What is the truth about obesity?

Christian Thibaudeau writes a lengthy article in T-Nation about obesity. Read it here.

An obese person's cry for help

Helen Pluckrose writes in The Critic,

The western world has an epidemic of obesity. The World Health Organisation (WHO) tells us that worldwide obesity has nearly tripled since 1975, that 39 per cent of adults were overweight in 2016 and that 13 per cent were obese. I, myself am one of the latter. WHO also revealed that most of the world’s population live in countries where an excess of weight now kills more people than being underweight. Most importantly, it tells us that obesity is preventable and that “the fundamental cause of obesity and overweight is an energy imbalance between calories consumed and calories expended”.

We knew this, though, didn’t we? We knew that people get overweight if they eat too much and underweight if they don’t eat enough. There are certainly plenty of people who insist they eat very little and yet are heavily overweight, but it’s hard not to notice that in regions where people genuinely don’t have enough to eat, none of them are obese.

...This indicates that they should be offered practical, educational or psychological support to overcome the problem. It does not indicate that all of society, including nutrition scientists, healthcare professionals and cancer researchers, should be bullied into pretending that obesity is healthy and beautiful or that maintaining a healthy weight is an unattainable goal. Scholars and activists who do this are terrible advocates for obese people. I, for one, would like them to stop helping.

Read more here.

Lost?

hat tip Misanthropic Humanitarian

"it’s probably best to avoid (a) excessive weight gain, and (b) feminism, both of which seem likely to engender alienation, resentment and fits of random hysteria."

David Thompson writes about a woman who is seething with empowerment here.

hat tip Ace

What is your sexual market value?

Chateau Heartiste writes today about sexual market value. One of his commenters noticed that there are an increasing number of women who have tattoos, are single mothers, or are obese. Chateau Heartiste takes a look at all three here.

Smokers and obese patients being denied routine surgeries in Britain

Henry Bodkin reports at The Telegraph,

Obese patients and smokers banned from routine surgery in 'most severe ever' rationing in the NHS.

Hospital leaders in North Yorkshire said that patients with a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or above – as well as smokers – will be barred from most surgery for up to a year amid increasingly desperate measures to plug a funding black hole. The restrictions will apply to standard hip and knee operations.

Read more here.

The beginning of the end?

It's happening! A miracle! Obese people are outside walking tonight, looking for Pokemon! It's only a matter of time. Pounds are being shed all over America. Saturday night here in Parker, Colorado is movie night in O'Brien Park. As usual, a large crowd is gathered. But no one is watching the movie, Ferris Buehler's Day Off. Instead, people are looking at their cell phones, rising up out of their chairs, and walking around the park trying to catch Pokemon. It is the beginning of the end of obesity in America! Get up, get out, and explore!

Accommodating the obesity epidemic

How have makers of women's clothes changed their sizes to accommodate the obesity epidemic? Chateau Heartiste supplies us with this graph from Wapo's Wonk Blog.

Does 910 pounds qualify as obese?

Kevin Fasick and Aaron Feis report that New York Fire Department employees rescued a

910-pound woman had to be rescued through the window of her second-floor Harlem apartment Friday afternoon after suffering from an undisclosed medical condition, authorities said.

The woman, 70, was hoisted in a large yellow net by FDNY paramedics from her Fifth Avenue home and rushed to St. Luke’s Hospital, where she was listed in stable condition.

“Firemen came down and measured the elevator door,” the building doorman said. “She would not have been able to get out of the door.”

Read more here.

How did she make it to age 70?

A chimera

Victor Davis Hanson writes that

the open-borders movement is race-obsessed to the core. Its message is anti-diversity, and anti-inclusiveness. Latino activists (in the age of the Redskins controversy, how has the racist rubric La Raza continued [3]?) have essentially hijacked U.S. immigration policy and set the following parameters: almost all illegal immigration shall come only across the southern border from Mexico and Latin America. Almost all legal immigration shall be predicated on family ties, which ensures Latinos will be privileged over all other groups, regardless of skill sets or education. If one objects that such a de facto policy is ethnocentric and does not result in ethnic, cultural, or professional diversity, then he is rendered a xenophobe. Racialists through extra-legal means have expropriated federal immigration law. It no longer exists. The losers are the Kenyan dentist, the Filipino nurse, the Estonian doctor, the South Korean architect — any who are not Latino, any who do not break U.S. immigration law, and any who have professional degrees and skill sets to offer America. How is that not biased to ignore all notions of diversity and meritocracy in favor of using only ethnic criteria?

Hanson also writes that there is a health crisis: obesity among Latino immigrants and their American-born children. I see the obesity among our own American citizens, and it is a huge problem. I did not know that it is even worse among Latino immigrants. I have not seen that here in the affluent suburb in Colorado, where I live. There are many Latinos here, but they are certainly not fatter than the average resident of this affluent American suburb. Is he talking mainly about women and children? The men I see are hard-working laborers, and definitely not obese. The obesity I see is mostly among women, white and black.

But, what about comprehensive immigration reform? Hanson writes:

Comprehensive immigration reform is a chimera. It simply does not exist. Talk to any Latino activist in private and ignore what the Democrat and Republican hierarchy profess and the paradox is clear. Secure the border? I know of no supporter of comprehensive immigration reform who, as a requisite for compromise, wants to finish the fence [5], fine employers who hire illegals, and deport those who have broken numerous federal laws. To do so would weaken all the forces that Democrat operatives see breaking their way, that Latino elites see as essential to their own self-appointed perches as group spokesmen for the perennially dispossessed, and that employers see as a way to ensure cheap good labor.

Deportation is now a joke. When the Obama administration bragged of near-record deportations before the 2012 election, we knew it was a lie. And so it was, predicated on redefining “deportation” as temporary turn-back at the border. Otherwise explain to a supporter of CIR that you favor deporting those with criminal records, with no work history, with long residence on public assistance, with only a brief residence in the U.S. — and yet would be willing to grant green cards to those working, paying taxes, not employing false names and fraudulent documents, with long tenure in the U.S., with no record of criminality or public assistance — and outrage still follows! Continue the conversation and you learn that CIR is a synonym for blanket amnesty and its supporters do not wish to deport anyone, to close the border, or fine any employers. Republicans know that as well as Democrats. In my experience, the Tea Party is not very likely to want to deport everyone while the race industry and Chamber of Commerce are very likely to want to deport no one.

If immigrants came in manageable numbers, if they arrived in legal fashion on the basis of ethnically blind and meritocratic criteria, if the host believed in the melting pot and promoted integration, assimilation, and the mastery of the English language, if the arrivals were reminded why they were leaving their homelands and why they were entering the United States, then we could manage. But, alas, the very opposite of these criteria is true.

It has become a cachet of elites to mouth platitudes about “comprehensive immigration reform” as they carefully construct their own apartheid existences in Nancy Pelosi style [6]. They are not so much immune from the ramifications of their own ideology as found guilty of racial bias and prejudice by their very efforts to talk in the abstract in a way that offers them psychological recompense for never living that way in the concrete.

Cancer research

From BBC News:

The globe is facing a "tidal wave" of cancer, and restrictions on alcohol and sugar need to be considered, say World Health Organization scientists.

It predicts the number of cancer cases will reach 24 million a year by 2035, but half could be prevented.

The WHO said there was now a "real need" to focus on cancer prevention by tackling smoking, obesity and drinking.

The World Cancer Research Fund said there was an "alarming" level of naivety about diet's role in cancer.

One of the report's editors, Dr Bernard Stewart from the University of New South Wales in Australia, said prevention had a "crucial role in combating the tidal wave of cancer which we see coming across the world".

"The extent to which we modify the availability of alcohol, the labelling of alcohol, the promotion of alcohol and the price of alcohol - those things should be on the agenda."

He said there was a similar argument to be had with sugar fuelling obesity, which in turn affected cancer risk.

"In the UK, about a third of the most common cancers could be prevented through being a healthy weight, eating a healthy diet and being regularly physically active.

"These results show that many people still seem to mistakenly accept their chances of getting cancer as a throw of the dice, but by making lifestyle changes today, we can help prevent cancer tomorrow."

It advises a diet packed with vegetables, fruit, and wholegrains; cutting down on alcohol and red meat; and junking processed meat completely.

Dr Jean King, Cancer Research UK's director of tobacco control, said: "The most shocking thing about this report's prediction that 14 million cancer cases a year will rise to 22 million globally in the next 20 years is that up to half of all cases could be prevented.

I eat a sandwich chocked full of processed meats and cheese every day. Goodbye. Actually, isn't the reason cancer is on the increase because of the fact that people are living longer?