I don't even know where to begin with this post without it turning into a full blown rant. But, I'll give it a try. Are you freekin kidding me? Is there not already enough discrimination against the overweight in this country?

It seems to me, the media took a boring study encouraging walking and riding bikes to work, and turned it into a story blaming fat people for Global Warming. This kind of thing just makes me so angry. Does anyone really think that we could solve the problem of obesity by blaming fat people for Global Warming? Does anyone really think we could solve global warming by getting rid of fat people? It's beyond absurd.

I was actually working on something totally different for tonight's post, and then I caught the tail-end of this segment on Fox...

From The LA Times...

We don't imagine Edwards and Roberts wrote their letter to be mean -- their point seems to be that it would be good for various reasons if urban policies worked to promote biking and walking -- and we haven't yet heard of mobs with torches roving the streets in search of those with BMIs of 30 or above. Nonetheless, Yale University has been quick with a news release urging "caution on obesity and climate change link."

Declares Kelly Brownell, director of the university's Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, "Saying that obese people are contributing to climate change is highly stigmatizing and assigns blame to the individuals who are obese rather than the conditions driving the obesity in the first place." Things, he says, like junk food marketing aimed at children, the demise of P.E. programs, behemoth portions offered up in restaurants, more.

From ABC News...

Obesity experts overwhelmingly condemned a letter in the medical journal the Lancet Thursday that suggested growing rates of obesity pose a threat to the environment.

"Obese people have enough issues to deal with without being demonized for their impact on the environment," agreed Keith-Thomas Ayoob, pediatric nutritionist and associate professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. "The truth is, all people are an environmental burden.

"It is offensive, and I'm not overweight," he said. "I hope the writers are not in the position of seeing patients. They must have missed the lecture on bedside manner."

Katherine Hobson wrote an article for US News and World Report, that started off by comparing public stigma against smokers and public stigma against fat people. Can Blaming People for Being Fat Help Curb Obesity?

Brownell authored a 2006 study showing that when overweight people feel stigmatized because of their weight, they respond by eating more and giving up on diets. "Obese people are under such enormous pressure to lose weight," he says. "They understand the health consequences, they see fat jokes on TV, they were teased and ridiculed as kids. To think that you could add much more to that pressure is wishful thinking." The stress may make them turn to food for comfort or, as one researcher hypothesizes, might even contribute to the physiological processes of obesity through, say, stress hormones. It can also keep people out of the gym, most likely thanks to embarrassment and shame. A study published this year in the Journal of Health Psychology suggests, at least among the college-aged, that having more experience with weight stigma makes people less motivated to exercise.

So if blaming the obese doesn't work, but their behavior still contributes to their condition, what does? It's a delicate balance; we don't want to encourage obesity, but nor do we want to swing the other way and promote unreachable body ideals or eating disorders. (Last summer, my colleague Deborah Kotz wrote about this thorny issue as it relates to obesity prevention programs for kids.) Maybe, Latner says, the focus should be on healthful eating behaviors rather than a number on the scale—and we should leave the character issues out of it.

BlogHer Stephanie Fierman writes - Scared Thin? Fat Chance.

And for those low-income families for whom obesity is a terrible problem, (a) less of them are likely to have the information the rest of us do, and (b) what are they supposed to do about it? A 2007 study revealed that a low-income family would have to devote between 43% and 70% of its food budget to fruits and vegetables in order to meet federal dietary guidelines. And healthy, low-cost foods, in general, tend to be less available to the poor.

I've also written about the difficulties facing low-income families and their ability to afford a healthy lifestyle.

Is It Possible To East Healthy on a budget?

Dr. Oz on Oprah: Money Doesn't Buy Happiness, but it does buy healthy food.

From mom at Mom's Blog...

mm, food for thought..(but not for eating). Today the NYT has an article in it about the above title and of course blogging from every corner follows the article...insanity rules. We who are not slim eat more thus cause more food production thus causing global warming...in addition I suppose we put out more heat. What about the carbons released by the cars of the slim who drive to the gym? What about the enormous appetite of my hardworking skinny hubby?

Annette from Health. Healing. Wholeness. had this to say...

What's next? Diet Prison to starve obese people until they reach an arbitrary number on the scale? Shall we end all athletic competitions to save fuel costs and deny people the right to bear children to solve a non-existant problem?

Blaming the obese for global warming is like blaming the fire department for setting a fire. Why not blame the food and diet industries that create obesity? Get rid of snack food, hydrogenated oil, high fructose corn syrup and MSG and obesity rates will decline. Give people time to cook healthy meals and stop bringing donuts to meetings. Force restaurants to serve reasonable portion sizes.

If you want to end global warming (which is a bunch of hooey) don't blame the obese, blame the industries and corporations that manufacture fake food and overwork their employees, making it extremely difficult for anyone to maintain or achieve an "ideal" weight.

Tracey from Unapologetically Female...

Seriously? Come on now. If they're really going to try to use the argument that a higher consumption of calories contributes to negative effects on the environment, why not focus on calorie consumption instead of obesity?

Even if you subscribe to their logic that larger physical size necessarily equals higher calorie consumption, there is more to size and calorie consumption than just fat. Tall people require more calories than short people. Large-framed people require more calories than small-framed people. Muscular people require more calories than non-muscular people. The only difference between these factors and fat is that we are given a free pass to hate fat and to judge fat people as much as we want. If one were to try to apply the same prejudices to tall people or to muscular people or to thin people with large apetites or to people with fast metabolisms, everyone would recognize it as completely ridiculous. But when someone comes up with new reasons to hate fat, the media can't wait to report it.

Laura from we move to canada...

Is an overweight person who takes public transportation more of a threat to the environment than a thin person who drives an SUV? (What about if the thin person drives back and forth to the gym in an SUV every day?)

Do you know how much the thin person eats? There's an assumption a thin person eats less than a heavier person, but that's not necessarily the case.

Has anyone even studied the carbon footprints of a large number of obese people and compared them to the environmental footprints of a large number of thin people? If not, isn't this "finding" just an assumption?

This is from The World According to Sylvia...

As I was reading the article, I thought how stupid it was to blame global warming on obese people. How can people really believe that the amount of food that an obese person consumes are causing the consumption of large quantities of fuel, which has a direct environmental impact. So all of those countries that have starving people live is a perfect world because they don’t consume as much food?

I’m not saying there aren’t any problems with being obese. But to blame a group of people for global warming so outrageous.

There other factors that contribute to global warming. Here is a list of what causes global warming is from the website: EcoBridge,org

• Carbon Dioxide from Power Plants
• Carbon Dioxide Emitted from Cars
• Carbon Dioxide from Airplanes
• Carbon Dioxide from Buildings
• Methane
• Water Vapor in the Atmosphere Increasing
• Nitrous oxide
• Deforestation
• City Gridlock

That list doesn’t include all the diapers going into landfills and people not recycling.

Had you heard about this study? Blogged about this story? Are you as angry about this as I am? Is there anyone who thinks it's o.k. to blame global warming on fat people?

Contributing Editor Catherine Morgan at catherine-morgan.com, The Political Voices of Women, Care2 Election Blog