Can this be true? Are we really this bad?

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/26072006/35...at-x-rays.html

<font color="blue"><i>click to enlarge photo</i></font>

Do I have to?

please speak for yourself when you use the royal &quot;we&quot;.

By the way, at the Paris Opera House a couple weeks ago, I was just fine in my tiny seat until this woman came in and sat behind me. We were in the top level so each row is about a foot or more higher than the row in front of it. This woman was so huge she literally couldn't fit back into the seat between the two arms. I'm talking 300 pounds or more easily. As a result she had to sort of perch on the edge of her seat meaning her knees extended over the back of my seat by a good 6 to 8 inches. I could not sit back in my seat. By the way, no she wasn't American. She was French, but of course many here will think I'm making this up because they KNOW that only the US has obese people.

what do they do on airplanes? Buy two seats?

Neo
I believe you
I have seen many an obese European. Heck, I know a couple of obese Asians as well!

As an American I find it embrassing! When the phrase &quot;a land of plenty&quot; was coined I don't think this is what they had in mind!

Just so our European friends don't feel left out:

http://www.iotf.org/media/euobesity.pdf

This is a tyical &quot;Tabloidisation&quot; of a serious story. It is the same in the UK - the rise in the number of obese people over the last 10-20 years is significant.
Instead of reporting that, the media choose to go looking for stereotypes.

Now I'm off to see if I can find a story about &quot;Bad teeth in America&quot; to try and balance up Neo's survey.

Actually, this was a serious study presented at the RSNA (Radiological Society of North America) and was available in the online edition of Radiology well before today's media frenzy. The reason it only talks about American patients is because it was a retrospective American study. It certainly doesn't even begin to suggest there aren't obese patients in other countries.
Anyway, the story isn't remotely new. For years, manufacturers of MR and CT scanning systems have worked on how to increase the scanner openings to handle obese or just plain big patients (for example, some wide-shouldered American football players didn't fit older scanners either and they weren't overweight, simply too big). A lot of the industry research (that is, not published in the journals) came from Germany, working on chunkified German patients. I heard similar discussions at the 2006 European radiology meeting (ECR).

Oh, my goodness. They're not only picking up our bad habits, they're picking up our excuses, as well.

&quot;It is no longer acceptable to blame the individual for their obesity: the causes are clearly societal.&quot;

Gotta love it.

there are just too many fatties.

And too many intolerant people, too.

Now, can I start in on all MY pet peeves?

go right ahead underhill.

underhill - sure I'll start.
I hate it when fat people act like they are handicapped by driving around on those carts. In Florida the buses were delayed and delayed waiting for fat people to park their scooters.

Read the study's abstract without all the hype of color commentary:
http://radiology.rsnajnls.org/cgi/co...t/2402051110v1

I am blessed to be very slim but honestly, I'd prefer to be extremely large rather than be capable of participating in such deplorable name calling and judgementalism as is showing up on this thread. We all have our challenges whether they be body size, mannerisms, or perhaps just manners in general.

I actually have a friend who's a radiologist.
I was at her practice one evening when she was trying to decide how best to treat a very obese patient. Eventually they had to send the patient back to the hospital without doing the scan. She just couldn't fit in there.

It is a very real and very serious problem indeed.

As a former fatty....I've seen the view from both sides. My observation is that the last &quot;acceptable&quot; bigotry in the American society (I can't speak to other countries) is obesity.

I found it fascinating that as I lost weight (from 300 lbs to 150) that I somehow became visible for the first time to people! I especially noticed this in stores...I could be the only one at a counter and I would be totally ignored when I was at my highest weight.

Now that I'm on the &quot;other side&quot;, I have great empathy for those struggling with this situation.

As a travel related side note.....it's SO much more pleasant to travel 150 lbs lighter.

This can be a very &quot;hot button&quot; topic.

Margy

What an insipid premise. And what a vacuous discussion it precipitated.

The 1989 frequency of too-fat-to-scan is <b>one</b> person in a thousand, and the 2003 number is a little less than <b>two</b> in a thousand. Not exactly epidemic proportions.

Yes, too many Americans are overweight. Yes, too many people from many other countries are increasingly overweight.

But this article, and the ridiculous interpretation of it by a British news writer drooling over another opportunity to bash Americans, have nothing to say about that.

The article concerns a tiny fraction of the population - fewer than 20 people in a thousand - who are grossly, morbidly, obese. Describing a change in that population, which is more than three standard deviations out on one tail of the normal curve, tells us nothing about what's going on with the rest of the distribution. The authors, who need to know statistics to interpret the results of their research, of course know that. The press, who need to know only how to sell advertising, of course don't.