First target was smokers.

Second target was obese people.

Third target...your guess is as good as mine, but don't fool yourself into thinking that your guns, motorcycle, Jet ski, hobbies or favorite sports are not on their list.

Not to be mean or anything but it concerns me as much as those people who hurt themselves doing all these crazy sports and end up making medical bills, hell, sometimes they end up on diability from it. We can't have that so no more bikes, trics, motorbikes, etc.... IT ENDS UP COSTING FOR THE BILLS AND IT IS JUST BECAUSE THEY WANT TO HAVE FUN!!!!!!! Sure can't have that.

oh I don't doubt that for one sec, however since I'm here for a laugh and to met others here for a laugh, I'll avoid such threads... cheers!

come on, isnt it genetic? I mean,, who would ever CHOOSE to be fat?

Convince me 1/3 of the country are bikers.

People appeal to genetics as the reason for almost everything. If this were true then our countries genes changed over the last 30 years which one would be hard pressed to prove.

The usual reason claimed is diets don't work. Interestingly enough, bariatric surgery ends up being a "forced " diet. After ones stomach is reduced in size they can't eat more than four ounces of food at any one time. The result: hundreds of pounds lost. If the "forced" diet works a diet adhered to will work.

We are a generation who do not want to be accountable for our actions. We want the government and/or a pill to do everything for us.

No convincing needed. I have statistics on sports related injuries but the point here is that unless you want to give up what can hurt you, you cannot ask others to give up what can hurt them.

Sport and Recreational Injury - The Scope of the Problem

National Data
For a printable version of this fact sheet, click here.

More sports-related non-fatal injuries are treated in hospital emergency departments than any other type of unintentional injury (1). Approximately 4.3 million sports and recreation-related injuries were treated in hospital emergency departments during July 2000-June 2001 (NEISS-AIP) (1). This represents 15.7% of all non-fatal unintentional injuries, across all ages and genders (Figure 2.1). Among children aged 10-14 years, 46.3% of all non-fatal unintentional injury ED visits were a result of a sports- or recreation-related injury. Although this percentage was lower among adolescents 15-19 years old (31.4%), sports and recreation related injuries in this age group still represented nearly one-third of all ED visits (1).

http://www.iprc.unc.edu/pages/stats/sports.html



Sport Injuries

We are all urged to exercise in order to keep fit and to avoid getting fat. Sports seem like a fun way of burning extra calories to lose weight, but according to a U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission report, sports injuries among baby boomers increased by 33 percent from 1991 to 1998.[1] There were about 276,000 hospital emergency room-treated injuries to persons 35 to 54 in 1991 compared to more than 365,000 sports injuries to persons of these ages in 1998. The number of injuries keeps increasing every year. In 2006, the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) reported over half a million injuries just for basketball. Another two million injuries were associated with bicycling, football, other sports.[2] The increase in injuries has also made doctors and RN's much busier which has sparked an increase in the need for CNA training across the country.

http://www.scientificpsychic.com/fitness/sport_injuries.html


According to SAFE KIDS USA:

More than 3.5 million children ages 14 and under receive medical treatment for sports injuries each year.
Injuries associated with participation in sports and recreational activities account for 21 percent of all traumatic brain injuries among children in the United States.
Overuse injury, which occurs over time from repeated motion, is responsible for nearly half of all sports injuries to middle-and high-school students. Immature bones, insufficient rest after an injury and poor training or conditioning contribute to overuse injuries among children.
Most organized sports related injuries (62 percent) occur during practices rather than games. Despite this fact, a third of parents often do not take the same safety precautions during their child's practices as they would for a game.
A recent survey found that among athletes ages 5 to 14, 15 percent of basketball players, 28 percent of football players, 22 percent of soccer players, 25 percent of baseball players and 12 percent of softball players have been injured while playing their respective sports.
Children ages 5 to 14 account for nearly 40 percent of all sports-related injuries treated in hospital emergency departments. The rate and severity of sports-related injury increases with a child's age.




http://www.sportssafety.org/sports-injury-facts/



Even though this proves what you asked, only for children though, that is still not the issue. If you want to give up what can hurt you possibly then you can ask others to give up what can hurt them. Until then you need to let people live and die how they want to and you can continue to hurt yourself how you wish

It's not entirely genetics, it's also the terrible diet the government pushes on us. They are telling you now to eat whole grains, fruits and meat in equal portions. Cut out the whole grains, make you diet about 55-35 meat to non-starchy veggies and then fill up the last 10% with seeds, nuts and fruit and you've got the diet that humans are designed (or evolved if you prefer) to eat.

Completely agree with the diet concept. I've followed this (more or less) for the last 35 years.

Obesity, where does your state rank?

I would say mainly around the toes, and in the crotch and the back areas of the underpants.

Sigh... you're right. I am an evolved man, so mature and insightful.

But designed men are built.

And to date(*) unfortunately it's those guys who are designed and built that get the chicks.

We, evolved men, get to be hung out to dry.

(*)In both meanings of the term "to date". :P Pun not intended, but willingly and gladly accepted.

People say getting fat is genetic, or it's an epidemic.

Well, epidemia spreads through infection. I don't think I can get fat coz I shook hand with a fat person, or wiped their noses.

But it may be proven yet by science, that that's exactly what happens. Fat people will need to walk around with those face masks from Sars-times, so we can recongnize them for sure. Like the hood for lepers in the middle ages. It was not enough to see a man with both arms missing to know he was a leper -- the public awareness of human physiology was in its infancy then. In the middle ages people were most comfortable with seeing a sign, such as a hooded person, and it developed over the ages into traffic signs and advertizing messages on billboards.

But I digress.

Is fat genetic? It has been shown that fat people can have slim children, and slim people can have fat children, and fat people can have fat childrend, and slim people can have slim children. It all depends on the dominant-recessive gene couplings, and on how much access to good food the subject has.

So... I think both the genetic excuse and the infection theory of how fat spreads are out.

I... am different. I have drug-induced obesity. I have been talking antipscyhotics since age twenty, every single day, and that pill puts grease under your skin like crazy. I am currently undermedicated (as you can see; if I were fully and properly medicated, I would never be so crazy as to tell the public I take this medication) to stop my body mass from increasing.

Now, THIS is a real excuse. This excuse is real, it is not a contrived make-belief ill-thought out rationalization. It is real fat that I sport, my friends.

My pick for the next target? Nose-pickers. Or people who hark and then spit right away in public.

Nose pickers I can take, as long as they don't handle my food. (I had to send back a waiter to the street, coz I saw him absent-mindedly pick his nose in an upscale Greek restaurant, and then forgetting to wash it.)

But hark-khrmm-spitters I would like to see all lined up against the wall and be shot into a heap. Well, they will be the first to be executed execution-style, when the revolution (by the Socratic method) comes.

I'm just a pig.