Free Republic

Government and health charities have been doling out duff healthy eating advice for decades, but when are they going to admit it? That's the question raised by the remarks of cardiologist Aseem Malhotra, who writing in the BMJ has challenged the orthodoxy that the consumption of foods containing saturated fat, such as butter and red meat, causes heart disease. Malhotra is brave and principled to speak out, yet he is far from a lone voice. In 2010, a major review of scientific studies on fat, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, concluded that contrary to what we have...

A Florida mom received an unpleasant surprise in the mail recently. No, it wasn't an unexpected bill, it was a letter that said her 11-year-old daughter, Lily, was overweight. "Lily is tall, she's athletic, she's solid muscle, Kristen Grasso, told Fox 4 News." By no means is she overweight." The girl, a star on her middle school volleyball team, had her Body Mass Index (BMI) calculated as part of a health screening mandated by Florida law. While parents can opt out, Grasso, a mother of four who says she tries to encourage her children to be active and feeds them...

Governor Chris Christie’s darkest moment, at least in the eyes of some members of the Republican establishment, came on a chilly Sunday night in early November of last year, just days before the presidential election. What Christie and his team did that evening, in a series of terse e-mails and calls with the pleading Romney camp, remains murky. On Capitol Hill, insiders still treat the episode like the Zapruder film, analyzing it and trying to discern, from limited context, what exactly happened. But what didn’t happen is indisputable: Christie didn’t attend Mitt Romney’s rally at Shady Brook Farm in Lower...

A 15-ton blob of congealed fat so large it's been dubbed a "fatberg" has been removed from a sewer tunnel beneath London. And just in case you're not completely grossed out yet, the fatberg — as large as a double-decker bus — was mixed with thousands of used baby wipes. (click image to enlarge)

*Repugnant mass of congealed rotting fat and other sickening waste found *Sewage workers have never seen the likes of the mass - as big as a bus *It could have sent sewage surging onto the streets of south London A lump of fat the size of a double decker bus has been discovered clogging a London sewer. The Fatberg, described as 15 tonnes of festering food mixed with wet wipes and a host of other disgusting ephemera, was found blocking pipes under Kingston in south London.

Part of the difficulty is that the crisis has taken hold rapidly - In 1989, fewer than 10 percent of Mexican adults had any weight problems. Studies show that Mexicans are eating more processed foods than ever before and fewer whole grains and vegetables. This year was the first time Mexico has inched ahead into first place, with a 32.8 per cent obesity rate to America's 31.8 per cent. However, this was only among the most populated countries of the world. Both Mexico and the U.S. have nothing on the small countries such as American Samoa in the Pacific where...

A CALORIE is a calorie. This truism has been the foundation of nutritional wisdom and our beliefs about obesity since the 1960s. What it means is that a calorie of protein will generate the same energy when metabolized in a living organism as a calorie of fat or carbohydrate. When talking about obesity or why we get fat, evoking the phrase “a calorie is a calorie” is almost invariably used to imply that what we eat is relatively unimportant. We get fat because we take in more calories than we expend; we get lean if we do the opposite. Anyone...

"Can you see in your mind's eye a way that this might not have been political, that this was a misguided stupid way to sort, but that they didn't intend it to be some kind of political attempt to harass the Tea Party?"

A CBS blogger who commented on the perceived weight problem of NBA Oklahoma City Thunder cheerleader, Kelsey Williams, has come under fire for labeling her 'too chunky' to perform. Under the pen name 'Claire Crawford,' blogger Anna-Megan Raley wrote: '[Mrs Williams] has been criticized by some folks in [Oklahoma] for having “pudginess” around her waistline... Is this chick “too chunky” to be a cheerleader?'

Almost every day, the website Reddit has someone either on television, the radio, or garnered their fame from the internet answer questions. These are called "AMAs," or "Ask Me Anything," and are considered interviews and the people asking questions are actual users of the site. Several days ago, noted liar and obese man Michael Moore participated in an AMA. Though Reddit is well known to have a liberal bias in most of its "subreddits," Moore did not have an easy time answering questions. Dozens of Redditors voiced their disapproval by openly mocking the supposed "documentary" film-maker... In another instance, Moore...

Hackers Bust N.Korean Propaganda Site International hacker group Anonymous on Thursday broke into Uriminzokkiri, a North Korean website that spreads propaganda from North Korea's official KCNA news agency. The hacker collective released the personal information of the website's 9,001 subscribers, including their ID and password, name, date of birth and other details. The South Korean National Intelligence Service said, "Many of the leaked details on the website match those of South Koreans." Police are taking a keen interest. A National Police Agency spokesman said, "A considerable number of people who want to access information about North Korea are registered on...

The Orange County Fire Rescue Department in Florida has invested thousands of dollars in a new ambulance designed for carrying morbidly obese patients. Over the past few years, they've seen an increase in the number of 911 calls to patients weighing more than 500 pounds. Called "Bariatric One," it comes with a $23,000 lift gate that can pick up 1,100 pounds as well as a stretcher ten inches wider than normal. The fire rescue, serving Orange County, an area just outside of Orlando, said that a third of all patients taken to the hospital are obese. "In the past, you'd...

Meghan McCain is getting a TV show. The MSNBC contributor and daughter of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., announced on Twitter Wednesday that "Raising McCain," a "genre-busting docu-talk series" will premiere sometime this summer on Pivot, a newly-launched cable network. Meghan McCain ✔ @MeghanMcCain I am SO EXCITED to announce my first series "Raising McCain" will premiere this summer on Participant's new cable network PIVOT!!! 5:49 PM - 27 Mar 13 34 Retweets 41 favorites According to Deadline, Pivot will launch on Aug. 1 and will have more than 300 hours of original programming during its first year. According to the...

Plague of the overweight riders who are too heavy for their horses • Only one in 20 riders are within the optimum weight for their horse • A heavy load can mean back pain, lameness and bad behaviour in horses • Vet guidelines advise that riders weigh less than 10 per cent of their mount • Weighing more than 15 per cent of horse's weight poses health risks • Research is published in the Journal of Veterinary Behaviour Horses are the latest victims of the obesity crisis as they take the burden of their overweight riders, experts have warned. A...

Ottawa scientists have discovered a trigger that turns muscle stem cells into brown fat, a form of good fat that could play a critical role in the fight against obesity. The findings from Dr. Michael Rudnicki's lab, based at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, were published today in the prestigious journal Cell Metabolism. "This discovery significantly advances our ability to harness this good fat in the battle against bad fat and all the associated health risks that come with being overweight and obese," says Dr. Rudnicki, a senior scientist and director for the Regenerative Medicine Program and Sprott Centre for...

Christie, by his own admission, is "not a subtle personality" and he likes to take charge. Those two traits figured prominently in how the rising Republican handled Sandy. From his frequent, televised updates to residents as the storm's winds whipped the state's beaches to his criticism last week of fellow Republican John Boehner's decision to delay a U.S. House vote on federal storm aid, his handling of his native state's worst natural disaster may one day be considered the defining moment in the political career of a budding presidential contender. The timing of the storm _ days before a presidential...

The government should ban high-sugar cereals such as Coco Pops and other foods that are contributing to an obesity epidemic among British children, the shadow health secretary has urged. Regulations limiting the amount of sugar, salt and fat in processed foods should be considered if the food industry does not take action itself, according to Labour’s Andy Burnham, who has begun a consultation on how to tackle obesity. Burnham highlighted the case of breakfast cereals, saying many aimed at children are more than one-third sugar by weight. …

After Wayne LaPierre spoke of the NRA's desire to help make children safer by using its own money and resources to train teachers and work with police departments to have an armed presence at every school that wants it, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former RNC chair Michael Steele joined Mayor Michael Bloomberg in crying foul. Said Christie: "In general, I don't think the solution to safety in schools is putting an armed guard because for it to really be effective in my view, from a law enforcement perspective, you have to have an armed guard at every classroom."...

The Left's love affair with N.J. Gov. Chris Christie continues ... so long as the outspoken pol is trashing his own party. Christie made headlines today by blaming the death of a Hurricane Sandy relief bill loaded with pork squarely on the GOP. “There is only one group to blame,” he ranted. “The House Majority and John Boehner. Last night, the House Majority failed the basic test of leadership and they did so with callous disregard to the people of my state. It was disappointing and disgusting to watch. Shame on you, shame on Congress.” That sentiment earned kudos from...

A century ago, Elsie Scheel was the perfect woman. So said a 1912 article in The New York Times about how Scheel, 24, was chosen by the "medical examiner of the 400 "coeds"' at Cornell University as a woman "whose very presence bespeaks perfect health." Scheel, however, was hardly model-thin. At 5 feet 7 and 171 pounds, she would, by today's medical standards, be clearly overweight. (Her body mass index was 27; 25 to 29.9 is overweight.) But a new report suggests that Scheel may have been onto something. The report on nearly 3 million people found that those whose...