Take That Fat Police

A delicious new study is out showing that many people with otherwise "normal" body weights--as measured by the unreliable BMI--and physiques are actually dangerously fat. It's the funniest thing I've run into on the food front since the whole "fat free dining prevents all bad things" paradigm went down the drain a few years ago. Here, although thin people appear to look just fine and are in shape on a physical--and mythopeotic, no doubt--level, they have "dangerous" fatty deposits around their hearts and livers and such. This state of affairs led one researcher to say:

"'Normal-weight persons who are sedentary and unfit are at much higher risk for mortality than obese persons who are active and fit,' said Dr. Steven Blair, an obesity expert at the University of South Carolina."

Not that we all aren't at risk for mortality. Researchers claim that the TOFIs--thin-outside, fat-inside--must address their inner blubber through exercise. Watching the drift in public health advocacy in this country over the last decade from education to coercion to banning and social shunning, I am looking forward to the state--bet it's Arkansas--that's the first to make exercise compulsory for all citizens. Unless they have a note from their doctor.