The top 1% in weight have lots of health problems

You have to read this article carefully to realize that its reference to "obese" is not as wide as in general use.  It refers only to the most extremely overweight people

Men who are obese in their early twenties are significantly less likely to live to reach middle age, according to a new study published in the BMJ.

They are also up to eight times more likely to suffer diabetes, potentially fatal blood clots or a heart attack.

It is well known that obesity in adulthood poses a risk for diabetes and cardiovascular disease, but previously it had not been clear whether obesity in early adulthood strengthens that risk.

Danish researchers tracked the health of 6,500 Danish 22-year-old men for 33 years up to the age of 55.

All the men were born in 1955 and had registered with the Military Board for a fitness test to gauge their suitability for military service.

All potential conscripts in Denmark are subjected to a battery of psychological and physical tests, including weight.

Over 80 per cent were within the normal range and five per cent were underweight.

One in 10 were overweight and just over one per cent - equating to 97 men -  were obese.

Normal weight is classified as a body mass index (BMI) of between 18.5 and 25; obesity is classified as a BMI of 30 or more.

Almost half of those classified as obese at the age of 22 were diagnosed with diabetes, high blood pressure, heart attack, stroke, blood clots in the legs or lungs, or had died before reaching the age of 55.

They were eight times more likely to get diabetes as their normal weight peers and four times as likely to get a potentially fatal blood clot.

They were also more than twice as likely to develop high blood pressure, have had a heart attack, or to have died.

Every unit increase in BMI corresponded to an increased heart attack rate of five per cent, high blood pressure and blood clot rates of 10 per cent, and an increased diabetes rate of 20 per cent.

In total, obese young men were three times as likely to get any of these serious conditions as their normal weight peers by middle age, conferring an absolute risk of almost 50 per cent compared with only 20 per cent among their normal weight peers.

The findings, published in the BMJ, have prompted researchers to warn that the continuing rise in obesity may counteract the fall in deaths from heart disease.

They said: 'Obesity-related morbidity and mortality will, in decades to come, place an unprecedented burden on healthcare systems worldwide.'

SOURCE





U.S. Government Bans French Cheese Based On Food Prejudices

by Hans Bader

The U.S. government is banning a standard, normal-smelling French cheese based on its own squeamishness. The cheese in question is Mimolette, a commonplace, orange French cheese so mild in flavor that I once confused it with cheddar when I visited my French relatives and ate it for the first time. The ban has triggered protests in New York City, reports the Global Post:

Around 40 protesters took to the streets of New York on Saturday to demonstrate against a US ban on mimolette that has angered lovers of the distinctive French cheese.

Since March, several hundred pounds of the bright orange cheese have been held up by US customs because of a warning by the Food and Drug Administration that it contained microscopic cheese mites.

The mites are a critical part of the process to produce mimolette, giving it its distinctive grayish crust.

The US decision has angered importers and consumers, who have even set up a Facebook page titled “Save the Mimolette.”

Benoit de Vitton, an importer of the cheese. . . said he was baffled by the recent blockade, noting he has imported mimolette for two decades without a problem.”They are afraid of allergies,” he said. “But we’ve been doing this for 20 years without any problem.”

Who cares if it has tiny, invisible mites in it? Cheese is the product of bacteria. Good yogurt has live cultures of bacteria in it, and that is beneficial for your health. Food that is alive can be good for you. The human body is full of living, friendly microbes that keep us alive. The cheese mites in Mimolette are there to enhance its flavor: as Wikipedia notes, the “crust of aged Mimolette is the result of cheese mites intentionally introduced to add flavor by their action on the surface of the cheese.”

When it comes to food, the Obama administration is incredibly ignorant. It banned white potatoes from the federal WIC program (WIC money can be spent on far less nutritious things than potatoes, things that are starchy, fatty or sugary, like apple sauce, which has no nutrition unless vitamin C is artificially added to it. But an NIH employee told me to stock my fridge with apple sauce so that my my daughter would always have access to fruits and vegetables. The same NIH that later funded a ludicrous left-wing “study” falsely claiming that the tobacco industry invented the Tea Party).

The Obama administration ignores the fact that the potato is superior to most foods in nutrients per dollar (and per acre of farmland), so much so that “in 2008, the United Nations declared it to be the ‘Year of the Potato.’” “This was done to bring attention to the fact that the potato is one of the most efficient crops for developing nations to grow, as a way of delivering a high level of nutrition to growing populations, with fewer needed resources than other traditional crops. In the summer of 2010, China approved new government policies that positioned the potato as the key crop to feed its growing population.” Potatoes provided much of the agricultural surplus that made the Industrial Revolution possible. Potatoes are more nutritious than other starchy foods like rice and bread, and “are a good source of vitamins.” They have a lot of vitamin C (much more than a banana or an apple), and potassium levels slightly higher than potassium-rich bananas). Potatoes also have all 8 essential amino acids, unlike most other staple foods like corn and beans.

Baylen Linnekin wrote earlier about “the sickening nature of many food-safety regulations,” like the “poke and sniff” inspection method required by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) “that likely resulted in USDA inspectors transmitting filth from diseased meat to fresh meat on a daily basis.”

Thousands of deaths from foolish food-safety rules have occurred in the past in other nations. A classic example occurred more than two centuries ago, when regional parliaments banned consumption of the potato in much of  France, leading to a short-lived national ban beginning in 1748. “Among the host of diseases the government mistakenly attributed to consumption of the tuber was leprosy.” This ban was particularly problematic because at the time, France was plagued by recurrent famines, and banning potatoes reduced the amount of food per acre that could be grown. French officials banned the potato despite the fact that it had been cultivated for generations in neighboring Germany, where the potato saved villagers from starvation at the end of the Thirty Years War.

The Obama administration has pushed extremely costly food “safety” rules, like the Food Safety Modernization Act, which has proved far more costly than supporters claimed, imposing large costs on orchard growers and other farmers. That law’s red tape may end up thwarting “firms from developing innovative new processes and practices that could deliver real food safety improvements” and could “leave tens of thousands of small and mid-sized farms and food stands to be crushed under the weight of rules designed for some of the world’s largest food processors.” Earlier versions of the bill backed by the Obama administration were even worse, and would have driven “out of business local farmers and artisanal, small-scale producers of berries, herbs, cheese, and countless other wares, even when there is in fact nothing unsafe in their methods of production.”

The Obama administration also used federal funds to subsidize the opening of an International House of Pancakes in Washington, D.C. (despite its sugary entrees), and the development of high-calorie foods that benefit politically connected agribusinesses.

SOURCE