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The future!!!!
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Racists, unite
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Memories. Though I could give a crap about Marvel’s skrulls.
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Amen. I think “fat acceptance” and “obesity rights” and “weightism” are the biggest crocks of bull ever.
Breaking News
Oprah Quitting TV Show In 2011
links for 2008-04-07
April 7th, 2008
4 Comments
the Jared Taylorites love their eugenicist conferences
I’m about 30 lbs overweight and I want to lose it. My young kids like to tease me about that. Also about being such an “old man.” At the company picnic over the weekend my elementary school kids were actually shocked to see how many of my peers were way way beyond that.
However, none of us at work would require a C-130 if we needed an air ambulance:
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,23493865-952,00.html
Ambulance uses air force to ferry obese patients
The same idiots forcing us to confront our hatred of fat people and demanding we rewire our brains to see obesity as attractive are the same nitwits who have brought us the shark-jumping strains of modern feminism. It’s way past equal rights.
While I’d agree that obesity isn’t really in the same class as race and gender, we also have to consider that there is a LOT more to the obesity crisis in America than “slobby people pigging out”. We have (albeit possibly unintentionally) done everything possible to organize our society and way of life to maximize the likelihood of weight gain.
It’s more than just the typical “McDonalds” problem. One of the less emphasized but most important segments in “Super Size Me” was the discussion of portion size – at ALL restaurants. I very rarely eat fast food, but even at most middle to upscale restaurants, the portion sizes of a normal meal are such that I must leave half the entree begind or doggie bag it. The only times I get an entree that is really a “right” amount of food for one sitting are when I go into Manhattan with my food snob buddy for the special dinner out. But very few Americans who eat out are going to do it in a $70/meal or up restaurant.
Our work has changed so that most Americans work in sedentary office jobs. And they often work extra hours over the usual 40 hour week at that. Couple that with commute time (since so many have been convinced that to live well you must live in suburbs far from commerce or public transport), we spend most of our time sitting or driving to and from work. I considered recently that most I ever walked in my life regularly was when we lived in northeast Philly when I was little and I walked every day to elementary school, and usually back and forth for lunch too. Nowadays the idea of letting kids walk to school gives people heebie-jeebies. Must drive the tots, so they never get exercise.
Those suburbs are also designed so that even close to home you MUST drive everywhere. Many tract communities are designed with loopy dead end cul-de-sacs everywhere which make it impossible to walk directly anywhere (if they even have sidewalks!) I saw a study showing that people living in neighborhoods with straight streets that let one walk to the store or playground were on average 10 lbs. lighter than people living in windy-cul-de-sac land.
In our society today, we demand people work more and more hours so there is little time for home meal preparation (leading people to eat out more either at fast food or even regular restaurants with these gargantuan portions), we can’t get much exercise as part of our “normal” routine, not to mention we put corn syrup in almost every food. What’s surprising to me isn’t how many people in America are fat, but that more people AREN’T fat! If you have to make an extra effort over and above your normal routine to eat decently and get some exercise, then it’s inevitable that many people won’t make it. If we can design our lives so that we get a modicum of exercise as part of our normal everyday activity (walking to work or school) and have time to prepare healthy meals at home, we’ll revert to the pre-1970 levels of obesity.
I agree with much of what Rheinhard says about this. Also, if one looks at Maslow’s pyramid, staying healthy and exercising is probably way below worrying about job security….