So, I read two things yesterday, on the internet, at two very different places. The first one I found through Jezebel, about how scientists think that we’re fat because we eat more food than we did thirty years ago, not because we sit around on our asses more. They recommend people eat less food. And then, over at Pith, Ashley points to this study about how smoking, along with acting as an appetite suppresant, seems to stimulate a gene that regulates weight.
Hmm. So, as fewer and fewer people in our society smoke, more and more of us are fat.
Surely being fat is better for our healths than smoking, right? Right?
Ha, I laugh, but only because here’s the truth. Fat people have always been with you. I can show you pictures of my fat relatives going back as long as their are pictures of my relatives. But, for the people who don’t find themselves fat because of genetics or medical condition, take heart, your skinny ancestors had to inhale a drug through a delivery system that causes cancer and other terrible health problems in order to pull it off.
Not that that’s much different than what the medical community often asks of fat people now, but I just thought I’d point it out.
Tiny Cat Pants 
Word.
That was my grandmother’s excuse for not quitting smoking – she didn’t want to get fat. So instead of getting fat, she died at a relatively young age (in her 60s, when most women in my family have passed on in their late 80s or beyond) from health issues caused by smoking.
I haven’t read the studies but I have my own theories.
First, genetics. I’m small & neither side of my family has issues with weight. So, there’s that.
And, sure, we probably do eat more than people did in the past, as we have almost unlimited food resources at our disposal. However, in the past, our ancestors not only ate less, but they also worked harder, which burned more calories. So, while my grandparents and great grandparents loaded up their diets with pork and all kinds of other fats to flavor their meals, they were also out in the fields sweating their butts off and burning the calories up. Here most of sit, eating our meals and either sitting in front of a computer or television, not burning much off at all, if any.
Then there are the restaurants. Have you noticed the size of the plates meals are served. They’re no longer plates, they’re platters. I simply cannot eat everything I am served when I eat out. I’m looking at you, Outback Steakhouse (for example).
I can show you pictures of my fat relatives going back as long as their are pictures of my relatives.
Really? Mine were all skin and bones, which I found confusing, then I noticed when they all got cars, well…then they most assuredly WERE NOT.
And that coincided with the mass-move to the cities.
This means I am supposed to live the life of a poor Appalachian peasant with no car, if I want to be thin. Poo. :(