`A leading professor in the U.K. said that obese people should be warned about the health risks of their weight when buying clothes, according to The Daily Mail.
Naveed Sattar, professor of metabolic medicine at the University of Glasgow, said that oversized clothing should have obesity help line numbers sewn on them to try to reduce Britain’s obesity crisis. [..]
The suggestion would be to put the label on all clothes with waist sizes over 37 inches for boys or 31 inches for girls. Women’s clothes over size 16 would also get a label.’
`A factory manager in east China has been arrested for using grease from swill, sewage, pesticides and recycled industrial oil to make lard for human consumption, state media said Monday in the country’s latest food scare.
Ying Fuming, a manager at the Fanchang Grease Factory in Taizhou, a city in Zhejiang province, sold the lard at half the price of other wholesalers while promising that his product met safety standards, the Shanghai Daily said. [..]
The Taizhou factory, which opened in September 2005, was ordered shut down but continued operating at night, the Shanghai Daily said. It sold its product to retailers across the country, who sold it to clients, including hotels and restaurants, it said.’
`A dead man had one final earthly act before moving on.
Fire officials said the six-hundred pound man was in being cremated when his body fluids were too much for the oven.
The body fluids seeped out onto the floor and ignited causing a fire at the Garner Funeral Home in Salt Lake City.
“Those fluids can be very flammable,” said Scott Freitag of the Salt Lake City fire department. “Sort of like a grease fire.” [..]
The crematorium is back in business and the funeral director said they’ll notify the family to assure them their loved one wasn’t harmed.’
`Want to spend less at the pump? Lose some weight. That’s the implication of a new study that says Americans are burning nearly 1 billion more gallons of gasoline each year than they did in 1960 because of their expanding waistlines. Simply put, more weight in the car means lower gas mileage. [..]
“The bottom line is that our hunger for food and our hunger for oil are not independent. There is a relationship between the two,” said University of Illinois researcher Sheldon Jacobson, a study co-author.’
‘It is bad for your blood pressure, knocks years off your life and is a strain on your heart. Now scientists have discovered that gaining weight lowers your intelligence. [..]
The researchers found that people with a Body Mass Index — a measure of body fat — of 20 or less could recall 56 per cent of words in a vocabulary test, while those who were obese, with a BMI of 30 or higher, could remember only 44 per cent.
The fatter subjects also showed a higher rate of cognitive decline when they were retested five years later: their recall dropped to 37.5 per cent, whereas those with a healthy weight retained their level of recall.’
‘Some big guys car breaks down and while he pushes it to the nearest gas station his pants keep falling off.’
(2.4meg Windows media)
see it here »
`The suspect, Thomas Fatty, was milling around the 7-11 at 11 East 1700 South. Employees say they saw Fatty shoplifting the burritos and confronted him. Fatty threatened the employees, saying he had a weapon.
Police say Fatty then threw enough money on the counter for one burrito and took off. [..]
Lt. Dave Cracroft, Salt Lake City Police Dept.: “It’s strange that he would decide he needed to have the last bite of his burrito before he complied, when he had two officers pointing pistols at him.”
Fatty was booked into the Salt Lake County jail on suspicion of aggravated robbery.’
`Robbery is never funny. Except when it’s described by Toledo police officers with a peculiar sense of humor. Early this morning, Scott Gibson, 44, was returning from the grocery store with a gallon of milk when, as he told cops, he was surrounded by “5 fat black girls” in the parking lot of a Kentucky Fried Chicken. As described by officers Patrick Sutherland and Kristi Eycke in the below Toledo Police Department incident report, one of the “hefty felons” asked Gibson to surrender his milk. Believing that he was being pranked, Gibson just laughed at the request. But, as cops reported, he realized it was no joke when the “rotund robbers” began “pelting him with a flurry of chubby fists.” After the assailants tore the milk from his hands, they relieved Gibson of his Motorola cell phone.’
`What do you get a 288-pound man for his birthday? How about 288 pounds of jelly beans? His family didn’t plan it that way, but when Mike Lively became the 1 millionth person to tour the Jelly Belly Center on his birthday Wednesday, he won his weight’s worth of the sweet treats.
The 41-year-old Indiana man, who claims he weighs only 278 pounds, said he wasn’t planning on sharing his windfall.’
`Increasing numbers of Americans are becoming too fat to fit into X-ray machines, US researchers report.
The nation’s rising obesity problems mean many citizens are not only too large for scanners but they have too much fat for the rays to penetrate.
Over the past 15 years, the number of failed scans linked to patient obesity has doubled, Radiology journal reports.’
`Health officials said Manuel Uribe weighed 1,235 pounds when he made a desperate plea for help on national television in January.
Unable to leave his bed for five years, the 41-year-old mechanic in the northern industrial city of Monterrey longed to move again.
His plea was answered by doctors and nutritionists who prescribed a high-protein diet, helping him lose about 200 pounds since then.’
followup to Man weighing 1,200 pounds seeks life-saving surgery in Italy.
`Only 20 years ago, what you weighed was mainly your own concern. That was before statistics showed that six out of 10 adult Americans weigh too much, and 17 percent of American children and teens are overweight or obese, too.
With such a large percentage of the population weighing more than is healthy, the public health implications of being overweight have taken on greater importance.’
`Thirty-seven-year-old Ruth Matthews told paramedics that another vehicle cut her off in traffic, and she took evasive action to avoid a crash. Her Isuzu Amigo rolled over and she was thrown through the sunroof and onto the roadway. Investigators say she was not wearing her seatbelt.
Paramedics initially tried to fly Matthews to Tampa General Hospital, but her weight, estimated at 600 pounds, made it impossible. Emergency crews were able to transport her to St. Joseph’s Hospital, where she is listed in stable condition.’
`A Mexican man who at 550 kg (1,200 lb) is possibly the heaviest person in the world hopes to travel to Italy for a life-saving operation to shed weight.
Manuel Uribe, bedridden for the past five years, cannot stand on his own and will need a special flight to take him from Monterrey, Mexico to Modena, where a surgical team has offered to perform an intestinal bypass free of charge.
“I can’t walk. I’m can’t leave my bed,” the 40-year-old Uribe, who weighs the same as five baby elephants, said in a recent telephone interview.’
Not safe for work.
Unless you are some sort of professional fat porn viewer.
`Scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital, USA, are using the Free-Electron Laser at specific wavelengths (selective photothermolysis) to heat up fat, which is then excreted by the body – without harming the skin. They say this technique could be used for treating cellulite, acne and heart disease.
Researchers used pig fat and two-inch-thick skin samples.
Prof. Rox Anderson, Mass. General Hospital, said “The root cause of acne is a lipid-rich gland, the sebaceous gland, which sits a few millimetres below the surface of the skin. We want to be able to selectively target the sebaceous gland and this research shows that, if we can build lasers at this region of the spectrum, we may be able to do that…. We can envision a fat-seeking laser, and we’re heading down that path now “‘
`A woman whose 457-pound body sat in a morgue for more than a month during a dispute over the cost of her cremation will be cremated within the next few days, officials said Thursday.
Charlotte Ann Blue died Feb. 6, but she wasn’t immediately cremated because Dallas County and the crematorium it contracts with disagreed over the extra dollar per pound charged for bodies weighing more than 300 pounds.
Blue’s son, Sam Roberts, said he believed his mother had been cremated under a county indigent plan until he called to get a death certificate.
“That’s when I was informed that for the last two months she’s been sitting in the deep freeze at the medical examiner’s office because the crematorium that does business for the county says, ‘Oh well, she’s too big (and) too fat,” he told WFAA-TV on Wednesday.’
`Going to the hospital is rarely fun. If you weigh over 300 pounds like Beth Henk, it can be embarrassing.
“I’ve flipped an exam table — I sat on the end of it and it just flipped up,” said Henk, whose weight peaked at 745. When her son was born three years ago, “I had to sit in the hospital bed the whole time — the hospital’s rocker wouldn’t fit my butt.”
Today Henk helps Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis find better ways to deal with the growing number of very obese patients, an issue for many U.S. hospitals. Barnes-Jewish is replacing beds and wheelchairs with bigger models, widening doorways, buying larger CT scan machines, even replacing slippers and gowns.’
`An ambulance company has responded to oversize needs in southern Nevada by providing an ambulance equipped to handle patients weighing 500 pounds or more.
“We’re getting more and more requests to transport larger patients every day,” said Roy Carroll, operations manager at American Medical Response, one of two companies with Clark County Fire Department contracts to provide medical transport in and around Las Vegas.
Crews have called 75 times in the last six months for additional manpower to handle morbidly obese patients, said Chris Piper, a western regional spokesman for Greenwood, Colo.-based AMR. He said the largest patients weighed more than 500 pounds.’
`A German hotel has started calculating fees according to the weight of the guest.
The three-star Ostfriesland hotel in the north German town of Norden charges the equivalent of 34p per kilogram.
So a thin man weighing 60 kilos pays just over £20 a night, but a man weighing 100 kilos would be forced to shell out nearly £35.
Owner Juergen Heckroth said: “Slim guests live longer and can therefore come more often and that is why we reward them.”‘
Borderline work safety factor.
`New research suggests that a few extra pounds can be good for you — if you’re male and unlucky enough to be in a car accident, that is.
Moderately overweight males are more likely to survive serious car accidents than either the thin or the very fat. Apparently, a bit of extra padding — but not too much — provides extra protection, according to the study. [..]
For reasons that aren’t clear, women don’t get the same protection from extra weight: Being fat, thin or in-between didn’t affect their likelihood of dying in a car accident, the study found.’
`A heavyweight couple caused a pub ceiling to collapse by frolicking together in a shower.
The pair checked in to the The Black Horse Inn in Taunton, Somerset, and spent an afternoon drinking in the bar.
They then went upstairs and got in to the shower together.
Their amorous behaviour caused some damage and water started to pour down into the bar below.
The couple left early the next morning, but not long afterwards the ceiling collapsed, leaving landlord Steve Ball with a £5,000 repair bill.’
`Stress, obesity and a lonely couch-potato existence make for miserable lives. And that’s just the start of the tale of woe for the nation’s dogs and cats.
“What happens to our pets mirrors what’s happening in human lives,” says Jon Sellors of insurer More Than. “Obesity in pets is getting to be a really big issue. When we spoke to vets recently, 80 per cent of them reported seeing increasing numbers of obese pets. Yet 90 per cent of owners believe their pets are not overweight.”‘
`McDonald’s french fries just got fatter – by nutritional measurement. The world’s largest restaurant chain said Wednesday its fries contain a third more trans fats than it previously knew, citing results of a new testing method it began using in December.
That means the level of potentially artery-clogging trans fat in a portion of large fries is eight grams, up from six, with total fat increasing to 30 grams from 25.
Often used by restaurants and in packaged foods, trans fats are thought to cause cholesterol problems and increase the risk of heart disease. The dietary guidelines for Americans that were issued by a government panel last year said people should consume as little trans fat as possible.’
`Britain’s fattest man has died of a heart attack aged 60.
Fifty-five stone Jack Taylor had a huge fish supper before his death in his sleep. [..]
He would eat six fried eggs, bacon and a whole loaf of bread for breakfast and scoffed seven cream cakes in a sitting.
But in the week before his death he got a cold and went off his food.
A neighbour said: “We thought alarm bells should start ringing then. It was sad.”’
`West Virginia, which has one of the nation’s worst obesity problems, is expanding a project that uses a video game to boost students’ physical activity.
All of the state’s 157 middle schools are expecting to get the video game “Dance Dance Revolution,” and officials hope to put it in all 753 public schools within three years. A pilot project began in 20 schools last spring.’
