Kirstie Alley and the Big Life

I stumbled upon yet another reality show the other night. It was called, "Kirstie Alley's Big Life."

All I could say was, "Wow..."

I remember Kirstie Alley from Star Trek II and Cheers. Other than that...not much. I've seen her on the cover of the occasional tabloid with headlines discussing how she gained weight and lost weight and gained more, as well as a headline declaring that she had been dropped from Jenny Craig as a spokesperson (they wouldn't come out and say it's because she regained weight).

I remember hearing the news in passing and scanning headlines on tabloids, but I didn't pay attention to it. Most of that gossip just sort of floats around out there like turds on sewage wastewater, waiting to be processed by a bored public that tries to feel more connected to those they admire by reading about the flaws in those making a metric crap-ton more than we do. So I wasn't prepared to see just how Kirstie Alley has changed since her days on Cheers.

Just...wow.

And the series didn't leave a good impression.

I must have seen an early series episode; she decided to test her new weight-loss program on her "handyman" and enlisted him to work with her. It kind of reminded me of the handyman on "Murphy Brown." He always seemed to be paid to just hang around more than actually do anything, and I guess it's a double-paying job when you're hanging around in front of reality show cameras.

My first thought; how can you shill your own weight-loss program when you're really not looking like you could be a successful poster child for your program? She's overweight. She puts it out there (c'mon...it's called "Big Life," and I believe she had a show called "Fat Actress" before that).

Second, the show had her deciding to get more exercise. Exercise will help her lose weight. They had an entire episode dedicated to interviewing personal trainers to come in and help her and her handyman lose weight.

Ugh. I so hate that.

I've railed against it before. Exercise is good for you, but it will not be your magic key to losing weight. Yes, you may lose a few pounds. But I'm willing to bet that much of that is because exercise fills time you otherwise would use eating.

When I'm on the treadmill, it takes an hour to burn 500 calories at an easy pace. An hour. A plain cheeseburger from McDonald's takes five minutes to eat (or less) and is 300 calories. Yeah, five minutes to take in 300 calories takes at least half an hour to forty minutes to burn off.

So if your lifestyle has you eating two thousand calories a day more than your body needs, can you fill in four or five hours a day with exercise to get your caloric intake to a manageable level?

I'll say this again; exercise will let you eat what you want as an obese person to achieve a skinny body if you become a professional trainer. You'll spend eight hours a day sweating calories from your pores. You'll have a huge calorie deficit. Most of us have jobs that don't involve wearing sweats for the majority of the day, however.

Second thing I'll say again; the "easiest" way to lose weight is to change your food lifestyle. That cheeseburger from McDonald's isn't really all that bad compared to most fast food fare; the average McMeal of a Big Mac, large fries and large Coke comes to 1,350 calories. That's over half the calories the average person should be eating in the course of the entire day compressed into one meal. And I don't think it's all that unusual for someone to have a meal like this.

Exercise isn't bad and I'm not advocating not exercising. Exercise makes you stronger and healthier in a number of ways. I'm simply saying that exercise isn't a magic bullet for losing weight, and unless you do a LOT of it, it won't make a huge difference in your weight loss routine. Want a big difference? Don't eat so much. Not eating that 540 calorie Big Mac will save you over an hour on the treadmill.

Forget how this relates to Kirstie Alley? Her show, or the episode I watched, seemed entirely endorsing the idea that if you have a personal trainer (because every fat person can afford one of those, along with your own personal home gym) you would lose weight. She mentioned the idea that she needs to change her lifestyle, but in the same session of marathon Big Life episodes she called her handyman one night to ask if he'd like to come over to eat something.

Um...

Now she has released her Certified Organic Weight Loss Program  (no I don't care enough to put in the actual name because it's yet another program dedicated to miraculous weight loss if you follow the magic "system"). Does it work? I don't know, but it seems clear that her show is less about the life of an actress who is no longer in the headlines for her roles and instead is on the tabloids because of her size and is instead a show cashing in on the public's fascination with reality shows to help promote her program. Good marketing, I suppose. But I think it's bad that it's promoting yet another "system" to an American public that desperately wants to believe all ills have a simple, singular magic bullet cure.

It's reported that she's lost 20 pounds since January (and now it's March) on her own diet program. That's great for her. The key is finding out if her system continues to have positive effects after five and ten years...

Gabby Sidibe and Weight in Hollywood

I don't really have any desire to see the critically acclaimed movie "Precious." IMDB has a plot summary that reads, in part, "In 1987, obese, illiterate, black 16-year-old Claireece "Precious" Jones (Gabourey Sidibe) lives in the New York City neighborhood of Harlem with her dysfunctional family; she has been raped and impregnated twice by her father..."

Not really my idea of a movie that grips my attention, but that's okay.

In a move that isn't all that surprising, Howard Stern made the news (again) by criticising Sidibe's weight on his Sirius radio show. He said, in part, "There's the most enormous, fat black chick I've ever seen. She is enormous. Everyone's pretending she's a part of show business and she's never going to be in another movie," Stern ranted. "She should have gotten the Best Actress award because she's never going to have another shot. What movie is she gonna be in?"

Her weight is definitely on the high side. She claimed to Oprah that her first diet was at the age of six. She decided to love herself and her body, making her sound like one of the members of the fat acceptance movement.

But is Howard Stern wrong?

He refuses to apologize for the remarks. From an article posted at Contactmusic.com: "Stern's comments stirred up a swathe of controversy in the U.S., but he's standing by his opinion - insisting Sidibe should not be held up as a role model for overweight people, because obesity is a life-threatening condition."

He also apparently said that she will have trouble with landing roles in Hollywood due to her weight.

From the article: "I feel this girl is going to kill herself - you can't eat like this. I did enjoy her performance (in Precious) I have nothing against her, I'm just trying to say she's enormous...The girl has got tremendous problems and she needs help. And we got slammed (for saying it)."

I won't argue whether Stern is an opinionated ass or talking head like so many others who capitalize on their fame by stirring controversy. The question is, how right is he?

There are those who are saying he's full of it because Gabby is already wrapping a second movie and is starting in a TV pilot. She also has had support from some heavy hitters...no pun intended...in Hollywood such as Oprah Winfrey. Ha ha! Take that, Stern!

At the same time I'm wondering how many grossly obese actors and actresses (especially actresses) are in movies and television. I could probably count them on one hand, and these were very talented people who excelled in their craft...usually as comedians, or people who slid into acting from a comedy career. Even those that are famous and overweight are often not known for their acting career; Oprah, a one-woman business mogul, has a well known struggle with food. But she's not known for being an actress (nor is she truly grossly obese). She's a savvy businesswoman with her fingers in many media revenue streams. Sidibe is a newcomer in Hollywood with one hit movie on her resume.

And there is the fact that she is fat. She can pretend that it won't have an impact on her career, but observation tells us that it simply isn't true. Even little slips of the tongue tell us that it is something on the minds of people around her. The director of Precious apparently said on the carpet: "No one in Hollywood told me they wanted to see a movie about a 350 pound black girl who had HIV," Daniels said at the podium. Immediately realizing his gaffe, Daniels noted, "She's not 350 pounds, Gabby...but the book says...before you were hired."

The fact is that her weight right now is stirring controversy, increasing her publicity stops with more interviews in part because it's unusual to have a 350 pound actress that has managed to get nominated for so many awards.  The director was quoted that after seeing her audition tape that she seemed to be in a state of denial of her weight.

Another fact; the movie was about an overweight, sexually and physically abused poor black girl impregnated by her father. What big names in Hollywood would pull off this role without a fat suit? This girl had some acting skills and fit the physical specifications the role required. But that doesn't mean that she's going to have a career in Hollywood. And if you see the train wreck that has come from other flash-in-the-pans, chances are she'll enjoy a window of fame then slowly peter away into nothing.

This girl is having a lot of publicity specifically because she is in a unique position. A 350 pound actress made a name for herself in a movie that garnered a lot of awards. If this were commonplace we wouldn't be hearing about it, and soon it'll disappear as someone else takes over the public's short attention span, and that's when you find out how much staying power and talent the girl really has. The true talents are the ones that you see in movie after movie and you can't even recall when you last paid attention to her, yet you still find her name coming up for Hollywood roles.

I'm afraid that Howard Stern was being realistic here. Harsh, uncouth, but realistic. Hollywood is fascinated by freak breakouts and the media loves to swirl around fresh meat so long as the public buys the gossip rags. It doesn't take a genius to see that the women on the covers of magazines aren't 350 pounds; weight is usually a topic for deriding the Jessica Simpson's and Oprah Winfrey's to emphasize the latest "Oh My God She's Gaining Weight From Breakup/Illness/Stress/Bizarre Career Event" headline, or "See Who's Losing Weight And How They Did It" article.

The real story will come if Sidibe is on the covers of magazines in another year highlighting her latest movie or television project and not gossip on her personal life or yet another weight-acceptance article. Until then, I think Stern has a point. My inclination is to believe that Sidibe is a flash in the gossip pan that will disappear in a short amount of time, for better or worse.

Movie Theater Snacks

The diet-blog had a quick blurb about a study from the Center for Science in the Public Interest that states that (are you sitting for this news? Of course you are, you're reading a blog entry...) theater snacks are not healthy.

I know, it's shocking.

Basically the study drew one comparison thus: could you stomach three McDonald's quarter pounders and 12 pats of butter?

That's what you get with a medium popcorn and soda combo from Regal. At least, nutritionally they're approximately equivalent in calories and fat. ~1,600 calories and 60 grams of saturated fat.

Before my surgery I'd have had to ask if those quarter pounders had cheese or not...ha!

Anyway, this caught my attention because I recently sat through that 2-hour comedy "Twilight" with my step daughter and her friends, so movie stuff with the food angle catch my attention since I'm always reminded of the food habits I've given up since my surgery. Nowadays, not too surprised that one movie is filling you with most of your daily calorie requirements.

Of course I don't get much at the theater anymore. I've had a few of the pretzel bites from a larger theater when we've gone; a few of them aren't too bad, I can't eat more than four or five of the bits, and we rarely ever go (I think it's been months since the last movie we saw as a family, I can't remember which one it was) so having a couple of the pretzel bites are a treat. But going to the theater is just too expensive. The article noted that the combo costs $12, and it's really no secret that you're paying a premium for food that is Sam's Club-econosized with a hiked up price when you eat at the theater. Theaters make their money from snacks and then they whine when profits go down as people can barely afford the tickets, let alone the three dollar water.

Back to the point...today, I rarely go to the theater. When I do go, normally the only thing I have in my stomach is bottled water. Food there is overpriced and calorie heavy, and I try giving myself some solace in that fact when I mourn that I cannot have these things anymore (I absolutely loved Reeses Pieces or Twizzlers when I used to go to movies).

I know...it's a heretical thing to suggest, going to the movies without buying a tub of 'corn and the candy and the so-big-small-children-can-drown-in-it soda. It's part of the theater experience. Unfortunately it's also a reason that theater seats are rubbing our thighs while trying to watch two hours of sparkly vampires.

I guess my stance is that I've had to adapt to not getting all those fun things at the theater when I do end up going. Miss it sometimes, so maybe it's retroactive justification, but you do what you have to do. Anyone else change eating habits in light of economy or nutrition information about theater foods, or do you continue with what you've always done?

You're Too Fat. No Diploma!

This was interesting. Apparently Lincoln University in Oxford, PA (USA) now requires students to have a BMI (body mass index) of 30 or less or they have to take a one-credit health course.

Apparently this is the first class for whom the requirement means if they haven't fulfilled the requirement from their freshman year, they won't graduate, and nearly two dozen seniors fit that requirement.

My personal feeling is that if you're going to college to specialize in a career, why do you need to have a requirement that has nothing to do with the career? Worse, why is it focusing on fat people to tell them that they're unhealthy? Are normals honestly so stupid that they think fat people don't know they're tired, short of breath, unable to walk well, or any of the other host of fat-related problems are because they're fat and unhealthy?

I find it to be stupid in that they don't encourage this policy of forced behavior through requirements on no smoking, or undereating (bulimia/anorexia), in addition to the you're-too-damn-fat requirement.

Maybe they should force a particular religion (or non-religion) onto the students as well. After all, studies have shown some evidence that spirituality improves the quality of life for students, and if you're going to preach the gospel of skinny to students why not also throw this in for good measure, since the justification for telling students that they're too fat is that it affects their quality of life?

Burger King Sued Over $1 Cheeseburgers?

I just saw this post at the Diet-Blog claiming that Burger King franchisees are suing the headquarters for forcing them to sell double cheeseburgers in a promotion that has them selling at a loss.

Apparently they will lose ten cents on each burger, while Burger King corporate believes that this will drive up patronage by %20, meaning more sales to cover the loss.

I'm torn here, perhaps because our local Burger King has rarely managed to even get our orders right to begin with. My family is still very big on fast food and we'd probably go there far more often if that place could actually get one @#% order correct. As it stands it's good exercise because we go to the drive through and end up having to walk in to get what was forgotten, missed, or given to us by mistake. To my recollection it's the only restaurant in the area we've ever actually called and complained about to headquarters...so part of me thinks that if the restaurant offered a better experience, they wouldn't need to rely on the give away the razor to sell the blades loss-leader sales gimmick. Oh, and there's the creepy King mascot, too. That can't help much for sales when kids have nightmares about the face of your product.

But that's my opinion.

I can see the corporate headquarter's gamble here. Lure customers in, hope they have a good experience and bring friends or come back more often. Kids can come hang out and keep buying stuff like soda and french fries which are crazy profit drivers.

Franchisees are probably scraping by in the tougher economy. They don't want to risk something that cuts into thin profit margins (I'm guessing, since I do know that the soda and I'm guessing fries are big profit, while other things aren't so much). If attendance is down then this is a risky gamble for them.

On the third hand I rarely see fast food as being good for you at all, and don't really weep when people can't get their grease and sodium fix. If people just aren't interested in your product and you fail to deliver a good experience, like our local BK consistently has done to us, then you quite frankly deserve to fail and drive what little loyal patrons you have to give their money to other, better businesses.

Burger King is still a large corporation that will no doubt find equilibrium before they sink. While the recent events with the economy have proven that no one is too big to fail, it also highlights that corporate scum will continue to make due, given the number of businesses that have laid off and fired workers or have been driven into near (or total) bankruptcy while at the same time giving their CEO's millions of dollars in bonuses. If the King goes bankrupt or closes some restaurants down, then the market has spoken and we'll have a small rise in the number of teens without slacker jobs for awhile, until someone else takes up the slack with a restaurant of their own (or a new franchise opens up). If not then this is just going to be another blip on the radar for people who care about this sort of thing.

Exercise Alone Doesn't Help You Lose Weight?

It seems that there is more research buzz pointing in the direction that exercise isn't as big a factor in losing weight as people are led to believe.

The first time this splashed on my radar was from this article in Time Magazine. The author was getting virtually speared online by various pundits and squawkers for suggesting that exercise wasn't a panacea in weight loss, and worse, may actually contribute to weight gain (I exercised a lot today, so I deserve this donut!)

So you can imagine my surprise when I found this article on the diet blog saying that exercise alone won't help you lose weight. Funny enough this article references the Time article, but goes on to cite other recent work that indicates that exercise is a marginal influence on weight compared to your diet.

I've suspected this for awhile. It's not just the BS that gets spread around by gym rats like, "You're heavier because muscle weighs more than fat!" and evidently forgetting that a pound is a pound, no matter what you're weighing, and that in order to actually gain muscle a person has to be eating a surplus of calories to gain building material in the body from which to build more muscle.

I also suspected it when I found out that fat burns only about four to six calories less than muscle per pound. If you replace five pounds of fat with muscle, your body will metabolize only 30 more calories a day at rest. That's a slice of 2% cheese. I vaguely remember having touched on the topic before.

And remember, to build muscle you need to increase your intake of food. Food fuels you but it is also the supply of building material from which your body grows and repairs itself. That means you need to monitor your calorie burning while exercising to make sure you don't have a surplus in calories leading to weight gain, which in my case would be counter productive!

I suspected exercise wasn't a huge key in weight loss again when I found that walking an hour on the treadmill at between 3 and 4 miles per hour would usually lead to an estimated calorie burn of approximately one McDonald's cheeseburger. Not the meal. The burger. Plain cheeseburger (which is 300 calories, by the way). This isn't much of a dent when people snarf double cheeseburgers in two's.

One hour on the treadmill and all I can get for it is a single cheeseburger? Ouch.

Of course some of the gym rats will say things like, "Exercise revs up the metabolism for an hour or two after you exercise, so you lose weight that way too!", or, "building more muscle means burning more calories even at rest!"

Which may be true. But driving your car speeds up the erosion on it's paint and metal on the fenders due to friction with the air and bugs and pebbles that bounce off it while speeding down the road. It's technically true. Just as wind and weather wear away at rocks over time, you're speeding up these same effects on your car to some degree by driving it, since it's like having a constant 45 to 65 mile per hour wind with rocks and bugs hurling into the surface of the vehicle, thus eroding it away. Yet it's not enough of a significant impact to warrant serious concern.

It's about time for an attitude shift in exercise from health fanatics. This evidence is pointing to the need for primarily altering your eating habits, and exercise would just augment this change. None of these articles are saying you shouldn't exercise; to the contrary, they say that exercise has other benefits, while weight loss isn't really one of them. It's still well known that exercise reduces osteoporosis risk as we age. It helps with balance. It does contribute to weight loss to a small degree (although you wipe this out if you celebrate your dedications to the gym with going out for a slice of pie at that local ice cream shop.) Exercise helps your heart and keeps you fit. I'm told it improves your mood as well but I've yet to experience that.

Being active helps you with weight maintenance. But it is an adjunct to adopting better, more reasonable eating habits. Maybe even from schools; I don't recall having a class that focused on telling you that the typical American diet had you eating like a chemical-laden pig, but I do remember wondering what the point of "phys ed" was (oh boy! I get to play a sport that I can't stand watching on TV...oh boy...yeah...not fun.)

Think about it. In an hour at the gym the average person burns up what, 300 to 500 calories? Roughly? Maybe 600. That, for the average person, is the calories in one or two snacks. A snack bar is roughly 300 calories. Some go as high as 500. So your hour in the gym may have bought you a five-minute snack. It doesn't even cover a "full" breakfast at a fast food joint.

And if you're trying to lose weight it's the calories that count.

3500 calories over your burned calorie count is a pound of fat. That means cutting back 500 calories from your diet each day will result in losing a pound over the course of a week. Or every two weeks if you cut back 250 calories per day. When you look at bread and see that a couple slices amount to 100 calories or that your average slice of whole-milk cheese is 100 calories than you can see that trimming your calorie intake here and there can have a bigger effect than jamming more exercise into your schedule, especially when in real-world activities fewer people visit the gym each day and keep up sacrificing their time to hang at the gym and of those gym-goers there's apparently a healthy number that like "treating" themselves to an ice cream cone or extra slice of pizza because they were good about going to the gym.

How about you? Have you noticed a significant impact from exercise on your weight? Or have you noticed that eating less has a bigger impact on yoru weight?

Tongue Piercing of DEATH!

Here's just some interesting thing that I stumbled on while buzzing around online. It's an article at Time about a guy that died of a tongue piercing. Check it out here.

How'd he die?

An infection that went to his brain.

It's interesting that there are people who are very, very afraid of having something like Bariatric Surgery because of the risks (although the risk of dying from the surgery is a mere .2 percent and lower if the surgeon was experienced. At the same time people don't seem to bat an eye at the risk of shoving a piece of metal into their tongue...people do that to their ears, so what's the harm?

Well, any time you jam something into your skin I'm thinking it can possibly introduce problems. The way I see it the skin is there to keep dirt and foreign objects out of the body. Any time you intentionally break the skin there's a risk that something is going to get in there that shouldn't, and putting something in there permanently, even if it's something small like a barbell in the tongue, is going to run a bigger risk than something that is allowed to heal like my post-operative hole in the gut.

The body is usually pretty good at dealing with the brain doing something stupid like piercing the tongue. The fact that people are still doing it and not dying all the time is a testament to that. However, it's not entirely without risk. Many people end up chipping or damaging teeth. Others get nerve damage to the tongue. And they always run a greater risk of having complications in the mouth. After all, they put a hole in their tongue, the same place where food and dental germs wriggle around.

I'd have assumed that there was some risk of dying considering how my dentist has taken to reminding me that infections from lack of dental hygiene can travel into your brain. I don't read of this happening frequently but it could happen.

The difference is that I see no utilitarian purpose in doing something like tongue piercing, and there are no real benefits for the risks, are there? You run a risk of chipping your teeth, having to do more to maintain your oral hygiene or risk infections, you have pain while healing...for what?

I knew someone in college that had a piercing done. He developed an infection that made his tongue look like freakin' cauliflower. No kidding. It was disgusting. And I hoped he felt like a damn fool because he did this...why? Just because?

I don't understand it any more than I understand tattoos with no real significance. Why did you get Tweety on your breast? Do you understand that it'll look like Big Bird in twenty years? Do you understand that your interest in Sailor Moon may not be at the same level in the future as it is now? Or maybe your employer will frown on the Darth Vader is my Daddy tat on your cleavage when you're trying to make more than minimum wage? There are tasteful tattoos and tattoos of cultural significance but these inked-on-a-lark or shortsighted things are, in my opinion, silly.

Kind of like random piercings that signify...nothing?

Maybe it's a form of natural selection. I tell myself that so I can come to some reconciliation for the behavior I don't understand. If someone was really doing something really stupid, they'll either regret it (and rationalize the regret away) or they'll end up with a nice infection or some other unpleasant side effect down the road.

Some people get really defensive about their decisions to do oddball things to the body. That's fine. Do what you want. You have the freedom to waste your time and pain receptors however you want just like I have the freedom to express the notion that I haven't the slightest idea why you do what you do.

Is there an actual reason for doing the body piercings and tattoos that makes sense beyond the "because I wanted to" or "just because" reasons?

The Cookie Diet

The New York Times had an article about a "Cookie Diet". The premise is pretty simple; you subscribe to a diet program where you get a certain number of little cookies for breakfast and lunch each day, and you pair those up with a "sensible dinner".

The doctor that started the program in 1975 has since started a website called cookiediet.com to sell his cookies in addition to selling them through stores like GNC and Walgreens.

It's just another system, put into a different perspective. The six cookies are roughly 800 calories; you have a light dinner, adding another 500 calories at most, and you end up with about 1200 calories for the day.

When you consider how many calories overweight people are probably taking in on average then it's a no-brainer that they'll lose weight on a 1200 calorie a day diet.

The doctor also sprinkles in some woo-ery in the form of "special ingredients" for protein and health (from his website: "Dr. Siegal’s foods contain his proprietary amino acid mixture that results from the blending of various protein food substances. They satisfy hunger without drugs and help you stick to a reduced-calorie diet.")

Take a step back and strip away the flowery talk; it's a reduced calorie diet.

Would it work? Stick with the program, sure, I don't see why not. You'll also lose weight by not eating a lot, which is essentially what this is.

What if you change this system a little? Say, encourage people to use a system where you assign points to portions of different foods, then sell charts, books, guides, and pre-packaged portions of food with your program's seal on it so people can eat healthy portions without thinking about portion sizes? That would be a sneaky way of getting people to eat fewer calories and lose weight. I'd probably call something like that...I don't know...Weight Watchers sounds good.

The key is the same as others in the field have said, once they strip away the flowery language and other BS. Eat less. Find a system of lifestyle you can live with. Weight Watchers does it by giving a simple point system for people to track and makes a metric crapload of money on the books and guides and foods carrying their logos. Other systems do it with "simple rules" that on one level are easy to follow (don't eat carbs!) but under the surface strip out a large number of calories from your diet (do you know how many calories are in common carbohydrates, especially if your favorite foods are pasta and bread?)

Is it healthy? I'm not a nutritionist. I've read countless times that these system diets usually mean having to supplement with vitamins or increasing certain food types you normally don't such as vegetables in order to make sure you don't have deficits. Others require monitoring or checkups to check your mineral levels in your blood. Generally speaking it's probably not a good idea to cut something out entirely from your diet; your body does require cholesterol and fats along with amounts of all the other things that various fad and gimmick diets vilify.

Antioxidants May be BAD for Diabetics?

Here's a diet-blog post about the effects of antioxidants on diabetics. Turns out it may be a bad thing to take antioxidant vitamins to help your diabetes symptoms!

The effect isn't huge; the best thing to do for diabetes is control your diet and lose weight, the things that have been repeated ad-nauseum for years. I thought it was worth mentioning this because the whole "antioxidant" movement is so popular while not really being supported with proper studies. More often than not any magic-bullet solutions make me pause and think that maybe that bullet is two parts bullet and eight parts manure.

Even the study seems to point to evidence that as a risk to diabetics taking antioxidants isn't exactly going to hurt all that much. It sounds more like it's a slight detriment. Stick to what your doctor advises...lose the weight, cut the smoking, get exercise, and watch what you're eating.

Fattism in America?

I just ran across this UK article about abuse of fat people. The article makes it sound as if there's a rash of beatings for being overweight across the pond, but overall is focusing on the question of why society seems to pile so much hate on people who are overweight.

Personally I've not encountered more than just the looks and stares and the occasional comment here in the US for being fat. Strangely enough most of that I remember occurred as an adult rather than my teenage years (you'd think it would be the opposite, wouldn't you?)

There is definitely discrimination against fat people; we are, along with smokers, one of the last of the "socially acceptable to make fun of" classifications of people. But outright beatings?

That's a little scary. Maybe the story was just focusing on isolated events rather than a rash of hate crimes. I certainly hope so. Has any reader found there to be outright discrimination against fat people in the US?

Fast Food and Healthy Diet

Ironically I found a post from another blog that said that Denny's is being sued to disclose the salt content in their food. The Reuter's article can be found here. I don't know what the basis is for compelling a company to tell you what's in their food if it's not something that'll immediately kill someone, but hey, in America you're free to litigate against anything that annoys you if you have enough money. I guess we need to make sure our justice system has a lot of busywork to earn their pay.

The article says that the salt content in one of the Denny's meal is "dangerously high", and cites certain people that need to watch their intake of sodium that could have problems with the food. I guess this in my opinion is kind of a slippery slope; I feel that there is a point when reasonable people have to take reasonable control of their own lives and responsibility for their decisions; the meal cited in the article is the Meat Lover's Scramble.

Okay...chain restaurant, meal item called "Meat Lover's Scramble" that consists of "two eggs with chopped bacon, diced ham, crumbled sausage, cheese plus two bacon strips, two sausage links, hash browns, and two pancakes," and a person who is at-risk for salt intake is pondering this item on the menu...

I think there are couple red flags right off the bat that should tell you that you need to avoid that meal. Hell, people without salt issues should avoid it.

I do wish that nutrition information for chain restaurants (Applebee's, I'm pointing at you, you skunks...) were more readily available, even if it's just available online. But to sue over just disclosing salt content (Denny's already has their nutrition information on their website.)

Hmm...Okay. That's odd. The Meat Lover's Scramble IS on the online menu. And unlike the claim on the article, the sodium level is 3,180 mg, not 5,690 mg. Apparently the group is suing to have it put into the menu, because the company isn't hiding the information (unlike, say, Applebee's). The difference in numbers may be with side items that are separately ordered, I don't know.

So if you're in an at-risk category for certain foods, I think you should actually get off your arse and research it. Look up the menus at Red Lobster or Denny's. Look for the printed nutrition information at McD's. For most reasonable companies you can find it online, or at least exercise some common sense (I mean, c'mon, you read the description of that meal...does it sound like it would be low in sodium?)

The reason I said all of this was ironic was because as I was actually sitting down to do a blog post on whether it was possible to eat healthy meals at fast food chains. Most of the information that got me thinking about it is here at HowStuffWorks.com.

I'm sure you could find, or modify, fast food orders that are relatively healthy once in awhile. But not like what you could make at home (or in some small off-chain restaurants). Once people take an interest in educating themselves about this issue they quickly find that most fast foods are full of fats, sugars, and salt.

Why? Because it preserves foods and makes them taste a lot better. Customers like the foods with the bad stuff in them...and it helps keep the cost of those burgers and salads lower. I mean, if you reduce the flavor or shelf life of the food, how much will prices rise? That's part of the convenience that sells this stuff. Duh.

It's a shame that "common sense" doesn't work for most people when choosing menu items in restaurants. Most people who listen to the media blurbs and sound bites equate chicken with being healthy; often, it's not, and it's not obvious. Even the chicken you get in the supermarket may have undergone "plumping". That's a process where the chicken is injected with saltwater to increase shelf life, flavor, visual appeal...yummy! Too bad it also makes the sodium content skyrocket. Even McNuggets are mostly corn.

But this information isn't hidden, it's just not advertised. The big problem I see is that people in America are anti-intellectual; we do not have a code of ethics that embraces education and learning. We wait for it to be plonked in front of us, handed over so as to save us from having to do any critical thinking.

We resent the idea that we don't have freedoms and choices. At the same time the more I read and listen to people the more convinced I become that people want a world where everything is done for us. We just go along with the flow, do what we're told, except for the one or two things in our lives in which we take an interest.

This would mean that many of our issues...if not most...come from our society, not from other people and companies doing "bad things" to us. A lot of problems would be reduced if we invested more time and effort in becoming better skeptical and critical thinkers.

But that takes effort...and right now there's more TV to be watched.

Burgerville and Calories

This was kind of surprising...a restaurant chain called Burgerville is apparently going to be adding calorie counts to the receipt of the customer's orders.

The story appears here.

The story also criticizes the fact that the only way to know what the order's calorie count comes to is to order, then look at the receipt. The restaurant apparently says it's a side effect of the way their business is structured; you can pick and choose whatever combination of goodies you want on the burger.

I went to the website; I wanted to find out where there was a Burgerville since I never heard of them, and I wanted to see what their website was like. I learned that they are only in Washington state (okay, guess that's why I never heard of them) and that their website does have nutrition information.

All I can figure is that this is about the menus in the restaurants, as obviously they have nutrition information on the website. People must be able to go in and customize everything up the wazoo, so they're putting information on labels.

Personally, I think this is great. I don't like the idea of putting calories and nutrition right on the menu. I believe in making them available for people, but I don't want Johnny Public to stand there and drool on themselves, staring at the options and deciphering if it's a price or a calorie count on the list, changing his mind because maybe he shouldn't go with something with quite that many calories or because the fat is a little high, while I'm waiting behind them and know what I want to order. Look it up.

Most places do have the information. It's not rocket science.

Shoving it down people's throats isn't the answer.

Putting this information on the website, then adding it as a customized list on your receipt for you to glance at while shoving your burger down your gullet is a wonderful addon because it removes friction...the issue of waiting for Jimmy the Twit in line taking three times longer to order while people behind him actually already have their minds made up...and because it educates after the fact.

Quick thought: if you want healthy, don't eat out. I'm sure it's not always the case if you really try, but c'mon...sodium counts? Calories? Fried food most of the time? Don't. Eat. Out. If you're going to eat out and are concerned, go to the company website and look for nutrition information. Download and print the menu. If they won't tell you (APPLEBEES) then don't go there.

If you want to make it a cause, email their customer support and tell them why you won't be going to their restaurants.

But please don't mandate something that makes slow fast food lines even slower because people can't be bothered to educate themselves. I'm all for making information available; it's not like when I say the "information is available" that you have to dedicate hours of research or years getting a nutrition science degree. It takes a few minutes of searching a website to get it. Some restaurants take the next step and offer it printed in their facilities.

When the information can be reasonably found with reasonable effort, I think that's pretty good. Don't make it so idiot proof that idiots are holding up the people that actually do their homework.

What do you think?

Time Magazine: Exercise Doesn't Work?

Wow...interesting how much noise is being made about this article at Time postulating that exercise doesn't help in weight loss.

I thought it was interesting. Then again, I think much of the article correlated with what I've observed in my time with exercise and people's habits, so it may be simply a matter of noticing some form of confirmation bias on my part.

I read the article about a week ago. But now there's blog entries and articles appearing to comment on the piece. This article from juancole.com declares the article to be an "epic fail", concluding that:

*********

The science on all this is perfectly clear. Vigorous exercise (both aerobic and resistance training) combined with a low-fat diet is what allows people to take weight off and keep it off. Time is shockingly wrong.

*********

The diet-blog had this snippet:

*********

n summary, the article essentially claims that exercise won't help you lose weight, and may in fact be responsible for people GAINING weight. Hmmm... The author, John Cloud (ooh the irony in that surname) goes on an anecdotally-based tirade, side-stepping contradictory evidence and common sense on route to his perplexing hypothesis.

*********

I thought this was an interesting claim since in the article author quotes Eric Ravussin of Louisiana State University as well as the journal Public Library of Science...diet blog implied that the entire thing is anecdote-based.

Further, the article doesn't say you shouldn't exercise; it states right in it that "In short, it's what you eat, not how hard you try to work it off, that matters more in losing weight. You should exercise to improve your health, but be warned: fiery spurts of vigorous exercise could lead to weight gain. I love how exercise makes me feel, but tomorrow I might skip the VersaClimber — and skip the blueberry bar that is my usual postexercise reward."

In other words, the article is saying that exercise is good for you, you should exercise for those benefits, but exercise alone won't necessarily help with losing weight.

The article states that people wipe out a lot of the calories burned by going out and eating more because, after all, they worked hard at the gym...what's the harm?

I've been going to the gym and found that a half-mile brisk walk on the treadmill...ten minutes...burns about 150 calories. That means that if I walked about 3 miles per hour for twenty minutes, that's a plain cheeseburger at McDonalds.

Keep in mind that most people don't eat a cheeseburger. If it's not a double cheeseburger or bigger, most people won't order it. With fries. And rarely do I see people getting the diet soda.

The article emphasizes that alterations in your diet are necessary for losing weight, not keeping the same habits except for an hour at the gym.

The blowback I've been reading online like to comment about how the article is so wrong, how exercise helps you lose weight, la la la...please. Weight loss isn't a subject that boils down easily.

• Fast foods and processed foods are inexpensive and convenient. They're also loaded with fats and preservatives, sugars, and salt. They also make up most of the American diet.
• Americans are fat and getting fatter. If it were as simple as waving a wand or just declaring that we want to lose weight, we wouldn't have this problem. We do.
• Americans overindulge. We simply eat too much. Portion sizes are out of control.
• Our media barrages us with images of foods that are engineered to make us want more and to eat more. It's socially acceptable to eat a brownie at the convenience store or slather on fat-laden dressings. Foods that seem like healthier choices aren't necessarily healthy (salads are good for you! Until you put on the dressing...chicken is good for you! Until you see the salt content...). Sound bites alone apparently don't help us make the right choices once you dig below the surface.
• Lots of health nuts talk about things like "muscle burns more calories than fat". Yeah...it does. Except it's not a dramatic difference overall. It's about 4 calories per pound. Muscle burns 6 calories per pound, fat burns 2. So if you replace 10 pounds of fat (burning 20 calories) with 10 pounds of muscle (60 calories) you're burning 40 calories a day more. That's it. One cup of sugar-free jello pudding (chocolate) is 60 calories. Ten pounds of added muscle isn't enough to burn off the sugar free pudding.
• They also like saying that muscle weighs more than fat...that is supposed to make you feel better about not losing weight while exercising. Which is interesting to me because, quick! Which weighs more? A pound of feathers or a pound of sand? Um...they're both a pound. Plus, in my researching muscle training for lifting weight, you actually have to eat more calories because muscle won't build itself. You have to supply more energy and building material in order to bulk up. If you're truly focusing on losing weight, you're not gaining muscle, because you're eating less. Otherwise you're on a weight training regimen where you're eating more and working really hard to track what you're eating and how you're working it into your body properly.
  

I know that empirically speaking, this isn't evidence, but sometimes you have to sit back and start analyzing your own observations and using common sense.

First, in order for you to maintain your weight you have to look at your Basal Metabolic Rate; basically it's the calories you burn when you sit on your ass all day. It's the energy used for metabolizing food, breathing, generating body head, circulating blood, and maintaining your weight level. Yes, fat does take calories to maintain. Just not as much as muscle. When you look at the BMR for what it takes to maintain an overweight body, you should get a very rough idea of what a 400 or 500 pound person is eating each day in order to stay at that weight level, regardless of how much he or she protests that they eat as much as their skinny friends do or exercise as much as their friends do. The body doesn't absorb mass from osmosis through your skin. Raw materials...water, protein, etc...come from your food and drink. You eat; the body processes it and integrates some of the material as fat or other tissues, the rest is excreted as sweat, urine, feces and water from your breathing.

Second, I find far more people who refuse or actively ignore simple things like counting calories or reading food labels. Food-wise, one of the great sources of depression I've found comes from finding out just what is in those McD's burgers and breakfast wraps and all the labels at the supermarket. I have had virtual sticker shock from discovering just how many calories I was actually shoveling into my gaping maw over the course of the day; a slice of cheese there, an extra helping of Chef Boy-R-Dee there...it adds up. It's amazingly simple to pile on a couple hundred calories by just adding on an extra helping at lunch and dinner. Eating out? Oh lord...the foods taste good because they have fat, salt, and sugar in various forms added. Wonderful taste, but they're all essentially treats; foods that should be eaten sparingly. Read the labels. The wraps I prep at home have far fewer fats and processing in them compared to McD's sausage burrito for breakfast, despite in some ways being similar. But the difference adds up. One of the most effective weight loss plans for the long term involves keeping a food diary...most people simply won't do it.

Third, as the article states, I've seen people who reward themselves because they've been working hard for the day or think they cut back a lot at lunch (do they actually check how many calories they saved, so they could treat themselves? One huge muffin from popular fast coffee chains can easily top 400 to 500 calories...that's most of a meal in itself...so an entire hour or more of a workout could be wiped out with ten minutes of yummy time. While in college the fraternity I belonged to had a "wing night" where we'd all meet at a local sports bar and generally hang out and eat wings and be obnoxious (although the waitress put up with us because we were regulars who ended up leaving a nice tip for putting up with us, and since they were nice while we were there we'd usually try picking up after ourselves as a tip-of-the-hat for their patience). We happened to pick a night that apparently a local weight loss group does their weigh-in. We knew because later that night the same group of very overweight individuals would come in and order pie as their "treat for the week".

Yes. Morbidly obese individuals were coming in from their diet group to celebrate making it another week on their diet by eating pie.

I bring that up because:

• It illustrates the mentality of depriving yourself or torturing yourself in the gym means an obligation to treat yourself. It's an unhealthy attitude because it's so easy to go overboard...do I really think they were just having a slice of pie once a week? I'll put it this way...in the years I was at the college, they never really changed the way they looked when they came in.
• I'm fat. Grossly, morbidly obese. For some reason this seems to give a free pass for making observations about other overweight people. But this doesn' t really matter in America because, as it's been said before, the two classes of people that are still socially acceptable to make fun of are fat people and smokers.
• These people were like millions of other Americans. I've heard some of their conversations. I have little doubt that they were looking for a simple way to lose weight that involved anything except what's known to work...take in fewer calories than you're burning. They would try all the diet plans, pills, herbs,...the most telling is if you ask someone on a diet how many calories they're getting a day and they just kind of give you that glazed-over look, then they're not tracking what they're eating.

Fourth, how many people have gym memberships but never go? Gym memberships are reaching record levels in America. I have trouble believing that those memberships are necessarily translating into higher activity levels. At the small gym I go to there's a sign in sheet on which we're supposed to "X" the days we come in, presumably for their record keeping. I see some people with solid X's across the sheet and other people with X's every other day or so, but there are plenty of names that have nothing down. To be clear I don't sit and analyze the sheet closely; I see names as I'm flipping to get to my name, and I'm fully aware that some people may not sign in as the big notes on the doors ask us to do. It's just an anecdotal observation. But I have a hard time believing it's not a possible trend.

So this article in time isn't necessarily misleading from what I've seen and experienced. The article's points sum up as exercise is healthy and you should do it because it has many benefits, but for weight loss you need to rely on cutting down calories and changing your habits more than relying on exercise. I don't know why this is a point of contention for people on the blogosphere. The article isn't saying you should drop the gym membership or stop the cardio routines. It's saying you need to stop getting off your arse if it's to walk to the fridge or pantry for a "little snack"...

Calorie Count on Food Labels

Well this is depressing.

I always knew that calorie counts weren't exact on labels. Your food would vary by some percentage because I knew that a calorimeter measures calories by burning the sample; you can get a decent approximation of calories in the food by using samples in the calorimeter tests, but it's only supposed to be a close approximation. "Close enough for hand grenades", I suppose; otherwise you couldn't eat the food if you wanted a more definitive measurement since the food would have to be destroyed in the process of getting the number of calories it contained.

Click here to see why it turns out labels lie.

This article contends that there are other factors that affect calorie intake because our bodies don't burn calories, they digest the food. Things like texture of food and which components are "digested" by gut bacteria before your body gets a whack at it affect how many calories our bodies absorb. Even how a food is cooked, like whether a steak is well done or only medium well done, affects the calories your body can metabolize.

For people like me this is very annoying; I used to track numbers obsessively (and now I track the number of ounces I'm taking in for each meal) so seeing that certain components in foods could or should be adjusted by nearly 20 percent is not only disheartening but a source of anxiety.

What next? That weight loss isn't a matter of calories in vs. calories out? That pills or weeds or sunlight exposure will affect your body weight?

Not surprisingly it was somehow concluded that this was too much of a burden for companies to fix the labeling system for very little benefit. It's sad to see that there is known science behind the argument that the current labeling system is significantly misleading, but it's being ignored simply because it's a pain for someone to have the food properly or at least more accurately labeled.

This isn't a magic bullet, as if finding out that 500 calorie brownie is actually 1,000 calories and that is the real reason someone weighs 400 pounds. But it would be nice to think that the labels we're using to track information for our health is more than just semi-fictional works!

What do you think? Is this something worth having on food items?

Health Care Reform Proposal

The Junkfood Science blog has an entry regarding the Democrat's proposed healthcare plan, and if the 10,000 foot overview looks like spaghetti from this diagram then it's probably too complex to actually manage in any practical sense.

You might be able to find the blog article from either the link I embedded above or the blogroll on the right side of this page to find Junkfood Science and check it out.

It's so disheartening what a complex mess healthcare is. I enjoy the Junkfood Science blog; the posts are thought provoking and packed with good information. But I do think there's a bias towards strong opposition to the Obama health care proposal; which is fine. Everyone is entitled to an opinion on their own information site...you won't find much praise for Windows on this blog, for example (is there any? I don't think so...I know I have some good things for it though, just not good enough to have posted about it yet).

What I haven't really seen on the Junkfood Science site is a counterproposal or explanation as to why nothing proposed could work. Maybe she has posted the information and I've just missed it (like I said, I enjoy the site or I wouldn't waste my time there). There's something I learned relatively recently (meaning in the last couple years) and that is that if you have a complaint, fine, voice it. It's good in a team or group to have someone that can see the flaws in an idea and point them out. But try to have a counterproposal or solution as well. Just whining about the problems accomplishes nothing but makes you a poisonous element to any team or group.

Now that Obama is in the hot seat everyone is focusing on how we're hoping the healthcare reforms he'll start...and it's important to say it'll only start, not complete, since changes with government occur at a glacial pace...but that it'll probably fail. Every lobbyist and company with a stake in it is making sure they can yell, "I TOLD YOU SO!" when it doesn't work for everyone.

On the other hand, what is the alternative? I'm in my thirties and I don't recall any time aside from Hillary Clinton's efforts hearing about a concentrated effort to help American citizens get healthcare that didn't leave them thinking it would just be better to crawl into the corner and die rather than sort through the bureacracy to get better.

Republicans and insurance companies are saying that the government will stifle competition (yet I keep getting packages from UPS and FedEx...didn't we have a government-run group that delivered packages at one point? I think it was called the postal service...).

After three decades we're still in a mess and not the Democrats or the Republicans have done squat to help their constituents. The Democrats have been and are trying now to find a remedy. Politics as usual between our defacto two-party system is trying to hamper even that effort. Meanwhile we have 46 million Americans (as of 2007) without insurance and with the economy tanking the last couple years there's little doubt that number has risen significantly.

I'm begging. Stop bitching about the planned reform and find a solution. If you think you know better, then propose it. The last time the country actually set it's collective sight on a goal we managed to land an astronaut on the moon in surprisingly short time. Now why can't we get vaccines and medical care to our neighbors without putting them in debt for the rest of their lives?

Bueller?....Bueller?....

Calorie Restriction and Living Longer in the News

There have been a number of stories flooding popular media lately about recent results of a study on calorie restrictive diets.

This blog post nicely sums up why 99.9 percent of those stories have been misleading at best and wrong at worst.

In other words, rely on the media to give you some 10,000 foot view of information but if you want the real story you'll need to learn to think critically about the information you're being spoon fed.

Calorie restriction diets being championed as pseudo fountains youth are nothing new. But now there's a study that refutes the claims, and somehow the popular media still interprets it as being in favor of what the proponents claimed. Funny what happens when you dumb things down for mass consumption.

Anyway...check out the link...mull it over a bit. See what you think. Leave a comment here if you'd like.

Insurance Politics Are A Racket

I toyed with the idea of putting this in the feed several days from now, but you know, this story is so outrageous that I decided to just plop it into the present time in the list.

Here's the story about one woman for whom a trip to the hairdresser was the first step on a road to ruination, financially and emotionally. I couldn't imagine going through what she went through and coming out on the other side a sane person.

It highlights so much of what is wrong with healthcare in the U.S.; the politics, the playing of the system, the bureaucracy, and the black mark that you end up having tattooed to your name for having the audacity to get sick.

What's really sick is the system.

Read the story. It's truly a terrible state that we're in when this is what can happen to any American and underscores the need for medical reform more than ever.

Being Overweight is a Good Thing?

Science Daily has an article with the results of a study from Obesity from Statistics Canada, Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research, Portland State University, Oregon Health & Science University, and McGill University.

Apparently the risk of death from highest to lowest runs:
Underweight
Extremely obese
Obese
Normal weight
Overweight

That's right...being overweight carries the lowest risk of death.

There is a caveat in the article that "Our study only looked at mortality, not at quality of life, and there are many negative consequences associated with obesity, including high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes."

This is the first (Canadian) study to show that overweight people may live longer than normals.

I knew there were claims that extremely low calorie diets extend lifespans, but this is the first time I've run across someone saying that being fat is good for you too. Then again, correlation does not imply causation.

The Nation's Obesity Report Card is Out! We FAIL!

Let's take a poll. Should I feel sad or bemused at the results of the recently released results of the "Obesity Report Card"?

We have more attention than ever on obesity.

Schools are adopting these cranial-rectal inversion policies enforcing limited snacks and beverages that are not "healthy".

PE programs are getting more (but probably not enough) emphasis in school-age kids.

Diet books are a multi-billion dollar industry.

Almost every tabloid has at least one story poking at weight issues with celebrities.

Every year there's a new buffet of diet hoaxes, pills, herbs, quick fixes, and fads from which to choose.

New bariatric patients continue to surge into the ranks.

And yet the rates of obesity rose in 23 states.

Granted, this is based on a study following BMI, which may not be an accurate overall assessment of your actual health level. But still it's troubling that there are so many steps being taken to do what in my view amounts to legislating health (how cooperative are most people when they have to do something "just because"?) while apparently the effect isn't quite as successful as hoped. People won't want to be fit unless they come to decide they need to do it on their own, and quite frankly our society is one that values excess and indulgence.

On top of that there's stress from our economy. Uncertainty on whether you'll have a job or a home next week.

Foods that are healthy are expensive compared to the unhealthy stuff. Some people who dedicate a good bit of time to learning about healthy living and frugality can proclaim this to be false, that it is possible to eat well and in a healthy way without spending a huge amount of money. Unfortunately it still takes effort to reach that point, to learn the techniques, and quite frankly, there's an investment to be made in changing lifestyle.

It's not easy. Ergo, we reach for snacky foods and cheaper foods and fast foods instead of the vegetables and healthier choices.

One of my favorite lines from the article is "research suggests that overeating is a key reason kids are overweight." I love it when they find the obvious, as if people are actually overweight because of exposure to some kind of floor wax; were they actually expecting to find something to justify the idea that it's not our own fault we're overweight? Apparently there are still people holding out hope that fat actually is caught by inhaling bad air or some kind of angry sky wizard waves a wand and somehow makes that small three-slices-of-pizza lunch multiple in the gut; it's not because that tiny three slices of pizza should have been one slice, yeah? Something is causing me to simply make calories multiply after I swallow the food. That must be it.

Anyway, there's the link to the article. Take a gander. Let me know if the whole situation is amusing or sad.

Airlines Charging More to Oversized Passengers?

I toyed with the idea of when to put this post into the feed, since I already had a sizeable (HA!) story in the queue for today. But this was an in-the-news item and as a rule of thumb...if I'm putting something in that is "time sensitive" I try not to put it into the end of the queue where it could take days to show up.

There is also the fact that while I've heard that this was being considered before I didn't have the link handy; it didn't stop me from putting it into my previous post as an example. Then my wife told me this story had just appeared in CNN that, lo and behold, was about this precise topic. I love it when fates smile on me. Doesn't happen often, but when it does, I smile. And I hit "edit" on the post that needed the link inserted to prove I wasn't just being a smartass and rambling about the topic.

The article pointed out that obesity has been rising for 25 years, yet coach seats are still 17 to 18 inches wide. Another reason this caught my eye is because I read about this issue already in The 9-Inch "Diet", a fantastic book that discusses another perspective on obesity in America, including the fact that theaters with their typically smaller seating have found it necessary after raising a generation to chow down on mega-boxes of candy and buttered popcorn now have to spend money on renovating with larger seats because their patrons are getting larger (that that they're the cause, just a contributor).

The issue here is that airlines are getting one step closer to charging fat customers for two seats on planes. Apparently airlines have had 700 complaints last year from passengers that had obese passengers spill into their seats, and one-third of a small European airline's 100,000 customers supported instituting a "fat tax" on passengers that are overweight.

To their credit, the article states that most airlines have had informal policies to deal with obese passengers that usually involves moving the obese passenger to another seat with an empty neighboring seat for free if the flight isn't full.

There have been lawsuits that claim this is discrimination, but since there are no laws to prevent discrimination against obese individuals I guess this means it's okay to do that (unless you can prove to a jury that your obesity is genetic and thus out of your control).

The funniest part for me was that after an accident from an overloaded plane (that's not entirely fair, it also had a maintenance issue, according to the piece) in 2003 the FAA decided to reevaluate the weight it uses for estimating average passenger size, upping it from 180 to 190 pounds (including luggage). I found it entertaining in that it once again illustrates that these people don't pay attention to what is going on around them...honestly, you haven't noticed that there's an obesity problem on the rise in the US? The figure of 180 was used in 1995. That means they updated it after 8 years. Geez.

The obvious answer is to start making seats that are wider, unless they really don't care about passenger comfort. There are normals out there who find airline seats uncomfortable, hard as it may be to believe. And it sounds from the article as if airline companies have a good view up their butts too...Boeing said that the 17 inch seats suit 95% of they traveling public, and that it's the shoulders, not the butts, that are more often spilling into the next seat. Honestly, wouldn't wider seats solve or alleviate the issue whether it's shoulders or arse spilling over?

So is it fair for obese passengers to pay a "fat tax"? Or should airlines work to accomodate their passengers, flaws and all? I understand that airlines need to work to make a profit and squeezing that profit out is more and more difficult; they need to balance comfort with profit or else there wouldn't be an airline left to have this issue. Personally I'm thinking that airlines have a convenient scapegoat when they should be focused on enlarging seats a bit to accomodate the average paying clientele. They'd rather not deal with it because they already irritate their clientele through asinine security procedures and removing even basic comforts like in-flight meals.

I suppose that there are actually two "obvious" answers; widen the seats, or lose weight. One puts the burden on the business to accomodate their clients. The other is forcing clients to adjust to those who are supposed to be providing a service.

Or don't fly. If everyone is getting fatter and they refuse to use a service where the business won't accomodate them then the airlines will get the message in the pocket books.

Just some food for thought.