if Laurel were a regular columnist.

How did this become a discussion on so-called "obesity epidemic"? All the models pictured in the article appear thin.

Oh, I know. Certain people have nothing better to do than rant about how every non-thin person is responsible for the lack of funding for public parks, bad restaurant food (you can't order a salad?), and general laziness and stupidity. Of course, every non-thin person must be a couch potato who is glued to the couch, lives on junk food, and is stupid, lazy, and aging at an accelerated rate. Yeah, right. Morons.

I know, don't feed the trolls. By the way, I would consider renewing my subscription if Laurel was a regular columnist. She is the one of the few regular posters with any sense.

Yes the obesity epidemic effects everyone.

There are the medical costs which are enormous and unsustainable.

There is the intellectual laziness and self delusion it tends to lead to, including the victim industry, such as the lies BS and you are demonstrating.

There are the effects on mood and work productivity that effects everyone. Fat is hormonally active and effects mood. Obesity leads to heath problems which then decrease energy levels and mobility.

There is the cost to society of obesity culture. As the culture values exercise less and makes fitness more difficult, there are fewer entertainments promoting health, less parks, less healthy restaurants, etc.

Not all big people are lazy of course. Especially not when young. But by the age of 30's most obese people are signifigantly degraded in physical and mental functioning, having serious health problems ranging from hormonal to organ degradation to skeletal problems, behaving decades older than they are.

The nationwide epidemic of obesity effects everyone.

Besides this women seem much better able to live a long time with disabling obesity than men do. It seems they have evolved a mechanism which keeps their hearts strong even when they don't exercise. This is no doubt a result of the fact that there is a huge benefit from energy conservation, fat storage, and therefore from inactivity during pregnancy and nursing.

"that is, the weight of WOMEN."

Wrong. Just more of your paranoia. I was referring to widespread obesity and nowhere did I say "female obesity."

I was responding to this myth from pseudo-feminist BS'ers that models are often anorexic. Which is really just envy and not fooling anyone. The only people who believe that are people, often women, who are jealous and have given up trying to get fit.

There's much less of an industry devoted to telling men their beer guts are good, or that women are unfairly prejudiced against their double or triple chinned flabbiness. There's much less of a "victim" industry for men.

is what I was referring to. But since you bring it up this is an issue with cremation now, if you are too fat when you die your relatives will be unable to have you cremated because of the grease problem.

Oddly enough, I happened to read about this recently: there were fat people in Auschwitz. There was testimony at Nuremberg about how bodies were burned for fuel. The testimony included how the Nazis had tried out various combinations of fat and thin corpses. Apparently, they'd discovered combinations that would burn with the least tending and the least need for adding other fuel sources. As I recall, the favored combination was: one fat person, one thin person, and one child.

Don't mention Auschwitz unless you have the guts to hear what actually happened there.

ANYONE CAN LOSE WEIGHT AND CAN STAY A HEALTHY WEIGHT THEY JUST CAN'T EAT AS MUCH CRAP AS ALL THEIR FRIENDS. You're opinions Laurel are compelling evidence though that the problem will never be solved until some form of medical intervention that directly targets the DESIRE to overeat is developed. One thing that would probably make any FAT SLOB willing to go on a diet would be if they had to deal with all of the consequences of another fat slobs failure to do so, unfortunately they are too fucked up to be able to handle the job so a thin person has to do it.

it's as worthy of comment as smoking, drinking and drunk driving, or drug use and is is MUCH MUCH more widespread. If you had ever had to deal with individuals disabled or limited by obesity as I have, (an experience which MANY MANY MORE people are going to have in the future than have had it so far given current trends) you would know why it gets talked about a lot.

It's interesting how you guys come out of the woods whenever the discussion turns to weight -- that is, the weight of WOMEN. (Apparently it doesn't matter what a guy weighs, big surprise.) What's your beef with the overweight, anyhow? Did a heavyset person scare you when you were in a stroller?

Why, healthyskeptic, is this worth 3-4 posts IN A ROW? Is hating on people because you don't like their looks THAT important to you? Or inflating your own self-worth because presumably YOU are a perfect weight and enjoy sneering at others less fortunate?

I dispute your statistics anyways. The "true anorexia" they are talking about only means they wish to limit it to only those who are at death's door -- typically this person is less than half normal weight, as much as SEVENTY lbs underweight (not the 20 you sneeringly propose). But to only talk about that extreme is to ignore the MILLIONS of women (and little girls) who are engaged in what is more appropriately called "disordered eating" - they binge and starve and purge, trying to look like models or compete with the images they see everyday of unrealistically thin women.

It's true that people use "anorexia" as a shorthand for this whole category, even when they often really mean "bullimia". However, it doesn't change the basic meaning.

The problem you are deliberately blind to, with all your hating on the obese, is that the constant striving to be thinner than nature intended, the diets, the criticism (of which your comments are typical), the social ostracism...all of this adds up to the OTHER extreme of disordered eating, which is overeating. If you look at it that way, it's just a continuum, with extreme, fatal anorexia on one end and extreme morbid obesity on the other, with a big "hump" in the middle which is the great mass of women who are not overweight (or only slightly so in a non-lifethreatening way) but are wretchedly miserable because they can't control their bodies.

Isn't that what much of it is about anyhow? Healthyskeptic claims that "anyone can instantly control their weight". Gee, it's wonderful that a brilliant physician, bariatrician and scientific researcher like yourself has bothered to post here on Salon....ooops, NOT. In other words, you don't know anything you haven't read on Wikipedia. The REAL reality of medical research is that we have VERY LITTLE control over our weight, and any attempt to CONTROL WEIGHT BY REDUCING DIETS is doomed to failure. Yes, starvation will remove some weight but it comes back as the body compensates by slowing metalbolism and increasing hunger until even the most disciplined person is forced to eat and regain the weight (and often more).

I suggest you two "fact spewing" haters read the wonderful book, "Rethinking Thin" by NYTimes science reporter Gina Kolata (herself slender), because she details the research, scientists and specifics far better than I ever could. Another good book is "Good Calorie, Bad Calorie" by Gary Taube.

If you would bother to read the facts, open your petty hate-filled bigotted minds and stop snarking at people for no other reason than YOU DON'T LIKE THE WAY THEY LOOK, maybe you'd have something better to do than post over and over again.