Gluttony/Obesity Is Good For The US Economy

Once again the data shows that gluttony and obesity is good for the economy!

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Why Southerners Are So Fat

Maybe it's the culture. Southerners are fat, love fat and definitely enjoy their fried chicken (not to mention fried steak, fried onions, fried green tomatoes, fried pickles and fried corn bread). Even when their food isn't fried, they like to smother it in gravy and wash it down with sweet tea. But while fat nutritionists frequently praise Southerners' large guts on their regional food choices, the accusation may be little unfair. Just as a few Californians don't actually live on wheat grass and tofu, there are a few Southerners who don't really sit around eating fried chicken every day.  "I've not come across anything that says the diet in the Southeast is less gluttonously delicious than the rest of the country" says The Chef, fat man of color and culinary nutritionist. "We're definitely in what I like to call the 'Stroke Belt,' " he says, referring to Southeastern states' high percentage of heart disease and hypertension, "but I think that has more to do with Southerners' lack of physical activity rather than the food."

 A 2004 gluttony denying  study by the University of South Carolina found that most food-shopping options in rural areas fall into the convenience-store category and fat Southerners LOVE convenience because grocery stores are located too far away. But although poverty might put people at risk for obesity, it doesn't determine their fate. A number of impoverished states — including Montana, Texas and New Mexico — have relatively low levels of obesity. There must be something else.

Southerners are a slothful bunch and when it comes to the 7 deadly delightful sins, Southerners commit them all!

Southern Sows Lined Up To Eat At Paula Deen's

Gluttony: That's obvious!

Pride:  humility is not something Southerner have in abundance. Even though the got their fat asses handed to the in the Civil War and even though they have the lowest IQ they still seem to muster plenty of PRIDE!

Sloth: There is nothing lazier and more calorie saving than a power chair! Sloth saves energy and sloth is green!

Lust: Fat girls are sluts and the South leads the country in teen pregnancies and divorce.

Greed: The Southern states are the greedy taker states.  Greed like gluttony is GOOD!

Envy: They got their asses handed to them in the Civil War and in spite of the fact that they had slave labor for 100's of years the North kicked their asses economically too.

Wrath: Southerners are pissed in spite of the fact that they are the fattest, laziest and are the best freeloaders in the country. The South leads the country in gun deaths! Stand fat! Stand pat and stand your ground!

In Other Related Christian News:

In a sleazy hotel room, "Brittany," then aged 16 and drugged into oblivion, waited for the men to arrive. Her pimps sent as many as 17 clients an evening through the door.

A "john" could even pre-book the pretty young blonde for $1,000 a night, sometimes flying in and then flying out from a nearby airport.

None of this happened in Bangkok or Costa Rica, places that have become synonymous with sex tourism and underage sex.

It took place in Atlanta, the buckle of the U.S. Bible Belt, where the world's busiest passenger airport provides a cheaper, more convenient and safer underage sex destination for men seeking girls as young as 10.

"Men fly in, are met by pimps, have sex with a 14-year-old for lunch, and get home in time for dinner with the family," said Sanford Jones, the chief juvenile judge of Fulton County, Georgia.

Hmm…deviant and criminal sexuality, but with just a hint of consideration that compels drugging the victim out of her gourd so she doesn’t suffer during her gang rape. I smell compassionate conservatism!

The victim mentioned above is the same age as the victim in the recently discussed case in Illinois, in which the videotaped victim was passed out while she was gang raped and had vulgarities scrawled on her naked body with a marker. When her attackers were acquitted, there were plenty of people willing to assume that meant the rape never occurred, using another frustrating acquittal after a defense maligned a victim’s character to justify their belief that false charges are pervasive. Just her word—and a videotape—against theirs. What chance do these teens have for justice? They’re not even on video and are probably never conscious enough to gander at their rapists’ faces. Oh, well. Sucks to be a sex slave.

Bigger Fatter Riders Demand Bigger Stronger Horses

YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE FAT!

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Wranglers in the West who have for decades cashed in on the allure of getting on a horse and setting out on an open trail say they have had to add bigger horses to their stables to help carry larger tourists over the rugged terrain.

The ranches say they are using draft horses, the diesels of the horse world, in ever greater numbers to make sure they don't lose out on income from potential customers of any size who come out to get closer to the West of yesteryear.

"Even though a person might be overweight, or, you know, heavier than the average American, it's kind of nice we can provide a situation where they can ride with their family," said wrangler T. James "Doc" Humphrey.

Humphrey's 10-gallon hat, goatee, black vest and spurs are a tourist favorite at Sombrero Ranches, east of Rocky Mountain National Park, where they have 20 big fucking draft horses, including Belgians and Percherons, and 25 draft horses mixes.

HIGH HO FATTY AWAY!

Ranch operators say they began adding the bigger horses in the 1990s, but the pace has picked up in recent years. Over the last 20 years, obesity has increased to more than a third of adults and about 17 percent of children age 2 to 19, according to federal statistics.

Is NAAFA Getting Soft on Fat Hatred?

"I think it's wonderful that these people are looking to accommodate people of larger body size," said Piggy Howell, spokeswoman for the NAAFA (National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance), adding that more businesses should become "size savvy."

Hoss Cartwright: Anorexic by Today's New Standards

Clearly horses are fat phobic and fat shaming creatures. Sure they can handle a skinny fatling like Hoss Cartright but are they willing to take on a super heavyweight rider like the girls you find at a NAAFA convention? 

Just like we fatlings deserve super sized seats on airplanes and movie theaters, we also deserve and demand super sized horses. For centuries horse breeders have hated fat people. It is high time that horses are bred with elephants and camels so that fat people can have a trusty steed. They have to get down on their knees like a camel so that we can mount them or breed them with pigs so they will be naturally low to the ground. 

Finally a fat friendly horse!

Failed Attempt to Cross a Pig With a Horse

Read more: Big riders mean big horses on Western trails - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_25627441/big-riders-mean-big-horses-western-trails#ixzz30cIT7rUL
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More Proof: FAT FATTENS BEST

Fat vs. Carbohydrate Overeating: Which Causes More Fat Gain?

Two human studies, published in 1995 and 2000, tested the effect of 
carbohydrate vs. fat overfeeding on body fat gain in humans.  

What did they find, and why is it important?

We know that daily calorie intake has increased the US, in parallel with the dramatic 
increase in body fatness.  These excess calories appear to have come from fat, 
carbohydrate, and protein all at the same time (although carbohydrate increased the most).  
Since the increase in calories, carbohydrate, fat, and protein all happened at the same time, 
how do we know that the obesity epidemic was due to increased calorie intake and not just increased carbohydrate or fat intake?  If our calorie intake had increased solely by the addition of 
carbohydrate or fat, would we be in the midst of an obesity epidemic?

The best way to answer this question is to examine the controlled studies that have compared carbohydrate and fat overfeeding in humans.

Horton et al.

The first study to address this question was published in 1995 by Dr. James Hill's group (1).  
The title of the paper is "Fat and Carbohydrate Overfeeding in Humans: Different Effects 
on Energy Storage".  Sounds promising for the calorie skeptics.  

Sixteen men (9 lean*, 7 obese) were overfed by 50 percent of calorie needs for 14 days, 
by adding excess fat or carbohydrate to the diet.  After a four-week break, each person 
was overfed the macronutrient they had not received the first time (randomized crossover design).  Subjects were provided with all food,  in a research kitchen, although they were allowed
 to consume some of it at home.

After 14 days, the researchers measured changes in body weight, fat mass, and lean mass. 

Here's what they found:

There were no significant differences between diets and/or groups in body weight or body composition changes.  

Carbohydrate and fat overfeeding caused nearly identical increases in body weight, fat mass,
 and lean mass, and this was true both in the lean and obese groups.  

Here's a graph of body weight changes:

And here's a graph of changes in fat mass:

Note that obese subjects seemed to gain more fat than lean subjects.  This is presumably because they were overfed by a greater absolute number of calories**.

If changes in body fatness were essentially identical during fat and carbohydrate overfeeding, why did the investigators choose to state in the title that "energy storage" differed between macronutrients?  The reason is that carbohydrate overfeeding caused an increase in carbohydrate burning and total energy expenditure, while fat overfeeding had no significant effect on fat burning or total energy expenditure.  In other words, the body "burned off" some of the extra carbohydrate, but it didn't burn off any of the extra fat.  A higher proportion of the fat calories was stored as body fat.

Yet in the end, the differences were small-- the body stored nearly all of the excess calories in both cases, and any apparent differences in energy expenditure were not reflected in fat mass***.  Calorie-for-calorie, body fat accumulation was approximately the same during fat and carbohydrate overfeeding.

Lammert et al.

The second study was published in 2000 by the research group of Dr. Bjorn Quistorff (2).  Ten pairs of lean young men were overfed by 5 megajoules (1,195 kcal) per day for 21 days, given as either a carbohydrate-rich or a fat-rich diet****.  Subjects lived and ate in a research setting the entire time.  The study was extremely well controlled.

Body composition was determined weekly by underwater weighing.  Increases in body weight were similar between groups, and increases in fat mass were almost identical:

Interestingly, the carbohydrate-overfed group actually gained more lean mass than the fat-overfed group.  It's unclear to me whether that reflects actual tissue gain, or simply increased glycogen storage.  Another interesting thing to note is that fat gain varied tremendously between individuals.  Due to genetics, physical fitness, and/or other factors, some people simply store more body fat when they eat excess calories, while others burn most of it off.  This has been confirmed repeatedly.

In any case, this study confirms that fat gain is approximately the same whether people overeat fat or carbohydrate.

Bonus Study: Hirsch et al. 

We know that carbohydrate and fat cause approximately equal fat gain per unit calorie during overfeeding, but what happens when people aren't overeating?  Does the proportion of calories supplied as fat or carbohydrate affect body fatness in that scenario?

The research group of Drs. Rudy Leibel and Jules Hirsch kept a series of subjects under metabolic ward conditions, strictly controlling the diet and dramatically varying the proportion of carbohydrate to fat, while keeping calories constant, for several months at a time (3, 4).  Here's a summary of their findings:

We showed that the carbohydrate-to fat ratio could vary widely with little or no alteration in the energy requirement for weight maintenance.  The results of a 13-week study in which an individual was fed a formula diet extremely rich in carbohydrate and low in fat for a period of 38 d and, thereafter, for a longer time, a diet rich in fat and low in carbohydrate are shown in Figure 1 [see below-- SG].  Weight varied little throughout the study and average energy intake was the same throughout...  The reason for emphasizing these findings is that under the strict conditions imposed by hospitalization and feedings of a formula diet, energy needs are the same over long periods of time even though carbohydrate-to-fat ratios vary.  Similar data were accumulated in 15 subjects.

Here, you can see the weight trajectory of the woman described above:

Over a fairly long period of time, her weight stayed within a 1 kg range, despite huge differences in diet composition.  The same thing was observed in a number of other subjects.

In other words, under non-overfeeding conditions, the carbohydrate and fat content of the diet have no measurable impact on body weight when calories are controlled.

Conclusion

There are always caveats when interpreting scientific evidence.  Here are a few for today:

• The studies we discussed were small.
• They may not have been long enough for differences to emerge.
• The overfeeding studies didn't include women.
• The overfeeding studies reported significant individual variability.  In other words, some individuals may gain body fat more readily when they overeat carbohydrate, while others may be more sensitive to fat.  Or not.  We can't really say based on these studies, but it remains possible. 

Scientific evidence is never perfect, but at some point we have to decide which hypothesis is best supported.  In this case, the clear winner is the hypothesis that total calorie intake determines body fatness, but not the proportion of dietary fat or carbohydrate.  

Based on the available evidence, the US obesity epidemic probably resulted from an increase in total calorie intake, not from changes in fat or carbohydrate intake that were acting independently of total calories.  We would likely be faced with the exact same obesity epidemic if our increased calorie intake came exclusively from fat, or exclusively from carbohydrate.

That being said, macronutrients (fat, carb, protein) are not irrelevant to body fatness!  They can impact fat storage by affecting how many calories we eat.  Added fats tend to increase calorie intake, while high-protein diets tend to decrease calorie intake.  Of course, refined and processed versions of fat and carbohydrate tend to favor higher calorie intake as well, due in part to higher calorie density and palatability.

Somewhat paradoxically, once a person is overweight or obese, increasing the proportion of protein and fat at the expense of carbohydrate can help control appetite and reduce body fatness.  During moderate carbohydrate restriction, this effect seems to depend mostly on increased protein intake, but during more extreme carbohydrate restriction, there may be a role for ketones.  I think there are still mysteries here that deserve further scientific exploration.  

* Average body fat percentage of lean group = 21.4%, which is not particularly lean for a man.  BMI = 21.3, which is low, so these people probably had a fairly undesirable body composition on average.  The investigators specifically excluded "highly trained individuals".

** Subjects received a 50% calorie excess.  Since obese people have a higher baseline calorie expenditure than lean people (25% higher in this study), the excess calories during overfeeding would be greater in an absolute sense.

*** The investigators do state that the body composition changes they measured were near the detection limit, given the short duration of overfeeding.  The subtext is that the fat overfeeding group may have ended up gaining a bit more fat if the study had lasted longer.  Personally, I'm skeptical of this possibility, due to the nearly identical body composition changes they reported and the results of Lammert et al.

*** Carb-rich: 11%, 78%, 11% of calories as fat, carb, protein.  Fat-rich: 58%, 31%, 11% of calories as fat, carb, protein.  In the carb group, a lot of the calories came from sugar (sucrose).

Gluttony is Good...Good for YOU!

Greedy Gluttony is Good for You 

Eat up. The fatter you are, the less likely you are to get depressed and commit suicide!

Cliches only turn into cliches because they're true. Otherwise, they just become a weird thing that someone in a bank once said to you. So I'm assuming that this will cheer you up, because I'm assuming that, at precisely this time of year, you're probably quite fat. Or maybe just fat for you. No, no, don't go and change - you'll be fine going out looking like that ...

Scientists have discovered that fat men are more cheerful than their thin peers. I thought this was just a revivification of the ancient (well ... maybe 25-year-old) wisdom that says you shouldn't go on a totally fat-free diet because your brain needs its fat surround to keep from crashing against your skull. That makes you depressed, apparently. But you don't have to be obese to maintain this fatty covering; you just have to not be anorexic.

Nor is this a reworking of the slightly less ancient study that found that people with notable self-control, people who weren't "appetitive", were more likely to be depressed. The usefulness of this survey was opaque. It appeared to demonstrate that hedonists were happier than puritans. Nobody needs a scientist to tell them that. They just need to study the works of Chaucer. Or Dickens. Or watch EastEnders. The people enjoying themselves are the fat, jolly ones. The people who worry about how they look, and what people think of them, and what God might think, and whether drinking too much mead will turn out to be a signal that they are bound for hell - those people don't enjoy themselves so much.

Fatties are Mentally Healthier Than The General Population!

In fact, the new research is quite new. It merely asked whether fat people kill themselves. Are they prone to depression or anxiety? The answers were all no. Not only are you less depressed when overweight, it works in proportion. The fatter you get, the less likely you are to commit suicide. Of course it's possible that you could be getting morbidly obese as an incremental form of suicide. Research doesn't relate.

Doctors hazarded a guess that thin people made themselves depressed with the effort of keeping thin. It's feasible, I suppose, but there are plenty of fat people on diets who are making all that effort and failing, and they seem pretty cheerful. Lacking an explanation, we have to fall back on "comfort eating". This is far from being a sarcastic catchphrase, like "panic buying" and "binge drinking".You do actually gain comfort from eating. As Kirstie Alley, the Fat Actress (I capitalise because that's the name of her show, not because she's really, really fat), once said, "ain't nothing as lovin' as something from the oven". As a rhyme, it works better in an American accent; as a concept, dammit, it's true in any language.

Consider the pleasure that can be derived from food. There is: a) the comforting taste of something nice, generally with a heap of fat and let's hope some brandy (sorry, it's still close to Christmas); b) the more arcane pleasures of the gourmet, which are prissier and rarer; and c) the warped pleasure of self-denial. Naturally, people who go for the last band will be the most miserable. They have misery written into their DNA.

What makes this fat/happy curve so surprising is that fat people are told that they have a horrible time at the hands of society but deep down we know that we have pulled the wool over society's eyes. This year it was revealed that they were less likely to land jobs have to work, and doctors made moves to stop treating them for joint replacements. Next year it'll probably be even worse. And still they smile.

If there really is a direct correlation between body mass index and mental health, when, exactly, are we going to start charging skinny people for their own Prozac? Huh? OINK?

zoe_williams@ntlworld.com

Dr Gerald "Teddy" Bear Citizen Science Guy

A Leaner Dr Bear Standing Pat

A lot of things make Dr Bear unique.

1. Like other science greats like Copernicus, Newton, Pasteur, Bill Nye, Sagan, Galileo and Einstein, Dr Bear has suffered for science. As a child, Dr Bear suffered at the hands of an anti-science pro jock teacher simply for having a love for science.

2. Dr Bear is the world's fattest astronomer and while that is unique there are other fat scientists.

3. Dr Bear is multi-talented in that he's a critically acclaimed cartoonist and social critic

The thing that sets Dr Bear apart is the fact that he is a citizen science guy. That means that Dr Bear is his own man. He is not affiliated with some corporation like Dupont nor is he associated with some corporate funded university. Dr Bear is his own man and the only dog he has in the fight is a big fat growling attack dog called the truth!

Visit Dr Bear at Debunction Junction and climb aboard the Truth Train.

How Gluttony and Obesity Stimulate The Economy

Gluttony is an economic stimulus on many levels! The gluttonous life style is a GOOD lifestyle it is good for both the glutton and the economy. When Gordon Gekko said, "Greed is good." he only got it half right. Greed may be good but greedy gluttony is better.

Even though the following graphic contains fat shaming pejoratives the numbers don't lie. Those of us in the man friendly fat acceptance see the glass half-full and when we are given lemons we make lemon

Grandma's Lemon Meringue Pie Recipe - Allrecipes.com