Bariatrics

Kim DotCon is not going to be very happy about this finding…perhaps it is the reason why he is studiously trying to avoid court.

Researchers at Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity have found that a defendant’s body weight and gender impact jurors’ perceptions of guilt and responsibility.

Their research has been published online in the International Journal of Obesity.

The online study involved 471 adult participants. They were presented with a mock court case, including images of alleged defendants. Participants viewed one of four defendant images: a lean male, a lean female, an obese male, and an obese female. After viewing each of these, participants were asked to rate how guilty they thought the defendant was.  Read more »

France needs a fat bastard tax:

The number of obese people in France, famed as the land of the slim, has doubled in the past 15 years to reach seven million, a new study has found.

Envied for somehow managing to eat great food and wine without putting on weight, the French are gradually falling foul of “Anglo-Saxon” couch potato and fast food culture, increasingly grazing between meals or in front of computer screens, the state-sponsored study by ObEpi-Roche found.

They may still officially be among Europe’s thinnest people but the average French person has put on more than half a stone since 1997 to weigh in at 11 stone 6lbs. That means that 15 per cent of the French population is now obese and 32.3 per cent overweight.

ᔥ NZ Herald

It isn’t really a surprise that fatties breed fatties. Though I guess there has to be some research done so Cat Pause can feed at the public trough:

Have you been to the food court lately? It’s school holiday time and all around the country, these places are filled with the joyous sounds of kids and adults chowing down on their favourite treats.

I was at my local food court in Auckland’s St Lukes mall the other day and there were people walking everywhere, with plates piled high with greasy, glistening mountains of deep fry from the buffet. The sheer volume of food some people can put away is quite something – and this was just before lunch.

It’s difficult to know the right way to say this, without sounding like a preacher and a prat, but judging by the food court scene, it’s no wonder New Zealand has an obesity problem. The people carrying those big plates of food were big – some very big – and they had large kids in tow.

Dollars to Donuts when you see fat parents you see fat kids….look at the Chawners FFS.

ᔥ Stuff.co.nz

A sensible response to fatties rights activists claims of fatties needing understanding is to mock…especially when they are a fatty themselves and have a silly name like Cat Pause.

One good thing though at the Fatties conference….the buffet will be fucking awesome!

The nation’s first fat conference will be held in Wellington this week and aims to challenge assumptions about chubby people.

Topics include fat pride, obesity panic, unfixing body size and shape and teaching children about fitness and fatness.

Massey University lecturer Cat Pause said the relationship between weight and health is more complicated than people think.

“As a fat activist and scholar I want to change the national discourse on fatness and hopefully this conference will take another step in that direction,” Dr Pause said.

“Fat people deserve the same rights and dignity as non-fat people, which we currently don’t have.”

Fat studies is a small and emerging field that challenges existing assumptions about fatness and fat people.

The human development lecturer said fat studies critiqued negative assumptions, looked at the impact on fat peoples’ lives, challenged the fat stigma and pushed for social justice.

ᔥ The Guardian

Either we tax fatties or we just make them pay for their own health care, either way they should pay somehow…otherwise people like the Chawners will just keep being fat pigs:

I’m in a bariatric ambulance (an alternative term for obese, favoured by the medical world because it’s less shaming to patients) investigating why the UK is in the midst of an obesity crisis. The crew pick up a dozen Daniel Lamberts every week. Fifty-three stone is nothing special, it’s at the lower end of the weight spectrum, with only the 80st patients worthy of mention when a shift finishes. The specially designed ambulance carries an array of bariatric gizmos including a “spatula” to help with people who have fallen out of bed or, on a recent occasion, an obese man jammed between the two walls in his hallway. As well as the ambulance, there’s a convoy of support vehicles including a winch to lift patients onto a reinforced stretcher. In extreme cases, the cost of removing a patient to hospital can be up to £100,000, as seen in the recent case of 63st teenager Georgia Davis.

Boing Boing has an interesting post about diet and obesity. But it was this graph that piqued my interest…basically if you stuff ever increasing amounts of food into your gob you get fat…who woulda thought?

On the other hand a friend of mine argued with me about the so called obesity epidemic…she said I was wrong and that there is an obesity epidemic…she caught it…and a few others she knows have caught it too.

Apparently fat people, in particular women earn less if they are fatties:

First, the obesity wage penalty exists even in countries with national health insurance, so lower wages cannot be solely the result of employers’ reaction to higher costs in the health insurance plans they sponsor. Second, there is a negative relationship between weight and wages for women even at weights that are too low to be associated with worse health. Third, experiments have found that obese individuals are less likely than healthy-weight individuals with identical credentials to receive job interviews and positive performance reviews.

Labour has a maori quota, a gay quota, a women’s quota, perhaps they need a fatties quota too and a policy to stop discrimination against fatties. Nanaia Mahuta and Parekura Horomia can share the portfolio.