen ‘Too Fat By 2020′
A shocking report from AFP shows that widespread obesity isn’t just an American problem:
Eight out of 10 men and nearly seven out of 10 women in England will be too fat by 2020, according to new data released Wednesday.
Researchers said that while recent research showed obesity among children levelling off, instances among adults show no sign of doing the same.
Some 41 percent of men aged 20 to 65 will be obese by 2020, with 40 percent overweight, according to the figures from the National Heart Forum, based on data from the Health Survey for England. That makes a total of 81 percent.
Among women, 36 percent will be obese and 32 percent overweight — a total of 68 percent.
By 2050, this will lead to sharp increases in the number of people suffering…
Director Kevin Smith Thrown Off Oakland Flight Over Weight
Reports CBS13:
OAKLAND, Calif. ― A cult-favorite movie director has claimed that he was thrown off a Southwest Airlines flight out of Oakland due to a dispute over his weight.
Kevin Smith, the creator of movies like Clerks, Dogma, and the upcoming Cop Out, posted a series of angry, sarcastic messages on his Twitter feed (@ThatKevinSmith) blasting Southwest Airlines for allegedly throwing him off a flight at Oakland International Airport after he had already been seated and buckled in.
According to Smith, a flight attendant told him the flight captain had deemed him a safety risk and requested that he leave the flight.
“I broke no regulation, offered no ’safety risk,’ (what, was I gonna roll on a fellow passenger?),” he wrote. “I’m way fat … But I’m not THERE just yet.”
Smith’s followers (numbering more…
Star Wars Teams Up With… Ugh… McDonalds
Great commentary by Killer At Large producer Bryan Young, in the Examiner:
Perhaps I have a different perspective on this than a lot of people, but I’ll explain it and hopefully you’re all with me on this.
Star Wars is doing a Happy Meal promotion with McDonald’s for their Clone Wars series starting Februrary 26th. (More information on that here). The 8 year old in me jumps for joy. The parent in me is filled with disappointment and disgust. My kids aren’t allowed to eat food of such poor quality and now I’m going to have to tell them they can’t have these Star Wars toys because I refuse to buy them junk food.
I understand that this makes sense from a marketing perspective, but the problem is that marketing junk food to kids…
The Growing Price Of Obesity: Buy Two Seats To Fly Air France
Air France now requires that obese passengers must purchase two seats to fly on its airplanes. I once flew from Charlotte to New York with half of my upper body covered by just such a passenger, who couldn’t have been nicer and more apologetic, but I was still pretty upset by the experience, so personally I hope other airlines take note (United does have a similar policy). From the Telegraph:
From next month seriously overweight flyers will be asked to pay for two seats, or not be allowed on board for “safety reasons”, the airline announced yesterday.
“People who arrive at the check-in desk and are deemed too large to fit into a single seat will be asked to pay for and use a second seat,” said Monique Matze, an Air France…
Weight Watchers Clinic Floor Collapses Under Massive Weight Of Dieters
One more for the ever expanding list of hazards from over-eating (for more check out the classic doc Killer At Large), as the Telegraph reports that the floor of a Weight Watchers clinic in Sweden has collapsed beneath a group of 20 members of the weight loss program who were gathered for a meeting:
As the dieters queued to see how many pounds they had shed, the floor beneath them in the clinic in Växjö, in south-central Sweden, began to rumble, according to a report in The Local, Sweden’s English-language newspaper.
“We suddenly heard a huge thud; we almost thought it was an earthquake and everything flew up in the air.
“The floor collapsed in one corner of the room and along the walls,” one Weight Watchers participant told the Smålandsposten newspaper.
Soon, the fault…
Obesity Rates Hit Plateau in U.S.
So it is good news or bad news? The spin from the CDC, echoed in this New York Times report, is that it’s good news, but considering that former Surgeon General, Richard Carmona has stated that “obesity is a terror within. It is destroying our society from within and unless we do something about it, the magnitude of the dilemma will dwarf 9/11 or any other terrorist event that you can point out…” (see the knockout disinformation documentary Killer At Large for much more on that), maintaining the status quo has to be bad news, doesn’t it?
Americans, at least as a group, may have reached their peak of obesity, according to data the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released Wednesday.
The numbers indicate that obesity rates have remained constant for at least…
Watching TV Shortens Life Span
Jeannine Stein reports on an Australian study finding that each hour a day spent in front of television is linked with an 18% greater risk of dying from cardiovascular disease and an 11% greater risk of all causes of death, for the Los Angeles Times:
Watching television for hour upon hour obviously isn’t the best way to spend leisure time — inactivity has been linked to obesity and heart disease. But a new study quantifies TV viewing’s effect on risk of death.
Researchers found that each hour a day spent watching TV was linked with an 18% greater risk of dying from cardiovascular disease, an 11% greater risk of all causes of death, and a 9% increased risk of death from cancer.
The study, released Monday in Circulation, a journal of the American…
Child Diabetes Tied to Food Sweetener Fructose
Lois Rogers writes in the Times:
Scientists have proved for the first time that a cheap form of sugar used in thousands of food products and soft drinks can damage human metabolism and is fuelling the obesity crisis.
Fructose, a sweetener derived from corn, can cause dangerous growths of fat cells around vital organs and is able to trigger the early stages of diabetes and heart disease.
It has increasingly been used as a substitute for more expensive types of sugar in yoghurts, cakes, salad dressing and cereals. Even some fruit drinks that sound healthy contain fructose.
Experts believe that the sweetener — which is found naturally in small quantities in fruit — could be a factor in the emergence of diabetes among children. This week, a new report is expected to claim that…
Who Killed Kenny? Ambulance Crew Drop Obese Man Who Then Dies
Here’s one more reason why obesity is extremely hazardous to your health, albeit one that hopefully won’t be repeated, as reported in the Telegraph:
A 30-stone [420 lb] man has died after the stretcher being used to load him into an ambulance tipped over, spilling him into the street.
Kenny Williams, from Newmarket, Suffolk, was being taken to hospital when the accident occurred outside his home. The East of England Ambulance Service has launched a review into its procedures for transporting obese patients following the accident.
But ambulance chiefs have warned that the movement of overweight patients is becoming increasingly problematic for paramedics who can sometimes risk their own safety.
Earlier this year it was revealed that medics were considering using a Chinook helicopter to take Britain’s heaviest man to hospital after ruling…
New Study Suggests Obesity Might Truly Be Caused By Genetic Mutation
No doubt those who claim obesity is a genetic fault rather than a compulsive eating disorder (see comments to this earlier post about the 900 lb man who had to be cut out of his chair) will jump on this story, as told in the Telegraph:
Childhood obesity could be caused by a genetic mutation, scientists at Cambridge University believe. Findings show for the first time that the condition can be a genetic one, rather than the result of over feeding.
The study could have a major impact on the decision of social services to take obese children into care where they believe they are being abused. Some of the children in the study had been on the at risk register because of fears they were being overfed. They have now been removed…
The Thanksgiving Leftover Sandwich … From Hell
Posted on This is Why You’re Fat:
Thanksgiving Leftovers Sandwich: Leftover turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, corn, cranberry sauce, mac and cheese, spinach balls, Puerto Rican rice, Brussels sprouts, pearl onions, bacon, white castle hamburgers and ravioli inside a foot long bun. (Submitted by Paul Cozzi)
Behold: The World’s 10 Fattest Countries
Laurie Cunningham writes on GlobalPost:
If you tend to pack on a few pounds over the holidays, blame it on globalization. As the world has grown smaller, we’ve all grown larger — alarmingly so. In countries around the world, waistlines are expanding so rapidly that health experts recently coined a term for the epidemic: globesity.
The common fat-o-meter among nations is body mass index (BMI), a calculation based on a person’s height and weight. The World Health Organization defines “overweight” as an individual with a BMI of 25 or more and “obese” as someone with a BMI of 30 or higher. (To see how you weigh in, use this calculator by the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute.)
Today, one in three of the world’s adults is overweight and one in 10 is…
900-Pound Man Dies after Cut from Chair
I didn’t know that you could be this fat, but not surprisingly, if you let yourself get in such a state, you’re probably committing suicide: CBS News:
A man weighing around 900 pounds died after he had to be cut out his chair in home, reports CBS affiliate WSPA-TV from Greenwood, S.C.
Authorities say he was stuck to a chair for nine months.
Daniel Webb, 33, died after being taken from his home on County Farm Road Wednesday. Webb had been in a medical chair for nine months, covered in sores and human waste.
Authorities say Webb died from cardiac arrest.
Webb hadn’t left his house, or even walked for almost nine months. His wife Ada Webb says he hurt his knee and could no longer walk. He sat in a Lazy-boy…
