Fatism? Obesity is bad but you must ignore it??

The Left hand does not know what the right hand is doing here. With all the propaganda against obesity, is it any wonder that fatties feel more disrespected these days? If fat-discrimination is to be banned does that mean that all the obesity warriors will become bigots? I think they are myself so that would be amusing. Fancy one of the approved bigotries of our time coming under fire! Maybe anti-Christian bigotry might become recognized for what it is too!

As obesity rates continue to rise in the U.S., so might our acceptance of those who are overweight. But a new study from Yale University suggests the converse trend: rather than feeling tolerance in our society, the overweight and obese say they feel more heavily discriminated against now than they did a decade ago.

Led by Tatiana Andreyeva, a postdoctoral research associate at Yale's Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, a team of researchers questioned 1,100 subjects, aged 35 to 74, twice over a 10-year span (once between 1995 and 1996, and again between 2004 and 2006). The respondents answered 11 questions about whether they had been discriminated against in the context of common life experiences - including applying to college or for a scholarship, renting or buying a home in a neighborhood they desired, applying for a bank loan or dealing with police. Participants answered nine additional questions about everyday experiences, such as how they were treated in restaurants, and whether they had encountered name-calling, harassment or threats. The subjects were asked to indicate the reasons they felt they had been discriminated against (facing police harassment, for example, or being denied bank loans), whether it was because of age, gender, race, height or weight, physical disability, sexual orientation or religion.

Between the two survey periods, the rate of discrimination due to height or weight increased from 7% of respondents to 12% of respondents. (The scientists determined separately that the people who reported discrimination due to height or weight were also more likely than other participants to be overweight or obese.)

The study is one of the first to track patterns of discrimination based on weight. It's worth noting, however, that the survey relied on people's own perception of discrimination - the authors did not require the subjects to document bias in any way. In addition, the authors found that rates of discrimination by age and gender also increased in the same time period, suggesting that several forms of bias - or perhaps sensitivity to perceived bias - is on the rise overall, not just against the overweight.

Nevertheless, the study did track the same population over time, and Andreyeva says that an increase even in people's perceived sense of maltreatment is an important measure of our society's attitudes. In this report, weight ranked third behind age and race as the most common form of prejudice. "If a person perceives he is being discriminated against," Andreyeva says, "it might have significant consequences for his or her health and mental health. Even the perception of discrimination can be important because it is self-perpetuating." And if rates of weight discrimination are indeed on the rise, say the authors, then it's up to society to mandate legal protections for those who are overweight, just as laws protect people from discrimination by race, gender, disability and age.

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Trans-fats linked to breast cancer risk in study

This study is an example of the lowest form of epidemiological crap. Not only is the data correlational only but it relies on self-reports. It enables NO causative inferences whatever, let alone scientific dietary recommendations. All that the data probably shows is that lower class people are both less fashionable in their diet and also (for various reasons) have poorer health

Trans-fats, which are being phased out of food because they clog arteries, may raise the risk of getting breast cancer, European researchers reported on Friday. They found that women with the highest blood levels of trans-fats had about twice the risk of breast cancer compared to women with the lowest levels. "At this stage, we can only recommend limiting the consumption of processed foods, the source of industrially produced trans-fatty acid," the researchers wrote in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

Trans-fats or trans-fatty acids are made in creating artificially hardened fats -- in the process of hydrogenization, for instance. They were, ironically, meant to be healthful replacements for artery-clogging saturated fats such as butter and lard. But the process of making vegetable oil behave like butter made it as unhealthful as butter. New York and California have banned trans-fats in restaurant foods. Canada and Britain have considered it and countless food companies have dropped them as an ingredient.

Veronique Chajes of the French national scientific research center at the University of Paris-South and colleagues studied women taking part in a large European cancer trial. They looked at blood samples collected between 1995 and 1998 from 25,000 women who had volunteered to report on their eating and lifestyle habits and then be followed for years to see if they developed cancer. They studied 363 women diagnosed with breast cancer, comparing their blood levels of fatty acids with those of women without cancer.

The higher the levels of trans-fatty acids, the more likely a woman was to have cancer, Chajes and colleagues found. Women with higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids, being studied for their potential benefits to health, were not any less likely to have breast cancer, the researchers found.

Obese women are more likely to develop breast cancer [That is the EXACT OPPOSITE of the truth], among other types of cancer, and high-fat diets are also linked with breast cancer.

Trans-fats can be found in cooking fats, baked goods, snacks and a variety of other prepared foods. Omega-3 fatty acids are found in fatty fish such as salmon, walnuts and leafy green vegetables.

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