Metabo!

[coachdb18]

Should the government require you to report for a government conducted weigh in, and then put you in a mandatory exercise class at a fat farm if they determine you're too fat?

 

[KRCummings]

Should the government require me to report for a government conducted IQ test, and then put me in a mandatory remedial class at a school if they determine I'm too stupid?

Absolutely.

 

[Bert Notorius]

My insurance carrier tried. They said it would save me $600 a year. Fuck that.

Don't think it won't happen.

 

[Bert Notorius]

Absolutely.

I've seen your alleged hips Grandma.

 

[Sean Renaud]

Fuck yeah.

 

[koalabear]

If they do that then they have to find a cause. They do not want to have to point a finger at genetically altered food.

 

[coachdb18]

Japan, Seeking Trim Waists, Measures Millions

By NORIMITSU ONISHI
Published: June 13, 2008

AMAGASAKI, Japan — Japan, a country not known for its overweight people, has undertaken one of the most ambitious campaigns ever by a nation to slim down its citizenry.

Summoned by the city of Amagasaki one recent morning, Minoru Nogiri, 45, a flower shop owner, found himself lining up to have his waistline measured. With no visible paunch, he seemed to run little risk of being classified as overweight, or metabo, the preferred word in Japan these days.

But because the new state-prescribed limit for male waistlines is a strict 33.5 inches, he had anxiously measured himself at home a couple of days earlier. “I’m on the border,” he said.

Under a national law that came into effect two months ago, companies and local governments must now measure the waistlines of Japanese people between the ages of 40 and 74 as part of their annual checkups. That represents more than 56 million waistlines, or about 44 percent of the entire population.

Those exceeding government limits — 33.5 inches for men and 35.4 inches for women, which are identical to thresholds established in 2005 for Japan by the International Diabetes Federation as an easy guideline for identifying health risks — and having a weight-related ailment will be given dieting guidance if after three months they do not lose weight. If necessary, those people will be steered toward further re-education after six more months.

To reach its goals of shrinking the overweight population by 10 percent over the next four years and 25 percent over the next seven years, the government will impose financial penalties on companies and local governments that fail to meet specific targets. The country’s Ministry of Health argues that the campaign will keep the spread of diseases like diabetes and strokes in check.

The ministry also says that curbing widening waistlines will rein in a rapidly aging society’s ballooning health care costs, one of the most serious and politically delicate problems facing Japan today. Most Japanese are covered under public health care or through their work. Anger over a plan that would make those 75 and older pay more for health care brought a parliamentary censure motion Wednesday against Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, the first against a prime minister in the country’s postwar history.

But critics say that the government guidelines — especially the one about male waistlines — are simply too strict and that more than half of all men will be considered overweight. The effect, they say, will be to encourage overmedication and ultimately raise health care costs.

Yoichi Ogushi, a professor at Tokai University’s School of Medicine near Tokyo and an expert on public health, said that there was “no need at all” for the Japanese to lose weight.

“I don’t think the campaign will have any positive effect. Now if you did this in the United States, there would be benefits, since there are many Americans who weigh more than 100 kilograms,” or about 220 pounds, Mr. Ogushi said. “But the Japanese are so slender that they can’t afford to lose weight.”

Mr. Ogushi was actually a little harder on Americans than they deserved. A survey by the National Center for Health Statistics found that the average waist size for Caucasian American men was 39 inches, a full inch lower than the 40-inch threshold established by the International Diabetes Federation. American women did not fare as well, with an average waist size of 36.5 inches, about two inches above their threshold of 34.6 inches. The differences in thresholds reflected variations in height and body type from Japanese men and women.

Comparable figures for the Japanese are sketchy since waistlines have not been measured officially in the past. But private research on thousands of Japanese indicates that the average male waistline falls just below the new government limit.

That fact, widely reported in the media, has heightened the anxiety in the nation’s health clinics.

In Amagasaki, a city in western Japan, officials have moved aggressively to measure waistlines in what the government calls special checkups. The city had to measure at least 65 percent of the 40- to 74-year-olds covered by public health insurance, an “extremely difficult” goal, acknowledged Midori Noguchi, a city official.

When his turn came, Mr. Nogiri, the flower shop owner, entered a booth where he bared his midriff, exposing a flat stomach with barely discernible love handles. A nurse wrapped a tape measure around his waist across his belly button: 33.6 inches, or 0.1 inch over the limit.

“Strikeout,” he said, defeat spreading across his face.

The campaign started a couple of years ago when the Health Ministry began beating the drums for a medical condition that few Japanese had ever heard of — metabolic syndrome — a collection of factors that heighten the risk of developing vascular disease and diabetes. Those include abdominal obesity, high blood pressure and high levels of blood glucose and cholesterol. In no time, the scary-sounding condition was popularly shortened to the funny-sounding metabo, and it has become the nation’s shorthand for overweight.

The mayor of one town in Mie, a prefecture near here, became so wrapped up in the anti-metabo campaign that he and six other town officials formed a weight-loss group called “The Seven Metabo Samurai.” That campaign ended abruptly after a 47-year-old member with a 39-inch waistline died of a heart attack while jogging.

Still, at a city gym in Amagasaki recently, dozens of residents — few of whom appeared overweight — danced to the city’s anti-metabo song, which warned against trouser buttons popping and flying away, “pyun-pyun-pyun!”

“Goodbye, metabolic. Let’s get our checkups together. Go! Go! Go!

Goodbye, metabolic. Don’t wait till you get sick. No! No! No!”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/13/world/asia/13fat.html

 

[missgiter]

How about not sitting a Mcdonalds (ew, who eats there anyways) at every corner, and having actual, fresh foods, to buy at the local supermarket.


My curves are beautiful, and I wouldn't allow -anybody- to surgically alter them.


And besides, My tax dollars aren't paying for somebodies fat removal because they can't be fucked to get off the couch every now and then.

 

[blobfish]

How about not sitting a Mcdonalds (ew, who eats there anyways) at every corner, and having actual, fresh foods, to buy at the local supermarket.


My curves are beautiful, and I wouldn't allow -anybody- to surgically alter them.


And besides, My tax dollars aren't paying for somebodies fat removal because they can't be fucked to get off the couch every now and then.

Would you allow me to surgically alter them?

 

[coachdb18]

How about not sitting a Mcdonalds (ew, who eats there anyways) at every corner, and having actual, fresh foods, to buy at the local supermarket.


My curves are beautiful, and I wouldn't allow -anybody- to surgically alter them.


And besides, My tax dollars aren't paying for somebodies fat removal because they can't be fucked to get off the couch every now and then.

Shouldn't we humiliate those who do? Shouldn't we make them wear a McDonalds clown on their lapel, so they can be easily identified as 'loafers', who are deserving of our abuse?

 

[Sean Renaud]

How about not sitting a Mcdonalds (ew, who eats there anyways) at every corner, and having actual, fresh foods, to buy at the local supermarket.


My curves are beautiful, and I wouldn't allow -anybody- to surgically alter them.


And besides, My tax dollars aren't paying for somebodies fat removal because they can't be fucked to get off the couch every now and then.

DERP!

 

[coachdb18]

How about not sitting a Mcdonalds (ew, who eats there anyways) at every corner, and having actual, fresh foods, to buy at the local supermarket.


My curves are beautiful, and I wouldn't allow -anybody- to surgically alter them.


And besides, My tax dollars aren't paying for somebodies fat removal because they can't be fucked to get off the couch every now and then.

If your curves don't meet government specifications, then you should be mandatorily resculpted, to save the money the taxpayers will have to eventually spend on you... you should be taken to surgery, without an option to say no, for the good of society!

 

[missgiter]

If your curves don't meet government specifications, then you should be mandatorily resculpted, to save the money the taxpayers will have to eventually spend on you... you should be taken to surgery, without an option to say no, for the good of society!

And asshats should be thrown in the gas-chambers! Huzzah!

 

[Sean Renaud]

If your curves don't meet government specifications, then you should be mandatorily resculpted, to save the money the taxpayers will have to eventually spend on you... you should be taken to surgery, without an option to say no, for the good of society!

Weight loss programs aren't surgery. Seriously, shut the fuck up.

 

[coachdb18]

At the very least, we should identify them clearly and taunt them at every opportunity.. for their own good. Fat kids on the playground should be chased down, mocked, and if the other kids think it proper, yo hit and slap them. They are, after all, a drain on society in general with no inate worth.... Fat store owners, or those selling products deemed destructive to the state should be required to post signs on their businesses identifying them as 'Metabo' malcontents....

 

[coachdb18]

Weight loss programs aren't surgery.

The government will determine whether you need to work harder, or whether you need to be surgically reduced via government mandated bariatric surgery. It's all about the cost you pose to society, and the government will determine what is best for society. After all, the Japanese have accepted it, how bad can it be?

 

[Sean Renaud]

The government will determine whether you need to work harder, or whether you need to be surgically reduced via government mandated bariatric surgery. It's all about the cost you pose to society, and the government will determine what is best for society. After all, the Japanese have accepted it, how bad can it be?

Link to forced weight loss surgery is needed.

 

[koalabear]

Link to forced weight loss surgery is needed.

It's only logical.

 

[blobfish]

Link to forced weight loss surgery is needed.

We all have our kinky fetishes, but this is ridiculous.

 

[coachdb18]

It's only logical.

The lobbying has in fact already begun, as surgeons in the industry have already begun to scamper for the funding...

http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2007/01/unprecedented-campaign-to-force.html

http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r257/Ryanv_13/Fat.jpg

 

[KRCummings]

How about not sitting a Mcdonalds (ew, who eats there anyways) at every corner, and having actual, fresh foods, to buy at the local supermarket.


My curves are beautiful, and I wouldn't allow -anybody- to surgically alter them.


And besides, My tax dollars aren't paying for somebodies fat removal because they can't be fucked to get off the couch every now and then.

Is that you in the AV?

 

[Sean Renaud]

Is that you in the AV?

Be nice.

 

[KRCummings]

Be nice.

I'm just curious.

 

[Sean Renaud]

I'm just curious.

Fine fine. I'm just sayin, if you hurt that poor girls feelings you won't get any cuddles.

 

[KRCummings]

Fine fine. I'm just sayin, if you hurt that poor girls feelings you won't get any cuddles.

Now how would I hur ther feelings? I wouldn't dream of saying anything about her being a fat tub of hypocrisy or that maybe she needs to get her own cottage cheese thighs off the fucking couch before talking about anyone else.
I would never. You know me better than that.