Recently New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg proposed to ban sugary drinks larger than 16 ounces from New York City eateries, street carts and stadiums. It would apply to sweetened bottled drinks and fountain sodas that contain more than 25 calories per 8 ounces in restaurants, delis, movie theaters, street carts and concessions sold at New York City sports venues. It would not apply to diet soda or any other calorie-free drink or milk-based beverages. Consumers will be allowed to buy additional bottles of soda if they wish and fountain drink refills are not restricted by the proposal. The mayor says it is necessary to combat the rise in obesity in New York City. He also wants to lock up baby formula in hospitals to promote breast feeding.

In the words of Bugs Bunny, "What a maroon!" On the other hand, he's trying to do something about the problem. I'll give him an A for effort, if nothing else.

There are people who think this subject is just too sensitive to be talked about, and that common courtesy to those concerned would suggest that I remain silent. Could be! On the other hand, both of my parents died from complications of obesity, and I believe that to stand by and do nothing in the face of this pernicious and deadly epidemic dishonors their memory. They needed help, and they didn't get it. People stuggling with problems of obesity may not be able to solve them alone, either. They need our help. They deserve our help. We can't help with their problems if we refuse to talk about them.

I don't know when it started, but the first time I recognized the "Fat Versus Ugly" debate in the Soundoff column of the Sun Herald newspaper was on September 3rd, 2007. Actually, the politically correct terms are probably "Obese Versus Unattractive," but that wasn't the actual headline. I'm known to be more sensitive to historical accuracy than to political correctness anyway. If the following offends you, don't read it.

"All you people who go by me and look at me, laugh at me and treat me like I am crap because I am fat obviously don't have mirrors or you are being lied to by somebody. You are just as ugly or uglier than I am. You might be skinny, but nothing can be done about your face. I can always lose weight." - The Sun Herald, Soundoff, September 3, 2007

Still, I can't help feeling that this unhappy person's condition is at least partially the result of the Seven Deadly Sins. Obviously angry, this person seems to be envious of skinny people and proud of being able, at least in principle, to lose the weight that is often the result of a synergistic convergence of gluttony and/or sloth. The only Deadly Sins I didn't notice were lust and greed. Maybe there's still hope.

Actually, the opposite of "fat" is "thin," not "ugly." Being fat does not confer any special virtuousness or protect one from being butt ugly too. If my experience is any indication, it doesn't keep one from being abhorrent, amoral, arrogant, avaricious, barbarous, base, boorish, cheap, churlish, coarse, common, contemptible, covetous, crass, crude, despicable, detestable, dimwitted, dirty, discourteous, disdainful, disgusting, doltish, evil, filthy, foul, greedy, gross, haughty, ignoble, ill-mannered, impolite, impure, inconsiderable, inferior, insolent, loathsome, lowly, malevolent, malicious, mean, miserable, miserly, narrow, nasty, niggardly, obnoxious, odious, ordinary, overbearing, paltry, parsimonious, petty, presumptuous, primitive, proud, rapacious, raw, reprehensible, repugnant, rotten, rough, rude, savage, shabby, small-minded, smelly, sordid, sorry, spiteful., squalid, stingy, stupid, substandard, supercilious, sweaty, tasteless, thick, thickheaded, tightfisted, trifling, trivial, unchaste, uncivil, uncivilized, uncouth, uncultivated, ungracious, unmannerly, unpolished, unrefined, unwashed, vain, vengeful, venomous, vicious, vile, vindictive, vulgar, wicked, or wretched, either. I know people who combine all of these characteristics, and they're fat and ugly as well!

I think the problem is rooted deep in human nature. Modern human beings have developed from tribal hunters and gatherers, the natural function of whom, like all other living beings, is to be fruitful and multiply. Thus, the natural function of men is to hunt and gather to provide for the physical needs of women immobilized by the natural function of childbearing. If you're too fat, you can't hunt or gather very well. You won't endure pregnancy and childbirth very well either, and you're more likely to die while the kiddies still need you, so nature works overtime to remove your genes from the pool. People who were sexually attracted to fat people back in the cave days didn't have as many babies who lived to childbearing age themselves. The ones they did have tended also to be fat, which continued the selection process to another generation. The result is that we tend to find fat people unattractive. Consider it evolution in action.

Nowadays, using modern technology, we have dorked around with nature so much in the past century that we've permanently screwed up natural selection of our species that took nature three billion years to perfect. Social survival conventions now are often diametrically opposed to natural ones. Primitive people are all skinny because their lack of technology simply can't support fat ones, but they have lots of babies to assure survival of the fittest. Technological societies kill a large portion of perfectly good unborn babies, but they keep the potential voters alive no matter what. You can be uneducated, unskilled, unemployable, sociopathic, criminally insane, permanently disabled, terminally ill, or even brain dead; society will do it's level best to keep you alive (and even elect you to public office). In the United States, 2/3 of the population is so fat that they simply couldn't survive in the wild, and 1/3 of our women have such small birth canals that they'll die in childbirth without medical intervention. You've come a long way, baby!

"You may be obese and I may be ugly, but the last time I checked, ugly doesn't cause heart attacks, diabetes, high blood pressure, bad knees and inability to walk." - The Sun Herald, Soundoff, September 4, 2007

The real tragedy is that the fat problem is so pervasive that people don't realize how much better things could be. Clothing, chairs, seats and benches used to be much smaller. Living costs used to be considerably less. Fat people don't realize how much better they would look, feel and live if they didn't have all those unnecessary health problems. They think feeling like crap all the time is normal! I think they deserve better, if only because they're fellow human beings!

"I just looked in the mirror. I'm pretty darn handsome, but I think Fatty is using a cop-out. Maybe they get treated bad, because they have a bad attitude toward life in general, but they can lose the weight anytime, so let's get started already. I bet you can't." - The Sun Herald, Soundoff, September 5, 2007

I also don't agree that they can lose the weight anytime, so I'll bet they can't, too. In my experience, once you've gained too much weight, it's devilishly difficult to lose it. Regardless of their heredity, or their genes, or their metabolism, or their job, or their family, or what their ancestors did for a living, people get fat by consuming more energy than they expend. That's it! To lose weight, they have either to cut down on the intake, which will make them unusually hungry, and perhaps tired from having less available energy, or else they have to expend more. That will make them unusually hungry and tired from all that exercise as well. Hunger, of course, makes you want to eat more, and being tired makes you want to work less. That's why fat people are fat in the first place. With enough technology, the natural limitations on excess weight are gone. In the engineering world, it's called positive feedback. It generally ends in catastrophe, which in the case of people is death!

Our fat brothers and sisters can't solve the problem all by themselves. They need improved education and public awareness and additional research and better diagnostic tools and more treatment options and better distribution of them at lower cost. We need to change public perception that fat is strictly a personal problem or not a problem at all. It's a social problem, and it's growing daily. It ultimately has to be solved by the people affected, of course, but they need our help. They deserve our help. If other people don't help you, what good are they?

"Yeah, I'm fat, but I am making strides toward self-improvement. I've joined a gym and have begun trying to change my eating patterns. By this time next year, I hope to be back to fighting trim. What have you done to help yourself or your fellow man lately?" - The Sun Herald, Soundoff, September 6, 2007

"Well, I ain't obese, and I ain't ugly, but I still got bad knees and I can't walk." - The Sun Herald, Soundoff, September 6, 2007

The fact is, like diabetics, alcoholics, bulimics, homosexuals, paranoid schizophrenics, lesbians, transsexuals, pedophiles, paraplegics, quadriplegics, conjoined twins, achondroplastic dwarfs and chronic bed wetters (among others), fat people have something wrong with them. Their reproductive potential is compromised! That doesn't make them bad people, or any less worthy of love, honor and respect.

There's a disease, Prader-Willi syndrome, that causes sufferers to be ravenously hungry all the time. Victims will do anything for food! The degree to which their abnormality is a liability is the degree to which it impacts negatively on their happiness, personal relationships, length and quality of life, and ability to reproduce their kind. This does not mean that we should despise, hate, or humiliate them. In my humble opinion, it means that we should love them as ourselves, and help them if we can or at least accept them if we can't. But pretending that they aren't fat or that being fat is all right doesn't do either of those things; it just perpetuates the problem. If you convince a fat kid that it's OK to be fat, you're condemning him to a shortened life of chronic health problems and personal unhappiness. Unfortunately, there's a lot of that going around!

"Our kids need to eat. Have you ever noticed that being considered too fat is relative to one's opinion? When I graduated from high school I weighed 98 pounds, was 5-feet, 9-inches tall. I ate all the time to try to fit in, because it was in style to look like Marilyn Monroe or anyone with an hourglass figure. I never fit in. Finally when I was in my 30s I looked just right; weighed 145 pounds and wore a size 9. I stayed that weight until I had a horrible accident and had to have surgery to get pins and plates in my leg and foot after age 50. Does society really have to put this much pressure on a person? I do eat healthy and am doing the best I can. Nobody in my whole life told me I looked good, it was either too skinny or too fat. My size has been a lifetime battle that I cannot win. I finally learned to concentrate on other, more important things and I am a happier person. Oh yeah, when I was skinny I never made fun of fat people." - The Sun Herald, Soundoff, September 6, 2007

Actually, most of our kids don't need to eat as much as they do. Skipping school lunch entirely might be a good thing for them. Being considered too fat may be relative to one's opinion, but being too fat is absolutely quantifiable. It can be measured in pounds, kilograms, body mass index, higher blood pressure, miles of extra capillaries, blood insulin concentration, blood sugar concentration, calories per day, annual health care cost, and probably parameters I haven't thought of. If you want to know if you're too fat, challenge a skinny person to a cross country marathon. The one who wins (survives!) is healthier.

"You must acquire the trick of ignoring those who do not like you. in my experience, those who do not like you fall into two categories: the stupid and the envious. the stupid will like you in five years time. the envious, never." - the libertine

I'm not sure, but I get the impression that fat people think that the rest of us should all pretend that being fat is OK. There's even a "fat acceptance movement" that seeks to "dispel myths and promote facts about fatness", and "fights unfair discrimination on the basis of size or weight." I think that's a good idea, as long as they don't create more myths than they dispel. Fat may be just as healthy as skinny, but neither is nearly as healthy as "just right." If they're going to promote facts about fatness, they need to examine morbidity records and health care costs and report the truth. And I don't know what "unfair discrimination on the basis of size or weight" is, but I think one is well within his rights to insist that if someone takes up twice as much seat space or health care as he does, she should pay twice as much. Fair is fair!

"I am mortified by the hateful remarks that are submitted and published: "You're fat." "Yeah, well, you're ugly!" Isn't anything good going on that we can talk about? Can't we be supportive and caring instead of malicious? Folks, look around, there's good stuff everywhere." - The Sun Herald, Soundoff, September 7, 2007

The military has a formula for problem solving. It's called a staff study. It's organized like this:

• Statement of the problem to be resolved.
• Facts bearing upon the problem.
• Assumptions made, absent relevant facts
• Possible courses of action to resolve the problem.
• Analysis and comparison of each course of action: criteria, advantages and disadvantages.
• Conclusion and recommendation.

One of our potentially deadly social problems is that as a nation we're over two million metric tons too fat, and that problem is not going to go away unless we actively do something about it! Here are a few things we can do. As far as I can determine, Mr. Obama, whose good friend Oprah is too fat, hasn't suggested even ONE of them as a positive change:

• Revitalize The President's Council on Physical Fitness (PCPF).
• Establish a national goal to lose two million metric tons in our population.
• Work up a program for doctors and gyms to document individual weight loss.
• Encourage reporting of such weight losses to the PCPF.
• Measure it on a big thermometer sign outside the White House.
• Encourage development of new drugs that make people lose weight.
• Enact legislation allowing charging on the basis of weight where appropriate.
• Have special "normal sections" where people sit, and provide skinnier seats.
• Conspicuously identify other sections as "fat sections."
• Charge extra for things that cost more for fat people (clothing, etc.)
• Base airline tickets on combined passenger/luggage weight.
• Have special "NO FAT" sections in facilities frequented by the public.
• Change building codes to allow thin entry doors for places that want to keep out fat people.
• Portray fat as undesirable in motion pictures and television.
• Put warning labels on fatty foods that say "Eating this can make you fat."
• Require a doctor's permit to use those electric scooters in shopping centers.
• Allow charging extra health care insurance premiums for fat people.

"Love one another!" (John 13:34, 35; 15:12, 17)

Fat people

Fat people ain't got much longer Fat people ain't got much longer Fat people ain't got much longer To live! They got fallen arches And arth'ritic knees And high blood pressure And diabetes. They puff so badly, They can hardly talk. They ride funky little scooters So they don't have to walk! Well, I don't want no fat people, Don't want no fat people, Don't want no fat people, 'round here! Fat people are just the same As us under their skin. (a fool such as I) All men are brothers Some are more like twins (or, in some cases, quintuplets)!		Fat people, there's so much of 'em, Fat people, there's so much of 'em, Fat people, there's so much of 'em, To love! Fat ain't healthy It's unsightly, too. And they just make it worse With those freaky tattoos! They take more resources Than they're able to pay. You might just get squashed If you get in their way! They take too much health care And too much room, And they're all gettin' poorer With the food they consume. Well, I don't want no fat people, Don't want no fat people, Don't want no fat people, 'round here!