Two comments from DIGG

...that make me think there is hope for the human race and America in particular.

From the "Is there a legal right to be obese article" comment section:

DIGGer nosecohn:

WTF? We're an obese nation because we're all conditioned from birth to believe we're bad?! That's ridiculous. I wasn't conditioned that way, nor were a lot of people I know, and some of them are obese. Sounds like you're projecting.

You know why we're obese? We eat too much! And we eat the wrong things.

For millennia, humans lived agrarian lifestyles. They worked the fields and ate what they grew. That usually included one staple whole grain (rice or wheat), a large number of leafy greens, fruits, berries and nuts. Much of it was eaten raw. Meat was used as a flavoring ingredient in small quantities because raising it was too resource-intensive for all but the very rich. And of course, everything was organic because there was no such thing as non-organic. This is how we evolved. It's how are bodies run best. The human engine knows how to process that mix of fuel.

Compare that to how we live and eat today. We hardly exercise. Whatever grains we eat are stripped of their essential nutrients (i.e. white flour, white rice). The primary part of our meals comes from animal protein. Fruits and vegetables make up the smallest portion of our diet. And everything is heavily processed and/or treated with chemicals that don't exist in nature.

Much of this is a product of wealth and industrialization. There are parts of the world where they still live the agrarian lifestyle of our ancestors. These are the undeveloped, rural areas without access to the modern conveniences. The way they eat has come to be known as the "Poverty Diet", and it is marked by the lowest incidence of disease in all human societies on the planet.

So, if you're over 30 and you eat fast food more than once a month, you're harming yourself. If you're not out walking at least a mile a day, you're sedentary compared to the blood line you evolved from. If the food you buy in the store has ingredients you can't pronounce, think about whether your ancestors ate that stuff, and then imagine why there's a huge increase in cancer rates over the last half a century.

We're killing ourselves, all while we've all been conditioned to believe that our lifestyles are "normal." Sure, "everybody eats at McDonalds," but that's why so many of us are fat and sick. A person who simply eats what the average human diet has consisted of for eons is regarded today as some kind of "health nut," whereas the vast majority of Americans eat like they're from some other planet.

DIGGer joeanon:

That's not the problem at all.

The problem is that once you get so obese you have special needs, like everything from your food intake to the size seat you need on an airplane, bus or movie theater.

Obesity is vastly more like drug use than it is like a physical handicap. It's choice to live an unhealthy lifestyle for almost all obese people. Very few have real health conditions that make them 300+ pounds.

So, are tax payers and consumers supposed to MANDATE 'fat friendly' infrastructure, no doubt at tax payers expensive. I don't think we should anymore than we should put smoking rooms in public places for cigarette smokers nor should we make alcoholism legal in public simply to be 'alcohol accepting'.

Obese people need to get thinner or accept the inconveniences of being obese.

Also note how much trouble the chronically obese become, many times eventually needing help from public services like police or firefighters just to MOVE and wind up with chronic health problems, no job and no chance of employment while inversely their medical needs skyrocket to 3-5 times that of a healthy person.

Business that want to cater (haha) to obese people can do so, but you can't realistically make a law saying fire departments have to hire so many fat people when they are clearly physically handicapped and will be putting themselves, their fellow public servants and the people who they need to save at higher risk.

Unless the person is willing to get into some problem to USE physical labor as a means to lose weight under some contractual terms. People are who morbidly obese, for instance, should not get special treatment beyond perhaps qualifying for a physical handicap.

Morbidly obese people are physically handicapped.... they are not an ethnicity that is being conspired against. Unless you quality as morbidly obese and show an inability to walk and such you SHOULD NOT get special treatment.

Just as cancer victims, and drug addict and people who were teased a lot in school don't get a special status for their problems in life.

Don't spend too much time feeling sorry for fat American's inability to control their eating habits. Negative stimulus from the public is ONE of the few reasons people have to control their weight. Most obese people could lose enough weight to improve their self image in only a few months, they chose instead to eat and eat and eat for decades until real health problems arise and their they stand at the crossroads of their life. Control your eating... or die young.

It's sad, but FRIENDS AND FAMILY should be trying to intervene and perhaps we need more lower cost services to help people get into a healthier eating style and oversize more.
For the most part that SHOULD be your DR's job, but in a privatized medical system like ours, disease is profitable. DR's have no real inventive to convince their patients to eat health or stop smoking, that would just mean less DR visits and less $$$.

With a national health care system we could offer extra money as incentives for DR's that get their patients to live healthier lifestyles instead of making profit PER INCIDENT.
That's yet another reason why national health care is SO MUCH CHEAPER than private health care.

If fat people need anything... it's to lose weight and better manage their health problems. National health care is the solution. If it takes a stomach staple to SHOCK you into controlling your eating habits... maybe that's what you need.- Or maybe you just need long term positive support from friends, family and DEFINITELY your DR.

All obese people should be pushing for National Health Care.

And I don't meant what Obama or Hilary is offering, but REAL national health care like Canada has.

Yea they tell you it will cost more, BUT they also keep telling your Obama is a muslim. When will you people get smart and realize these are lies to keep the rich richer. The only benefit of private health care is that the drug companies and top medical professionals that work with them can make entirely out of proportion profit, while letting the poor, the chronically sick and the obese live shorter and more painful lives.

Canada has national health care AND national education and their taxes are 5% LESS.

5% LESS TAXES people... cmon. Before Reagan we did used to spend like it war WARTIME... ALL the time. The military budget is supposed to GO BACK DOWN when we aren't at war so we can afford to GROW THE NATION instead of using our endless surplus of aged and useless military gear as artificial reeves... to replace the ones WE NUKED and poisoned and such. OH and to stop rich people's private beaches from eroding.

I want to be the world wealthiest nation too. BUT you have keep a reasonable level of control on the wealth gap. You can't allow the rich to just keep getting richer endlessly while leveraging their wealth to effectively make the poor poorer.

Exxon Mobile's profit aren't going down because they are cannibalizing the working classes wealth by keeping prices higher and keep salary and benefits low. At the years have passed corporate America has increase it's profit margins, but handed proportionally much fewer raises.

If you LET them do that... they certainly will. Now every individual could demand a raise, but chances are we are more powerful as a democracy than as individuals.

Instead, we should demand national health and education, this freeing OUR pockets of the responsibility and taking the profit model OFF things that are more important than profit. Like health and education.

As a nation, it should be clear by now, that we need better education and health care MORE than we need the rich to get richer.

Plus the wealth are SO STUPID they didn't even remotely plan for the energy crisis (beside idiotic things like trying to horde oil and food). Yea... lets see how long those stores last your mansion. Not long enough that's for sure. The wealth are SO STUPID they stood by with their hands in the pie while the dollar dropped to HALF it's value.

That;s the real reason oil costs a lot... the dollar is worth HALF as much. So....had the dollar not fallen gas would only cost around 60 bucks a barrel or $1.75 a gallon.

It's no doubt going up, but 2 bucks a gallon or cheaper just isn't that bad, especially compared to twice that, which is what we are paying now.

Thanks to Reagan's tax cuts for the wealth, thanks to the DOW economy, thanks to trickle down economics, thanks to chaotic privatization of markets that effectively just created more middlemen and more costs, thanks to the GOP congress accept NO PRICE NEGOTIATION for medicare (which is the single largest medical fund in the world so should negotiate most aggressively), thanks to wars for oil and basically being a global embarrassment for the last 8 years.

That;s pretty much all thanks to the GOP. From Clinton's impeachment cirrus to NOW it's been downhill for the US.

How is it 8 years ago impeaching a President for a BJ was a possibility and now... we make no effort to impeach Bush for what is clearly much higher degrees of crime. Crimes that have ruined our global imagine, crimes that a clearly against the constitution and humanity in general.

We give him a free ride... and the GOP is still trying to blame Clinton for ALL this.

It's more than embarrassing, it's ruining the imagine of the land of freedom and opportunity.
We are torturers cataloging great lists of our potential enemies, completely destroying public privacy and using police to suppress the people's Constitutional right to assemble.

At every level this is the MOST horrible combination of events in US history. The level of conspiracy runs far beyond McCarthyism and it's even worse than WW2 prison camps for Japanese Americans. That was at least a TRUE time of war.

There is threat to us here. TEN times more people die of the flu every year than terrorism. They used OUR OWN JETS against us. SECURE the airlines and the problem is solved... game over.

Terrorist and jihadist have been attempting to hit the WTC for DECADES. That was ALWAYS one of their top targets. So, eventually they got it, but only using unsecured US infrastructure in the form of flying rocket fuel missiles.



Since the 80s American's have become the BIGGEST PUSSIES in the world. From political correctness to 'fat acceptance' This nation is BECOMING A JOKE.

The funny thing is, the LOLCAT generation of readers vote down these comments, making snide statement such as "Wall of text, buried".

No wonder nuanced political and topical discussion on network TV is dead, replaced by pundits who speak in 5 second soundbites...