UK women are 'fattest in Europe'

[Loppan Torkel]

What faults?

 

[NovaKart]

There are other things harmful to people's health besides obesity.

Getting stressed out about fat people might be one of them.

 

[Zelig]

Do you really think people are going to stop eating junk food and start buying organic vegetables and yoga mats? This will just take more money out of the pockets of poor people. I would prefer society butt out of what people choose to eat and look at their own faults.

What faults of my own should I look at?

 

[Quackers]

I don't think you could fit all the text in one post

 

[Loppan Torkel]

there is a text limit, you know.

 

[Zelig]

That's fine, I only need a few, to start the fixin'.

 

[Dachs]

That's fine, I only need a few, to start the fixin'.

For starters, you're not American

 

[Loppan Torkel]

That's fine, I only need a few, to start the fixin'.

You seem to be mishandling the syrup quite badly. What underlying issues could be the cause of it?

 

[squall78]

USA just barely #1?

 

[Narz]

Think about it, fat people are almost always stronger than skinny people

I dunno, I had this dude help me move my girlfriend's dresser once, he must've been at least 275, maybe 300 and he was huffing and puffing while my skinny ass was having no probs. Some big dudes are badass like Elta but not all heavyset guys are particularly strong.

 

[Narz]

So having a fat kid is the same as not sending them to school, sexually abusing them, etc?

Well if your kid is fat it shows you're not doing the best job. Probably letting them watch too much TV, not eat well, etc. That said, being a parent is hard & the answer is social support, not being a jerk about it.

I would prefer people just eat what they want without the government having to encourage us or discourage us like we're children.

The problem is the govt. sponsors the crap in the first place. Just subsidize the good stuff (fruits & veggies) and stop subsidizing meat, dairy & corn and the problems take care of themselves.

That's cute. If I had a Euro for every time someone mentioned straw man I could finance my own wizard of oz themed porno.

That would be kind of a sausage fest, don't you think? How many females in that one? One good witch, one bad one & Dorthy. Might go over well with the furry crowd though.

 

[Hehehe]

There might be some truth in that. As people get fat, their muscles slowly adjust to hauling more weight, and become stronger in order to keep the weight in balance, so a fat person might be stronger as a side effect of hauling all that weight around.

Just a guess, of course. No clue as to whether or not it is actually true.

this would be why they are stronger. Obviously if you are a body builder, then you would most likely be stronger, but I'd say the average fat person that does not work out is stronger on average than the average thin person who does not work out.

It's actually even simpler than that; there's nothing more anabolic than lots of food, and a person who does nothing other than sit on his butt and overeat will gain a lot of fat but also a significant amount of muscle underneath all that fat. If he or she also does any form of physical activity (such as walking around with all that fat) they will gain even more muscle.

Fat isn't going to turn into muscle without exercise. And fat isn't concentrated on the arms, so it isn't going to buff one's arm strength (which is what you'd need in a fight). And what little fat there is on the arms trains the wrong muscles to be of use in a fight. Carrying all that fat around would train legs, assuming the person in question gets as much exercise as a normal weight person. And even then, the fat person would be at a disadvantage in a fight, due to carrying all that fat around (he would be slower than a thin person).

That is not to say that body fat has no advantages in a fight. It does protect one's body (not sure if it's relevant in a fist fight but it does protect from cuts at least) and simply having extra mass may be useful in some situations. Someone with a lot of fat would probably have an advantage when wrestling.

 

[Mise]

I'd rather get in a fight with a skinny guy than a fat guy. Getting beaten up by a fat guy is far more embarassing, and if you win you can say "he was HUGE!".

 

[Leifmk]

Fat isn't going to turn into muscle without exercise.

Fat never really turns into muscle. The fact is, just sitting around on your ass and eating a lot more food than you need WILL result in you packing on some muscle (unless you were already highly trained and have just stopped training, of course, in which case you will be losing muscle mass instead).

And fat isn't concentrated on the arms, so it isn't going to buff one's arm strength (which is what you'd need in a fight).

Arm strength is nice and all, but pretty much all useful power comes from the ass.

Extra body mass, within reason (not talking about people who are so fat they lose normal mobility, here), is always useful in a fight or in any application of strength, even if it is just extra body mass from fat; it makes you harder to handle, more stable, protects you somewhat, and improves your leverage. There are, however, two other reasons why most competitive fighters you see are pretty lean:

1) Weight classes.

2) Carrying extra body mass around may make you stronger and tougher but it also makes you wear out faster, and this is a very very big drawback in combat sports (when two guys who both know what they're doing face off against each other, and neither gets in a lucky KO strike or submission hold early on, the loser is usually the first guy who gets fatigued).

In weightlifting and powerlifting, endurance is not really a major issue in competitions, which is why guys in the highest weight class tend to look like... well... google up some pictures of Shane Hamman if you want.

 

[Winner]

So having a fat kid is the same as not sending them to school, sexually abusing them, etc?

In principle, yes. Allowing your children to get obese in such an early age is a serious thing. It literally damages their health just as much as if they were permanently malnourished. You can as well give them cigarettes and booze if that's how you want to raise your children (I mean if you could).

I would prefer people just eat what they want without the government having to encourage us or discourage us like we're children.

But children are children! And if their parents are too stupid to take a good care of their kids, then the state needs to take action. What I propose is fairly doable - children in most countries go to regular health checks. If the doctor finds out the kid is overweight, he/she should notify the parents and give them some advice as to how to adjust the child's diet and lifestyle to deal with it. If the parents ignore the advice and the kid is still fat the next time, then the doctor should have the option to inform social services, which would then deal with the situation in a more repressive manner.

The threat of it alone should be enough for most parents to do the right thing.

 

[Traitorfish]

Maybe because your comment didn't really include any proposition that could be responded to?

What do you mean by "proposition"? I included one explicit criticism of your reasoning, that a generalised or systematic social exclusion requires a group to be of a particular size to come into being, so the increase in the size of a given group from negligible to considerable can be the preconditions for social exclusion as much as acceptance, but rather than replying to that you just repeated your previous claim that obesity must have been normalised because it is relatively common as compared to previous periods in history.

 

[warpus]

Is this an anglo-saxon thing?

 

[NovaKart]

Well if your kid is fat it shows you're not doing the best job. Probably letting them watch too much TV, not eat well, etc. That said, being a parent is hard & the answer is social support, not being a jerk about it.


The problem is the govt. sponsors the crap in the first place. Just subsidize the good stuff (fruits & veggies) and stop subsidizing meat, dairy & corn and the problems take care of themselves.


That would be kind of a sausage fest, don't you think? How many females in that one? One good witch, one bad one & Dorthy. Might go over well with the furry crowd though.

Lots of people aren't great parents, it doesn't mean they need social services bothering them because they let their kids eat junk food.

Aren't food subsidies more for helping farmers?

And last, I never mentioned the film was specifically hetero.

In principle, yes. Allowing your children to get obese in such an early age is a serious thing. It literally damages their health just as much as if they were permanently malnourished. You can as well give them cigarettes and booze if that's how you want to raise your children (I mean if you could).



But children are children! And if their parents are too stupid to take a good care of their kids, then the state needs to take action. What I propose is fairly doable - children in most countries go to regular health checks. If the doctor finds out the kid is overweight, he/she should notify the parents and give them some advice as to how to adjust the child's diet and lifestyle to deal with it. If the parents ignore the advice and the kid is still fat the next time, then the doctor should have the option to inform social services, which would then deal with the situation in a more repressive manner.

The threat of it alone should be enough for most parents to do the right thing.

That's a horrible intrusion into people's personal lives, I can see it doing a lot more harm than good. Fining the parents just takes money away from that kid's family, and putting the child in foster care would be terrible. Parents, particularly low-income parents who are often obese have enough to worry about without having to deal with the government taking their kids because they failed the weigh-in.

 

[Hehehe]

Fat never really turns into muscle. The fact is, just sitting around on your ass and eating a lot more food than you need WILL result in you packing on some muscle (unless you were already highly trained and have just stopped training, of course, in which case you will be losing muscle mass instead).

Of course fat never turns into muscle literally (muscle is made of protein). And of course you will gain little muscle to carry that weight.

Arm strength is nice and all, but pretty much all useful power comes from the ass.

Can you please elaborate? I've never trained my ass but then again I'm not a fighter. Of course it's not all arm strength and there are a lot of other muscle groups involved when landing a punch (most of these muscle groups are not trained by simply having a lot of fat). But ass strength? Do explain please.

Extra body mass, within reason (not talking about people who are so fat they lose normal mobility, here), is always useful in a fight or in any application of strength, even if it is just extra body mass from fat; it makes you harder to handle, more stable, protects you somewhat, and improves your leverage. There are, however, two other reasons why most competitive fighters you see are pretty lean:

1) Weight classes.

2) Carrying extra body mass around may make you stronger and tougher but it also makes you wear out faster, and this is a very very big drawback in combat sports (when two guys who both know what they're doing face off against each other, and neither gets in a lucky KO strike or submission hold early on, the loser is usually the first guy who gets fatigued).

My post assumes that this hypothetical fight would be a fist fight rather than a wrestling match. That means there is no handling and leverage is not as useful.
I don't know which one a fight between two amateurs is going to resemble (that would, of course, depend on how serious this fight would be).

In weightlifting and powerlifting, endurance is not really a major issue in competitions, which is why guys in the highest weight class tend to look like... well... google up some pictures of Shane Hamman if you want.

Yes, I know the basics of strength training, thank you. But we were talking about people who are not bodybuilders, were we not?

I forgot to mention, I believe it is fair to assume that, in general, a fat person get less exercise overall than a thin person, which might help the thin person in this hypothetical scenario. I have a friend who is somewhat overweight and sometimes he just can't be bothered to do simple physical activity, such as going up four stories worth of stairs or walking a few kilometers.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Can you please elaborate? I've never trained my ass but then again I'm not a fighter. Of course it's not all arm strength and there are a lot of other muscle groups involved when landing a punch (most of these muscle groups are not trained by simply having a lot of fat). But ass strength? Do explain please.

I hope it's just a typo and he meant mass.