Be Careful Not To Fall Down the Slippery Slope of Nanny Statism

Of all the things for the Baltimore City Council to worry about:

Baltimore City should improve access to fresh produce and recreational activities in low-income neighborhoods to stem childhood obesity, according to a City Council task force report released today.

"This is more serious than smoking," said City Councilwoman Agnes Welch, who has overseen the issue in the council. "Let this be a movement: We're going to stop childhood obesity in the city of Baltimore."

You heard it here first; pork rinds are more dangerous than smoking. Prepare for the War on Lake Trout.

Full article here.

Updates!

The Guardian Angels announce they will open a chapter in New Haven, CT, and walk beats alongside the Edgewood Park Defense Patrol. How bad is your neighborhood when it's reminiscent of 1979 New York?

In related New Haven governmental apathy, a man struck and detained a robber with an ax handle, then called police. When an officer finally arrived, he arrested the man -- and very nearly arrested an off-duty detective who intervened on the man's behalf. Thank you, New Haven Police Department. Your lack of judgment and slow response times are a shining example to racist cops everywhere.

MeMe Roth received death threats after she criticized American Idol winner Jordin Sparks.

And finally: this is a week old, but law enforcement surrounding Ed Brown's Plainfield, NH home disbanded uneventfully, although they did seize his wife's dental practice and its alleged network of tunnels in nearby West Lebanon.

Brown, who asserts that the federal government has no jurisdiction in New Hampshire and no authority to charge him under a non-existent law, said the activity surrounding his properties in Plainfield and West Lebanon yesterday was a "Zionist, Illuminati, Free Mason movement."

And with that, any remaining sympathy I had for the man officially evaporated.

Two Months

That's my guess of how long it will take before public health fascists start adopting this anti-obesity plan in the United States.

Dance classes soon will be mandatory for Chinese elementary and secondary students because of worries about increased obesity, state media reported Tuesday.

It said the dances will be performed during class breaks or during extracurricular time. The newspaper cited recent reports that said heavy loads of schoolwork had cut into the amount of physical activity student perform and that "obesity has been on the rise."

'Cause it's way better to be thin and dumb than fat and smart. But wait, it gets worse.

Last month, the official Xinhua New Agency reported that besides good grades students also could have to prove their physical fitness to earn a place in a Chinese university under a ministry proposal.

Xinhua said the ministry was considering recording the results of physical tests in students' academic files, and could use them as a way to split university applicants who have the same score on written tests. Competition for spots at China's top universities is grueling.

How long before MeMe Roth suggests that overweight people be denied access to a college education in order to "send a message" to our youth? I say about two months.

The War on Fat People

I've had it with the public health fascists. It's time to quarantine them. Seriously. We have to think about the children. The children who will grow up in an America divorced of freedom. Let's start with the anorexic, "loathsome human being" MeMe Roth, who thinks overweight people shouldn't be allowed to become America's next American Idol. Why should anyone care what this flat skeleton thinks? I guess she is doing some good in keeping people thin - listening to her makes me puke.

Sure You Won't Lose Weight, But It's Still Fun

I guess I haven't been keeping up with my breast-feeding and obesity news. I didn't know that the conventional wisdom was that they we're linked somehow. So a recent report challenging this conventional wisdom is totally unexpected.

While breast-feeding has many benefits, it won't prevent a child from becoming fat as an adult, says a new study that challenges dogma from U.S. health officials.

The research is the largest study to date on breast-feeding and its effect on adult obesity.

"I'm the first to say breast-feeding is good. But I don't think it's the solution to reducing childhood or adult obesity," said the study's lead author, Karin Michels of Harvard Medical School.

More here. Related in only a dirty-old-man kind of way is news that Jaime Pressly's breasts are ballooning from her pregnancy. She says, "When my milk comes in, I'm going to be able to feed a small village." I'll be the first in line. More on that story here.

The War on Fat

How long can America continue the hypocrisy of leaving overweight people alone while arresting people who use drugs, even though fat people are as big of a drain (or bigger) on society?

Overweight workers cost their bosses more in injury claims than their lean
colleagues, suggests a study that found the heaviest employees had twice the
rate of workers' compensation claims as their fit co-workers.

Obesity experts said they hope the study will convince employers to invest in programs to help fight obesity. One employment attorney warned companies that treating fat workers differently could lead to discrimination complaints.

More here. I suggest fat courts to punish people who abuse their body with fatty food. As for discrimination, I fail to see why businesses shouldn't refuse to hire fat people in the way they refuse to hire known drug users. After all, we're in a war here.

School Obesity Fight Gets Some Backlash

There are a lot more fat kids than there used to be, and that is not good, but the tactics that schools have embraced to combat it have gotten so extreme that there is a backlash among parents, as the WSJ [subscription only] reported today.

At issue are not non-coercive measures such as improving the quality of school meals or taking out soda machines. Instead, what is causing backlash is that the government battle against obesity has become very invasive, with schools measuring students' body mass index (BMI) and including it on their report card. Even worse, the heaviest kids are "invited" to participate in school fitness and nutrition programs.

Across the country, the new rules are also sparking a backlash among parents, children and even some teachers and school officials. The efforts often draw derision for being too extreme and demonizing children. Arkansas, the first state to pass legislation requiring schools measure students' body-mass index, backtracked last month and now allows parents to refuse the assessment. The question of weight in Arkansas has been a sensitive one since former Gov. Mike Huckabee shed more than 100 pounds a few years ago and encouraged locals to follow his example.

Note to self: Huckabee is a Nanny Stater. More from the article:

Even determining who is overweight has proven nettlesome. Nine-year old Jeremy Holwell, who attends Lakeview Elementary, swims in a local league several nights a week and plays baseball in the summer. In January, Mrs. Holwell noticed a fitness assessment at the bottom of his nearly straight-A report card. Jeremy placed in the 97th national percentile: "overweight," according to the report.

As is clear in the case of Jeremy, BMI is an imprecise measure of fitness, as it is a crude height/weight calculation that does not measure actual body fat or correct for muscle weight. Ergo 56% of NFL players are considered obese, yet they are in better shape than 99.9% of the population and work out constantly. Yes, some of them are fat, but a majority of them are just very muscular. And how devastating to be Jeremy Holwell, who is a committed athlete at a fragile age to be deemed "obese" on his report card?

Must-See TV: 'Fat Teens Can’t Hunt'

More important than the fact the sun comes up every day, I'm grateful The Sun comes out each day. Else we'd miss stuff like this:

THE BBC is set to cause outrage with a reality show that makes porky kids a laughing stock — by forcing them to hunt for food.

Ten youngsters will be sent to live with Aboriginal tribesmen in Australia for a month in Fat Teens Can’t Hunt.

They have to follow the strict rules of the Aborigines — so if they want to eat, they must feast on plants, grasses and fruits as well as trap, kill and cook any animals or insects they find.

If they do not tuck into the traditional tucker, they go without.

Cameras will follow the group’s attempts to locate food in the baking sun of the Australian bush.

[Ellipsis]

“This experiment gives our teenagers a unique opportunity to address their dysfunctional relationship with food once and for all before they reach adulthood.”

The BBC3 series will be filmed this summer and producers are looking for ten overweight teens prepared to be filmed around the clock.

It follows Channel 4 plans for a similar show, which will force participants to source food from a rubbish dump.

More here. If you're a morbidly obese wannabe celeb Brit, you must click here.

"Scientists": Don't Tell People the Secret to Staying Thin is Eating Right and Exercising

Sigh. I don't even know where to begin with the latest study on anorexia. Do I talk about the fact that scientists are claiming that the "disease" may be partially genetic - no, it's not; just eat a fuckin' hamburger you twiggy bitches - or that they're claiming that the genetic disposition is set off by a society that tells people that the secret to staying thin is eating right and exercise - which is, uh, the truth; notwithstanding alternatives like surgery, methamphetamine, and tapeworms (in the stores soon, my patent is pending).

A researcher at a Tulsa clinic says a decade-long study into anorexia nervosa is beginning to reveal that those who suffer from the disease might have a genetic predisposition toward it.
[...]
Researcher Craig Johnson said that if a person has a family member who has had anorexia nervosa, she or he is 12 times more at risk of developing the illness.

"Genetics loads the gun. Environment pulls the trigger," said Johnson, the director of the eating disorders unit at Laureate Psychiatric Hospital in Tulsa and one of the study's principal researchers.

Johnson said researchers have devoted much attention during the past 40
years into looking into how a culture that promotes dieting provokes eating
disorders.

"We now know that the illnesses occur when there is a perfect storm of events that include genetic vulnerability and a culture that is promoting thinness through dieting and exercise," he said... Johnson called dieting and exercise "the royal road to eating disorders."

More on women who just won't eat here. Next up, women who just won't listen.

Video Games Help Kids Fight Obesity

Think Hillary Clinton will be trumpeting this report?

PLAYING video games makes children fitter and gives them healthier hearts, a study shows.

An average teenager would burn off 27lbs in a year using the new Nintendo Wii consoles in which body movements control games. But even just sitting playing is healthier than watching TV, say researchers at Liverpool John Moores University.

Probably not. More here from The Sun.