My Fat Posts

Table of CONTENTS
ICONO CLAST'S FAT POSTS
A few posts on fat, obesity, nutrition, and health
posted to UseNet late May 1998 to early December 2006.



Newsgroups: rec.travel.europe — 5 December 2006
Subject: Train Travel in Europe              
B Vaughan wrote:
I have no problem with the banning of junk food ads, but I think a bit of parental involvement in choosing a healthy diet would be even more useful.
More often than not, parents ARE the problem. I've actually seen adults feeding French friend potatoes, colas, doughnuts, and other delicious crap to pre-school-age children. How DARE they?!? Are they willfully and deliberately trying to shorten their children's lives?
   Also, many baby foods are very sweet or salty thus developing a taste for those flavors right after breast milk. Those taste preferences are likely to last a short­ened lifetime.
   And worst of all is feeding sweets to children as a “reward” or “treat.  Mobetta to force them to eat those things when they've mis-behaved. The associations could last a life­time of healthful eating.
   One of the things I attribute to being the only person my advanced age I know who has no aches or pains, has no ills and takes no pills is my broadly varied and healthful diet. You wouldn't notice anything during a meal but if you ate with me for a week, you'd hear me try to remember what I had yesterday so I'd have something dif­ferent, but complementary, today. For example, if I have a steak today, I might have no meat tomorrow or maybe chicken or fish.
   Yes, I eat high salt/fat food and enjoy them immensely but my ingestion of them is quite rare. My normal diet is easily eaten in restaurants and at home and is no more costly than junk. I don't seek “health foods” or anything special; my corner store, and yours, is full of delicious and nutritious foods.
   At supermarkets, I rarely enter an aisle as most of the stuff I buy is on the perim­eter; fruits, vegetables, meats, dairy, and stuff like that there.

An observation:
In the USA, the proportion of fat people outside of cities seems to be far greater. And the proportions of fat people in coastal cities seems to be far lesser than inland. No, I have no idea why. I don't even know if it's true but it's what I think I've observed.

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Newsgroups: rec.travel.cruises — 27 April 2004
Two excerpts from: Subject: M/V Mercury (Bahamas)


FAT
I don't know whether fat people have a tendency to go on cruises or people who go on cruises have a tendency to be fat. Whichever, the proportion of fat people on this ship was extraördinarily high when compared with what one usually sees in Coastal USA.

FOOD
There was also a junk food and pizza stand with sausages, ground meat, buns, and French fried potatoes (I was appalled at the adults killing children in their company with those fries). Sometimes it had more healthful faire such as turkey and other meats' sandwiches and interesting vegetable dishes …
  …There was also a multi-flavored cold bar with ice cream (some of which we witnessed being served to babies!), sherbet, and frozen yoghurt.

In the same Thread …
One of the … cruisers, claiming considerable experience, said that she managed to avoid gaining weight on cruises by never using a ship's elevator.

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Newsgroups: rec.travel.usa-canada — 31 January 2003
Subject: Re: Stay in LA                    
Paul Tauger wrote:
I have a photographic package that, I expect far exceeds 5 kilos, and doesn't fit in a shoulder bag. The solution is simple: I have a . . . backpack, which is a very comfortable way to carry all this stuff.
Good luck on your back's future health. I hope you're at least in your fifties and your skeleton is well developed.
   Were it up to me, persons under age 18 would be prohibited from carrying anything on their backs for longer than a minute or two. I cringe at the future of the backs-burdened children I see on the streets. O how they'll suffer! The fat ones, though, probably won't live long enough for their mis-treated backs to bother them.

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Newsgroups: alt.california — 28 August 2002
Subject: Teach them to not ingest junk      

I come to praise the Los Angeles School Board for electing to pull soda beverages from its schools. I've never understood why schools permitted their students to have access to such unhealthful beverages on school premises thus teaching them that they're OK. I hope that they'll pull all high salt, high sugar, and high fat foods from the schools and serve only healthful, well-balanced meals to the growing bodies in their care.

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Newsgroups: ba.food — 11 October 1999
Subject: Re: Ridiculous dining experience 2
Geoff Miller wrote:
> Icono Clast writes:
> > I think it's unconscionable for schools to sell sodas and
> > other beverages and foods that are commonly known to be
> > either unhealthful or of no nutritional value. If they want junk
> > food, they can leave the campus to visit the corner grocery.
> Why does every single thing a kid puts
> into his mouth have to be actively nutritious?
Water isn't nutritious but it's clearly more healthful than a soda or coffee.
> Making sure a kid gets proper nutrition is his parents'
> responsibility. If he eats well at home, then clearly a soda
> or roll of SweeTarts at school isn't going to do any harm.
Schools are places of learning. By the unavailability of unhealthful or non-nutritious foods, one can learn what to not eat.
>> they can leave the campus to visit the corner grocery.
> And how many schools have open campuses these days?
Irrelevant. If the student knows the campus is closed, junk foods can be acquired from a negligent parent or from a grocery store on the way to school. I'm saying the schools shouldn't make it avaiable.
   If you, as I, spent any time in amusement parks, you'd probably be as shocked as I by the bodies of today's youth. So many of them are grotesquely fat slobs that we won't have to worry about them collecting Social Security or their union pensions.
   I, by the way, am getting heavy. But I'm old. Although healthy, I'm gaining weight in spite of a generally heathful diet and am very unhappy about it. My problem is an enor­mous appetite for all that good healthful food. Yes, I eat junk food, high-fat, -salt, and -sugar foods too, but it's rare. Gorged on that stuff this week-end while at a dance convention but probably sweat most of it off. Well, I hope I did.

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Newsgroups: rec.roller-coaster — 27 August 1999
Icono Clast said:
> > The picture I've seen . . . is of a quite normal-looking, although
> > frightfully-fat (that could be the result of parental feeding abuse) boy.
Skip Smith alleged:
> Funny....Fat bashing is still socially acceptable.
An observation and a bash are not the same thing.
> Make fun of a . . . Fat person? People agree with you...
I did not make fun of the boy. In fact, by calling him “frightfully fat” I was sympathizing with him and the probable feeding abuse by his mother.
> > Considering the grotesquely fat woman claiming
> > to be the boy's mother, perhaps his frightful flab
> > is the result of a genetic pre-disposition.
Once again I was neither bashing nor making fun of them. I observed the woman to be grotesquely fat. Perhaps your observation differs from mine. Perhaps your opinion of her appearance differs from mine. I even gave her a way out of my food abuse charge by speculating that “perhaps [the boy's] frightful flab is the result of a genetic pre-disposition”.

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Excerpt from a 13 December 1998 report on rec.travel.cruises
The proportion of fat people was shockingly high. Although I didn't count, my guess is that at least 40% of the passengers were enough overweight to be unhealthy.

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Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance, rec.roller-coaster, rec.travel.usa-canada — 29 May 1998
An excerpt from: Subject: Atlanta Trip Observations, Some

The post was converted to the easier-to-read “The New(!) South” at this site.      

FAT:
Waiting in amusement park lines can be tedius and looking at others in the same situation is one of the most interesting things to do. It didn't take me long to notice how fat the people were, so fat, in fact, that I started to count them. It seems that every time I counted, a third of the people I counted was fat. No, I don't mean merely overweight and I didn't count beer bellies, either, but real fat people, most of them quite young. Many of them also smoke cigarettes. It's sad. Their lives will probably be very short.

Excerpted from a 2013 trip report
She, not as accustomed to amusement parks as I, was shocked by all the morbidly obese people eating and drinking the most calorie-rich and unhealthful of foods as they wad­dled about. She didn't mind so much after I pointed out that their early deaths are what ensure Social Security payments for her children.
   One woman, who had waited a very long time to ride Manta, was so fat that they couldn't latch the bash bar thus forcing her to leave …


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