November 27, 2019

"I was OK with this article until they got to talking about overweight women. The body shaming needs to stop! I'm shocked that WaPo allows this type of research to be discussed."

"I agree with you. Some folks would consider me to be obese because I carry a lot of 'junk in the trunk' like Kim Kardashian, but I also get a lot of compliments and I have no intention of changing my eating habits."

2 comments on the WaPo article "‘There’s something terribly wrong’: Americans are dying young at alarming rates," which looks at various factors, including obesity:
The average woman in the United States today weighs as much as the average man half a century ago, and men now weigh about 30 pounds more. Most people in the United States are overweight — an estimated 71.6 percent of the population age 20 and older, according to the CDC. That figure includes the 39.8 percent who are obese, defined as having a body mass index of 30 or higher in adults (18.5 to 25 is the normal range). Obesity is also rising in children; nearly 19 percent of the population age 2 to 19 is obese....
That's hardly leaning on the women. Those commenters seem to have a hair trigger on the topic of female fat.

77 comments:

Michael K said...

Department of AG guidelines are the cause. They had to sell all that pasta.

The hysteria about cholesterol began in the Korean War with the KIAs having coronary disease at age 20. They thought it was red meat but never thought about smoking. Fifty years later, we know better. Atkins was right.

mockturtle said...

If the blubber fits, wear it.

walter said...

"Those commenters seem to have a hair trigger on the topic of female fat."
Nothing new there...beyond an expanded lexicon to be defensive with...and Sir Mix-a-lots anthem.

tim in vermont said...

When I was a kid, there were cartoons on about four hours a week. The rest of the time TV was for grownups. No cell phones, just books and the great outdoors, if you wanted to play some kind of game, it involved other people face to face, not just you and your computer.

It’s more than food that makes people fat. We are the first generation to make a living typing in computers while sitting on our asses. Food is so cheap now it’s ridiculous too. So easy to get, there are a thousand reasons that things are different than they were in 1950. Of course smoking also kept the weight off and lots of people smoked.

tim in vermont said...

Sir Mix-a-Lot talked about an "itty bitty waste."

Sebastian said...

Fat-shaming, like all prog fixations, is mostly projection, in this case with a dose of self-loathing.

Why are Americans giving in to fatness -- using food as a form of low-level self-medication?

Dingels said...

"Take too long 'fore I found out
What people mean by down and out
Spent my money, took my car
Started tellin' her friend she' gon' be a star
I don't know, but I've been told
A big-legged woman ain't got no soul"

If I can't bench press them I don't fuck them.

Is that what fat shaming is?

JohnAnnArbor said...

Some people are in TOTAL denial of the health problems of extra weight. "Size acceptance" and all that.

Dude1394 said...

What is surprising to me is that the amount of effort to cure obesity ( which causes much, much more deaths and unhappiness ) than other diseases is so minuscule. With the exorbitant amount of dollars pharmaceuticals spend, you would think that there would be a Manhattan project to help with obesity.

I suspect, it is because people see it as a vice and a fault, versus the very difficult thing it is to keep off. Or the pharmaceutical industries make a LOT more dollars treating the effects ( heart disease, diabetes, etc. ) than curing it.

This would be something I could get behind the federal government tackling and conquering. Many, many more people die of this than they ever did with Aids for example. Not to mention the amount of people just miserable because of it.

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

"Nothing Tastes As Good As Skinny Feels" --Anna Rexik

tim in vermont said...

Sometimes I think an EMP is what America really needs.

mccullough said...

People are definitely heavier on average.

But BMI is a bullshit metric.

Professional athletes are 30 pounds heavier than 30 years ago as well. And they are ripped.

BMI tells you nothing.

Dude1394 said...

Skylark, I agree but so what? We are never going back to that situation and lifestyle. So instead ( like we do for everything ) we need to invent our way out of it.

I can only surmise that it is more profitable for the US to be fat.

Anonymous said...

I'm shocked that WaPo allows this type of research to be discussed."

Me too. Allowing this causes fat people to develop diabetes and all the other morbidity and mortality associated with obesity.

We can stamp out all the negative effects of obesity with censorship.

Dude1394 said...

Blogger Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

"Nothing Tastes As Good As Skinny Feels" --Anna Rexik

Very true, but not exactly a walk in the park to get there.

JPS said...

At the risk of reopening a tired old discussion: The definitions don't distinguish between overweight people, which we certainly have more of than we used to, and muscular people, which we also have more of than we used to.

The NIH charts consider a 5'10" man overweight at 174 pounds.

(mccullough beat me to it.)

tim in vermont said...

“Allows this type of research to be discussed.”

Don’t worry, all of the IQ research is safely suppressed.

mccullough said...

Americans weighed less when more of them smoked. Discuss

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

@Unknown

More strolls, less buttered rolls!

readering said...

We don't have a lot of heavily muscled folks where I live.

Don't see non-smoking correlation. I think the states with most smokers also have most obese.

Freeman Hunt said...

Why are they complaining? Do they want more women to die? Maybe they are misogynists posing as women.

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

"Queen"-size !!

https://youtu.be/GMWp4SWzspw

mockturtle said...

Our weight is one thing that is truly within our control. Or the lack thereof.

Dude1394 said...

Blogger mockturtle said...

Our weight is one thing that is truly within our control. Or the lack thereof.

And I expect the above is why there is so little investment to solve the problem.

mccullough said...

Trump is overweight. He’s also 73. Bill Clinton was overweight when he was president.

Hillary was overweight.

The Dem field now is fairly normal weight. None are fat and none are skinny. I’d say Warren borders are too thin. She’d probably break her hip if she fell. She needs to starting lifting some weights.

Tulsi and Booker look pretty strong.

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Fernandinande said...

Whappo article -> Doctors' union:

"By 2014, midlife mortality was increasing across all racial groups, caused by drug overdoses, alcohol abuse, suicides, and a diverse list of organ system diseases."

I vote for natural selection, in what some people would consider an unnatural environment, i.e. western civilization, rather than government interventions.

Dude1394 said...

And they all:
- Have servants drive them around
- Cool most of their meals
- Take care of any children they have.
- In the senate/congress they work 3 days a week.
- None put in 8-10 hours a day, come home, cook dinner for their kiddos and try to make a meal budget work.

Try buy arugula, prime fish, fresh produces on 50K/year. Then come talk to me.

Fernandinande said...

Americans weighed less when more of them smoked. Discuss

The gummint should encourage tobacco smoking because nicotine improves cognition and therefore "worker productivity"*, and then saves the general public's money by killing smokers shortly after they typically retire from useful work.

*"Attention, working memory, fine motor skills and episodic memory functions are particularly sensitive to nicotine’s effects."

Anonymous said...

Sebastian: Why are Americans giving in to fatness -- using food as a form of low-level self-medication?

It's not just Americans. Even the French are now getting noticeably fatter, sad to say. Not that overweight and obesity are anywhere near U.S. levels, and most French people - especially the older ones - are still nice and slim. But not long ago one rarely saw pudgy young people in more rural regions, and never in the cities.

But a few years back I started noticing younger people there - late teens, say - starting to develop that doughy look that had become so common in American teenagers. Not obese, not even really overweight, but yeah, getting there. Fast forward a few years and I began to see a sprinkling of the genuinely overweight, and, to my shock, spotted two or three outright obese natives. (It used to be that the overweight or obese people one saw in France always turned out to be - sigh - tourists from the Anglosphere. No more.)

On my last trip this fall it was markedly worse - in the rural areas/smaller towns *and* in the cities (sample of Paris, Lyon, and Bordeaux). Pudgy young people could be seen everywhere, and real obesity (some of it, alas, cased in yoga pants) was no longer a vanishingly rare phenomenon.

Oldsters are still enviably lean and fit, though. I was doing a long-distance hike and was put to shame by fleet, nimble 80 year old grandmas who always seemed to be zipping by me on the trail, no matter how steep and rocky the terrain.

chickelit said...

BMI should be graded on curves.

hstad said...


"WaPo article "‘There’s something terribly wrong’: Americans are dying young at alarming rates..." Proof? There opinion? Despite the fact, as a culture and country, we've consistently have increased our lifespan substantially. Just more garbage reporting for the 'inner teenager' in us!

rhhardin said...

The female pear shape is preferred.

Erik Satie, "Three pieces in the shape of a pear."

Trois morceaux en forme de poire.

FullMoon said...

The hysteria about cholesterol began in the Korean War with the KIAs having coronary disease at age 20. They thought it was red meat but never thought about smoking. Fifty years later, we know better. Atkins was right.




The simplest and most effective fat-loss diet is made of meat, fat and water, and quantity is not limited. Journal of the American Medical Association - 1957

FullMoon said...


It's not just Americans. Even the French are now getting noticeably fatter, sad to say. Not that overweight and obesity are anywhere near U.S. levels, and most French people - especially the older ones - are still nice and slim. But not long ago one rarely saw pudgy young people in more rural regions, and never in the cities.

Answer is pretty obvious. Climate change.

Humans are adapting to the increasingly dangerous rise in temperatures.

Kevin said...

The solution is simple. The Dems should pass a law making the USA a "death-free zone".

Freeman Hunt said...

I wonder how much control people have over their cholesterol. I was comparing my recent (good) lipid panel results to those of years past, and all of them are the same even though my diet and amount of exercise has varied dramatically between the tests. Weight hasn't varied much though. Did confirm for myself that eggs have no effect by eating about a half dozen a day for a few months before the last test. No change.

FullMoon said...

Moderation is key..


Genuine benefits of cigarette smoking

Ken B said...

You cannot travel, or watch crowds of extras in old movies, and not see how fat we are. (I certainly am.)

Ken B said...

Dingels
It’s a useless rule. When I was 30 I could bench press 300.

FullMoon said...

I wonder how much control people have over their cholesterol. I was comparing my recent (good) lipid panel results to those of years past, and all of them are the same even though my diet and amount of exercise has varied dramatically between the tests.

Had you been medicated, Doctor would credit medication for continuity.

This is interesting in relation to daily medication to treat occasionally severe problem such as migraine headache.

Personally had a couple of bouts with cluster headaches. By time I was well enough to go through a bunch of tests, first experience had passed. Second and third times were spaced almost exactly two years apart. Had I taken Doctors advice and been medicated with anti-seizure medicine, I would have attributed headache free intervals as due to the meds.

FullMoon said...



The solution is simple. The Dems should pass a law making the USA a "death-free zone".

Yeah, we got that in San Francisco Bay Area. Lots of people break that law, but rarely prosecuted

Jeff Brokaw said...

“allows this type of research to be discussed”

**ALLOWS**

What a revealing comment.

Nice job, American institutions. Stellar.

Jake said...

Body shaming. lol.

Leland said...

Speaking of dying young, I saw this in the news: "Taiwanese Model-Actor Godfrey Gao Dies After Collapsing During Reality TV Shoot in China. He was 35 and apparently died of cardiac arrest while doing a stunt on a reality TV show. His death was in a country with socialized medicine and he was a model for Louis Vuitton.

Maillard Reactionary said...

There are a lot of overweight American women, and it's not a pleasant sight. Watching them waddle from side to side in the store, sometimes with the arms held out and swinging as a counterweight, says premature wear and tear on the back and lower joints, to me.

A lot of them don't even wait until their 30's, it appears. As soon as they have their first kid, they cut loose and let it all hang out.

Not so hot from the husband's point of view. Talk about the old bait-and-switch. I'm not saying a happy marriage and family cannot coexist with this scenario but it seems not the way to bet.

Birkel said...

BMI is a stupid tool.
The readers are sensitive because they know the article is correct about them.

Maillard Reactionary said...

Skylark @ 12:52 PM: Tell me about it. "The Bell Curve" is out of print, but I have a used copy I got through Amazon. I don't know if they still offer it.

mockturtle said...

Freeman: My late brother was always irked because, even as a vegan, his cholesterol/triglycerides were always bad and mine always good even though I eat butter, eggs and meat. One's body manufactures the stuff, after all. I'm sure there's a strong genetic component.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

"I'm shocked that WaPo allows this type of research to be discussed."

What jumped out at me immediately. It's not that they're Stalinists. It's that they're so cool with being Stalinists.

mockturtle said...

Angle-Dyne, obsession with social media may be partly responsible. How much real exercise do people get nowadays? Do kids even go outside for recess? If so, are they allowed to take their phones?

IgnatzEsq said...

From when the Onion was consistently funny - a headline from their special Women's issue Women: Why Don't They lose Some Weight

Nancy said...

Weight control is the hardest thing in the world. Not surprising that most people can't do it. That includes me.

mockturtle said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
mockturtle said...

It's hard to lose weight and hard to keep it off because it means you can't enjoy eating the way you're accustomed to. If food is more important than being slim--and I'm not saying that's wrong for you--then you won't lose weight. I really feel sorry for people who, due to illness or accident, are confined to wheelchairs and have to reduce their calorie intake to a mere fraction of what they're used to. Plus, when you're in a wheelchair, there's not a lot you can do and eating is bound to be a high point of your day. Football players who are used to working out and burning calories usually put on a lot of weight when they retire and their muscle turns to fat. A former close friend [now deceased] was very fat and she was fun and witty. She had a good life, albeit much too short.

mccullough said...

Weight control is harder for some people because of genetics.

Just like math.

mccullough said...

Also a side effect of some medications.

rcocean said...

Obvious facts: Being overweight is unhealthy and unattractive. You know, I know, Bob Dole Knows it. We need more "fat Shaming" - not less. With some people its genetic, but with most people its just laziness and gluttony. Put down the pie and exercise!

rcocean said...

Yes, losing weight is hard, but the fatter and older you get the harder it is to take it off.

JAORE said...

Those commenters seem to have a hair trigger on the topic of female [fill in the blank].

Fernandinande said...

Yes, losing weight is hard,

Let the virus work its magic.

Yancey Ward said...

I am just going to guess that the commenter that was triggered who claims to have "junk in the trunk like Kim Kardashian" also has junk everywhere else.... unlike Kim Kardashian.

mockturtle said...

Kim Kardashian looks like a woman. I'm not a guy but, except for models, I don't think women look good deathly thin. And models only because they're showing the clothes, not themselves, to their best advantage.

narciso said...

well Sharon stone looked good between the time of king solomons mines, to a little past total recall, maybe sliver,

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

"Hey look!! I can finally see my abs!"

...said no one in a death camp, ever

chickelit said...

Titus of yore was the only commenter into both fat shaming and “shat faming.”

Joanne Jacobs said...

"Body shaming" implies that curvy women are criticized for not looking like Twiggy. I don't think that happens. "Fat acceptance" is about accepting overweight and obese women as just as attractive as women of normal weight. Perhaps they are to some people, just as super-skinny is attractive to some people. But not to most of us.

I recently ordered a sweater and a pair of pants in size small. Both are a bit baggy. I am not thin. I am in the middle of the healthy range on weight tables. I'm average! But average is now, apparently, "extra small."

Michael K said...

One comment on weight and females.

There was a time when starvation was pretty common. Mild obesity was a sigh of prosperity. You see a lot of nudes, by Rubens and others from that era, who are clinically obese but it was a statement that they had enough to eat to get fat.

He painted around 1600 when obesity was definitely not a common problem. The same thing happened with the romantic painters. Formal gardens got popular in the 16th century as a reaction to the wilderness that surrounded so many villages. Then, as civilization cleared the forests and wilderness became less of a problem, the romantics went back to idolizing the wilderness.

svlc said...

I feel bad. I have lost 83 lbs and presently weigh 223. This week I baked 4 loaves of Stollen and 1 loaf of raisin bread. I am making pasta for dinner with tomato cream sauce with pork. I love my intermittent fasting diet. It is the only diet that I have found that works for me.

walter said...

I think the rise of self-checkout stations might influence purchase choices.

LordSomber said...

If there's no shame in being overweight, then what's wrong with saying they're overweight?

Achilles said...

My BMI is between 30 and 35 depending on day and time.

It is a stupid measure.

Freeman Hunt said...

"I recently ordered a sweater and a pair of pants in size small. Both are a bit baggy. I am not thin. I am in the middle of the healthy range on weight tables. I'm average! But average is now, apparently, "extra small.""

Sizing has definitely changed in the last twenty years. I am also in the middle of the healthy range, but when I went shopping last weekend, the shirt that fit was a size two. Are people on the low end of the range stuck wearing sacks?

Rocketplumber said...

It’s hard to go wrong by doing the exact opposite of the USDA recommendations:

USDA: High carbohydrate, low fat, and most of that unsaturated.
Healthy: Low carbohydrate, high fat, almost all saturated. Avoid seed oils due to their bad omega 3:6 ratios.

USDA: Avoid Cholesterol sources such as egg yolks.
Healthy: Cholesterol intake does not increase the risk of cardiovascular disease. Enjoy high cholesterol foods as you wish. Braaains!

USDA: Low sodium to the point where deficiencies strike many.
Healthy: Salt to taste, healthy kidneys can eliminate any excess, there is no CVD risk due to sodium.

USDA: Measure and regulate serum LDL cholesterol levels with statins.
Healthy: LDL has no predictive power for CVD. Statins cause harm and no good.

USDA: Fruit juices are a healthy part of the “My Plate” regimen.
Healthy: Fructose in all forms must have fiber with it to reduce absorption. It is almost as hepatotoxic as ethanol.

USDA: A calorie is a calorie is a calorie.
Healthy: Added Sucrose (and particularly fructose) contributes to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and metabolic syndrome.

USDA: Feedlot fattened beef is an economical and healthy food.
Healthy: Only grass-fed beef with good Omega 3: Omega 6 balance should be eaten. Wild-caught fish vs farm-raised has the same issue. Natural Omega 3:6 ratio is about 1:1 when eating non-factory foods, the standard American diet is about 1:20. Ack.

USDA: To lose weight you must consciously consume fewer calories.
Healthy: LCHF diet induces satiety before excess calories are consumed, ensuring long term compliance. and successful fat loss. Ever had a cheeseburger so rich you couldn't finish it? Ditch the bun and fries, wash it down with water, and you'll eat fewer calories than in a carb-laden meal -without having to struggle.

USDA/AMA/FDA: The cause of type 2 diabetes is a mystery, and can only be treated, not cured, with medication.
Healthy: Stop eating the goddamn carbs and T2 diabetes will cure itself, except in end-stage patients.

It’s almost as if they’ve been programming the proles to drop dead as soon as they retire and can draw benefits…

Segesta said...

Some girls are bigger than others. In fact, some girls are bigger than other girls' mothers.

effinayright said...

Yeah...the same people who go on and on about how animals ""other than"" humans engage in the choice in their sex partners based on their desirable characteristics want to make doing so "shaming" when we do the same thing.

It's fuckwits, all the way down.

Robert Cook said...

"Americans weighed less when more of them smoked. Discuss"

Correlation is not causation. In the era when smoking was more widespread, so was manual labor and physical activity in general. Fewer workers spent their days glued to screens, with typing being their primary manual effort. People were more social, and engaged in physical activities for recreation and interaction with others. Over time, more people have come to spend their time sitting in front of their screens at home, too, including tvs. In addition, the ingestion of high-fat, highly sweetened foods has increased.