Letters to the Editor
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Anonymous--regarding fat people
"If you eat enough to maintain 50 pounds of extra fat on you you are pig, period"
No, not necessarily.
This is anecdotal, and I don't claim to know what makes all fat people fat. I have a (white female) friend who's seriously obese.
One fall break, I spent a long weekend with her and her parents. Both of her parents are also seriously fat. Practically round. So it's not in a genetic vaccuum that she ended up fat.
We cooked several meals together...one I remember was a slim salmon fillet, asparagus, and corn bread. I was barely even full. In fact, I was hungry nearly the entire 4-day weekend. They just didn't eat that much. *Nowhere* near enough to sustain me for any extended length of time. And I've always been thin--at the time, I was on the low end of normal weight for my height.
Obviously I don't know the whole family's health history and genetic profile, but it's sure not how they eat that makes them fat.
There are plenty of fat people who got that way by being unwilling to control their eating. But it is *far* from true for everyone--it's unfair and unfounded to insult and accuse people whose health background you're really in no position to know.
I'm sorry that you've been so maltreated by people whose obesity was clearly a matter of serious dysfunction. But what you experienced doesn't make what you think true for everyone.