Wonder if you have a degree in Grievance Mongering Social Justice & Fat Studies if you are qualified to work at Micky D's and ask people if they want fries or to Supersize their order?

I mean, they would understand the consequences . . .

"weight awareness and acceptance"??? I'm aware that fat people are fat. It's impossible not to be aware. I also accept the fact that they are extremely lazy, and have virtually no self control at all.

Not surprisingly the government regulation of food has likely made obesity worse. For sure the number of calories ingested contributes....however a calorie is not a calorie in its effect on the body. Protein affects the body differently than does a carbohydrate and sugars.

Those old studies by Ancel Keys that claimed to show that fat caused fat are so thoroughly debunked now that the food pyramid is actually a cause of obesity. Driving people to overeat carby foods breads and pasta's. The worst offender is of course the ban on sugar imports from Cuba and the subsidization of corn which makes Hugh fructose Corn syrup the ingredient thats used as a sweetner.....I am not advocating sugar, but sugar in comparison to HFC is a distinct inmprovement on the bad effects on your body.

Eat what we were trained to eat by evolution, thats what your body is used to eating.....sorry for the vegans but that means meat with fat and green veggies.

The food pyramid, like most government inventions, is bass ackwards and leads to a number of unintended consequences.

Well, if you're into nailing fat chicks, you can probably pick up a bundle in such a class. If...

Fat studies scholars...?

Is this one of those fat lesbian jokes?

This one might just actually proves Captain Capitalism's point.

Living on a university campus in California, "lesbian studies professor" Rothblum probably hasn't heard about the action that was taken last week to radically reduce government obesity. That sound you hear professor, isn't Speaker Pelosi's taxpayer-fueled jet, it's a meat grinder for bureaucrats and court jesters.

Will Elizibeth May be instructing?

Quatitative easing puts this class at risk. Food prices... And let us not forget how many food-grade and pharma-grade base ingredients are solely sourced in China.

We live in interesting times.

So... this means Michelle Obama is a fascist, right?

Why not simply a class devoted to "Self Control" studies? Oh wait, that would assume taking responsibility for one's own behavior -- how non-PC. My apologies to academia!

So, basically, universities classes are moving in the direction of giving academic credit to self-help groups. Brilliant, this has the potential to open an entire new branch of Studies and New Age Degrees - Bachelor of Self Esteem, Master of Misanthropy.

Wonderful article (in the link) that you wrote for the National Post, Kate. Too True.

"There would be no Fat Studies if there were no obesity epidemic," says Esther Rothblum, a lesbian studies professor at the University of California, San Diego... and, so there would be no lesbian studies if there were no lesbian epidemic, Dear Professor?

Will Elizibeth May be instructing?

Sadly no. She's the "before" model.

Are there really people in this world who willingly adopt titles like "Professor of Fat Studies" or "Professor of Lesbian Studies"?

Can "Professor of Irrelevant Crap" be far behind?

B. Humphreys: Po-tay-to, Po-tah-to.

Later on today I'm going to study fat. My hypothesis is that if butter and peanut butter are combined with flour, sugar and eggs, rolled into balls, flattened with a fork and baked for 13 minutes, it will result in pb cookies.

Who knew studying could be so much fun, and tasty too?

Funny, this "fat-attack" thing.

Just ask any emergency responder:

Question: Ever respond to a call where some runner/athelete/fitness buff collapsed from a heart attack during or immediately after exertion?

Answer: Oh, for sure!

Question: Ever respond to a call where some big fat guy had a heart attack while he was sitting in his easy chair, drinking Molson Ex, eating popcorn and watching the hockey game?

Answer: I can't recall....

At this point I've dropped over 90 lbs, have around 40 to go. Being fat was entirely my fault -- no argument there. Here's what I find funny...

I constantly have female customers coming into my store and asking what diet I used to lose all the weight: Atkins? South Beach? Fit for Life? Lemon Cleanse? Etc.

Almost every single one of them has the most heartbroken look when I tell them I lost the weight by...

a) Eating better
b) Eating less
c) Exercising a LOT more

They all seem to buy the crap on the cover of Women's Weekly each week where you can diet by floating face down in a tub of melted chocolate and lose 10 lbs in five days. Honey, ain't no such thing.

Jamie MacMaster - now look, 911 emergency lines exist for an important purpose. As tempting as it might be, it really isn't right to call them with these kinds of questions. What if you're tying up the line when someone's got a kitten stuck up a tree? Huh?

Your cruelty, Kate, is truly startling.

Let me lay out the things for your small mind to be able to grasp.

1. Soviet Union and Chicom infiltrate the Western governments, bribe and intimidate Western bureaucracy into complicity during the cold war.

2. Corrupt Western bureaucracies institute the policies that weaken the West, including creating favourable legislative climate for redistribution of wealth from low and middle class to the state.

3. The above policies result in evaporation of personal savings for the wast majority of population, forcing women to join workforce and both parents to spend more time making ends meet the needs.

4. That leaves no time for mothers/wifes to cook food for their families and increase dependency on factory-processed shelf items.

5. Japan, mad as hell at the USA for its loss of WWII in the Pacific establishes Ajinomoto Inc. for promotion of MSG and the stupid yanks jump on that idea like a fat guy on a twinkie: the neurotoxin MSG increases food consumption and allows them to make 'food' out of otherwise non-food ingredients on industrial scale, extend its shelf life to months and even years thus increasing profit$. Nothing could be finer, except that...

6. Population, poisoned with MSG, develops wide spectre of health problems, including obesity.

And now you have guts to blame the very people for their medical condition. These people are not the enlightened elites, who have tons of time on their hands to do research, buy raw ingredients and cook meals in their kitchens - these are the lower/middle class folks, who barely have enough time to take their kids to the hockey game in the evening before falling asleep.

We don't need famine - we need to stop corrupt government bureaucracy from colluding with food industry lobbyists at the silent approval of medical establishment. We need to forbid massive poisoning of food and water and then obesity epidemic will stop. But we keep trying the same failing methods over and over.

Stephen @ 9.40am, Cuba is a net importer of sugar, the collapse of the Cuban sugar industry is a direct consequence of communism, and for a few years now, Cuba hasn't had any sugar to sell, they are a net importer of sugar, and imports about 80% of its other foods. I believe this is paid for by the next to free oil imported from Venezuela... Cuba only uses a small percentage of that oil, selling the excess.
*I have no issue with the other commentary.

If there truly were an obesity epidemic, it would be easier for me to find jeans in my size at Mark's Work Wearhouse.

I often can't, so there probably isn't.

The obesity epidemic is in America also. The current alert is not to make people healthy but to make money for people in power and to enable our leaders to grab more power.

If you are really interested in an entire country slimming down, then restrict bovine growth hormones from dairy and beef cattle. Restrict high fructose corn syrup from being put into all of our prepared foods. Mandate proper labels showing GMO foods and countries of origin and so on.

If anyone remembers about 12 years ago, the American Congress considered adding chalk to milk so that it would be thicker and taste better. So the bottom line is to get the additives out of our food for a healthier and slimmer population. Don't hold your breath though.

aaron: "and then obesity epidemic will stop."

Adolf and Joe, consultants for National Socialism, say, been there, Ich Bin Done That. Da.

Adolf:

"Josef Mengele, Angel of Death ***
Dr. Josef Mengele was born on March 16, 1911, the eldest of three sons of Karl and Walburga Mengele. Josef was refined, intelligent and popular in his town."
www.auschwitz.dk/Mengele.htm

Joe:

"gulag: Definition from Answers.com **
In the winter of 1941 a quarter of the Gulag's population died of starvation. [31] 516,841 prisoners died in prison camps in 1941-43. [32] [33] In 1943, the term katorga works ..."
www.answers.com/topic/gulag

Just remove toys from everyone's Happy Meals.

So what's the new word for people who hate or fear fat people?

Plumpists
Lipophobes

Are fat people circumferentially endowed? Horizontally challenged?

Are they born stuffing their pie holes? If you call getting fat a "choice" will you lose the Senate race in Colorado?

If people really want a famine they only have to elect hardcore socialists to governments everywhere.
History has shown that they are very adept at engineering manmade famines and creating artificial shortages along with rationing things that are in abundance.

Additionaly they'll gin up some quasi-moral reasons for it all and you can feel really good about starving to death for some truely great cause.

Kate:

Great NP column. I read it when it was first published. It definitely deserves to be reprinted every couple of years.

Marc @ 12:27

I don't know what Cuba you're familiar with but, when I was last there it was sugar cane from sea to sea. That's one reason most food is imported; most of the arable land is used for a crop that brings in foreign exchange to buy imported food. Nuts? Yep. Sort of like us exporting natural resources to China so that we can import shiploads of their electronic toys and crappy clothes.

I just can't say "I'm a lesbian studies professor" with a straight face.

nothing like quit stuffing the piehole to slow the fatroll growth

Behind every "obesity" nazi is a militant vegan who wants an end to animal protein in the proletariat's diet. Put them on an amino-deprived slave diet so they are less likely to question why agricultural output is incrementally being controlled by politicians.

Joke is, weight loss is quite well understood at the medical level. CALORIC INTAKE REDUCTION, plus exercise as an adjunct and to make the dieter feel better.

Exercise makes you feel better, wadda concept eh?

"Fat Studies" would seem to be the study of how fat chicks can bully society into giving them goodies, not how to motivate, manipulate or otherwise finagle fat people into pushing away from the dinner table a little sooner.

Typical lefty Ivory Tower dumbsheis-ery, in other words. How incredibly expected.

I'm fat and I don't need a PhD to tell me so, or to tell me how I got that way.
I'm not lazy - sorry Pete - just stubborn.
"What do you mean I can't eat in my forties like I did in my twenties?"
At least I saw the light (lite?) and today I weigh fifty pounds less than I did six months ago.
Course I still have at least another hundred to go, but I'll make it.
Thank goodness I didn't get indoctrinated with "fat awareness and acceptance" crap.

By the way, I don't think we need a famine. What we need is a TAX CUT.

Without TAX MONEY funding all this bullsh1t, all these Ivory Tower idiots would be forced to get real jobs. Also all the poor people one sees waddling about at +300lbs, they would also have to get jobs and presently would be under 200lbs. In maybe two years, tops.

Then there is the morbidly, grossly obese ones, the types you find growing to a couch somewhere at 500lbs and northward. They can't get up to get their own food. Somebody else is doing it to them.

Perhaps in those cases if the enabler was deprived of free money (or possibly chucked in jail for the new crime of fatty abuse) the mentally ill fatty wouldn't be able to stay so friggin' fat. After all, if you can't get down to the market on your own, its hard to maintain the weight that's keeping you from getting down to the market.

Just my physical therapist mind wondering out loud if allowing that kind of mental and physical abuse is something our society should be proud of, know what I mean? Its hard to call something "Welfare" if its killing people.

Zog, Cuban sugar production prior to the revolution averaged 6 million tons, in recent years it's about 1.4 million tons. Prior to the revolution, Cuba exported food, now it pays the USA cash (last year about 1/2 a billion $) because... the Cuban slaves pretend to work, the Cuban slave owners pretend to pay them, then they steal the fruits of their labors. The same as all communists.
Cuba is currently negotiating with the government of Brasil for investments into the sugar cane industry. The better to keep the slaves in their place, the same as Canadian/european tourist dollars do.
Prior to the revolution, Cuban's had a higher caloric intake, and freedom.

and in Cuba, there are about 16.3 million acres of arable land, less than 50% is currently under cultivation (for all crops), not "most for cash crops". This is a result of the slave owners dictates.

Aaeon spare me the hyperhole, obesity is the direct result of over eating and not exercising. It's not a medical condition, it's self inflicted. Ever been to an all you can eat buffet in the US, jebus no wonder some many Americans are fat.

How about a program to raise awareness of stupidity?
It appears that stupid is the new smart.

I really don't have a problem with anyone studying anything at University. I do have a problem with said folks demanding or getting taxpayers money to pursue subjects that do not contribute back to the society that has footed the bill. Some things are a better investment than others.

I'd say it's the humanities depts that need o go on a diet. I'd suggest the starvation type...

Flashback.

After "Fat" studies should come "Drunk" Studies and "Stupid" studies.
"Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, boy" -- Dean Vernon Wormer

Aaron;You cant be that stupid.Dont eat that food you are talking about,GROW YOUR OWN!People for thousands of years grew their own,but now you expect other people to provide you with food to your specs.It aint going to happen.There are people that will grow custom food for you but it wont be cheap.

> Dont eat that food you are talking about

This is not about me. This is about hundreds of millions of unsuspecting lower/middle class people. You apparently have reading and attention disorders if you've missed that part.

What a gang of savages you are: it does not matter for you that hundreds of millions unsuspecting customers are being fed diet that requires everyday intake of painkillers to get by, causing them to suffer and creating huge strain on our own pockets, as we have to fund an army of doctors to treat the consequences.

And you claim you are conservatives, people in favour of small government and individual liberties. On the contrary, you are failing every litmus test, which shows that in reality you are collectivist slave runners.

marc @ 3:06 and 3:15 PM ,

I doubt that you've ever set foot in Cuba and are therefore quoting somebody. Do you have a reputable source (preferably a link) for the numbers that you're so freely throwing about?

There's no doubt that Cuba is a shithole but, having worked extensively in Latin America, I can make comparisons and would say that it's neither better nor worse than Guatemala or El Salvador, better than Honduras, Nicaragua or Bolivia, much, much, much worse than Costa Rica or Chile etc.

I hope it is next door to the 'Heating With Wood' course. The Fat Class wood discover a solution.

Being fed, Aaron get real, no one is stuffing the crap down their throats they are stuffing their chubby faces with abandon and free will. If they need painkillers because they are fat perhaps they should get out of the puter chair and go for a walk like us skinny people do.

Zog, all my facts on Cuba are sourced from and through www.babalublog.com and therealcuba.com and desdecuba.com/gererationy Their community is comprised entirely of people that know Cuba, without nuance. In all the countries you've mentioned, those people are free to stay and own their own property, or leave for better prospects elsewhere. In Cuba, there are 11 million slaves, not better or worse ect... and not with "free healthcare" as they've paid for it, with their freedom.

my commentary at 3.15 pm actually was a quote from Raul Castro, proudly telling the assembled media how his country was doing its part for environmentalism ... by keeping 50% of arable land in fallow.

I got the "lecture" from my Doc, that was about 50 pounds ago, I'm on the startling new diet that is "Eat less, move more". It works.
As for fat lesbians? buy a bike off the nearest fish, guaranteed they're not using it.

Kate @4:41 - it's funny, I've had hypothyroidism for over a decade. In fact, the disease is scandalously underresearched; I suspect there's a good deal more to be learned about it. And yet, I take my pills each morning (a little levothyroxine, a little dessicated pig gland), and I am fetchingly svelte.

Aaron - I honestly don't mean to be offensive, but in my experience, and in the experiene of experienced people for whom I have a high regard, Russians tend to be very conspiracy minded. It seems to me quite obvious that obesity in the West comes down to the fact that Westerners a) are rich and b) don't exercise much.

The last statistic I saw in a farm publication (Western Producer I think [no jokes about this please]), quite some time ago, was that 40% of the food that Canadians, and no doubt also Americans, eat is consumed in restaurants.

The portions served by the restaurants are too big and the food too rich. This means less healthy home cooked meals consumed, coupled together with less strenuous employment for most types of work and therefore less exercise. Throw in a generation that has more disposable income to spend on pop, chips fast foods etc and bingo you have an overweight population.

I could probably count the number of chocolate bars and bottles of pop on two hands that I had before my teens. No money at that time for junk foods.

Some people have health issues that create overweight problems.

No doubt just another little law pushed through by the nanny state know betters will fix it.

Black Mamba, "fetchingly svelte", hmmm, how does one whistle in a blog comment.

From 0:30 in:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MheNUWyROv8

This Catherine McMillan sounds like a very dangerous woman, it's like she thinks we live in a free country or something!

Yes, that was very good, let me try it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MheNUWyROv8

Can you imagine, it worked.

larben, that would be to some degree past tense.

Sorry Marc. Those are Cuban exile booster sites. I specifically asked for reputable sources, i.e. statistical tabulations. After seeing your response, I did a little Googling myself but could only come up with isolated annual stuff. eg. the all-time production record was 8 million tons in 1988, just before the Soviet market disappeared. Since you have the interest, and if you have time,try a comprehensive search yourself and get back to me.

We Need A Famine

The way things are going its only a matter of time.

I predict this fat thing won't be around for much longer. When you use food for vehicle fuel, you kinda beg for it.
JMO

> Russians tend to be very conspiracy minded

Yes, that comes from experience.
We know what the government is capable of doing, while you are just astonishingly naive. I don't mean to be offensive.

"So what's the new word for people who hate or fear fat people?
Plumpists
Lipophobes
Are fat people circumferentially endowed? Horizontally challenged?"

I like the term "Gravitationally Challenged". I also advocate the repeal of the Law of Gravity for it's obvious discrimination against Gravitationally Challenged people and in favor of Gravitationally Privileged people. Anyone second this? :-)

Dave in Pa - it's funny, but LC "Elsie" Bennett linked to this a few days ago in another context:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8Y46S5OmGU&feature=related

Why is it that it's the poorest of American society that generally represent the obese?

All the excuses in the world, from “too tired to cook a decent meal” to “lack of education” are pure BS.

The US, Canada, UK Australia etcetera, have millions of useless generational welfare class’s that feel as entitled as Louise the 18th & Marie Antoinette. They feed their faces with whatever tasty treat the working class buys them, while leaving their bratty children for everyone else to contend with.

This was liberalism 101 Chapter 3 in action, Destroying the Western World from Within.