Fat America Won't Need Mittens

Alice Randall: 80% of black women 'seriously overweight'

(NEWSER) - Most Americans need discipline in order to battle today's obesity epidemic—but in black America, "what we need is a body-culture revolution," writes Alice Randall in the New York Times . Even experts "don’t understand something crucial about black women and fat: many black women are fat because we want to be." This goes way back, from the Lucille Clifton poem "Homage to My Hips" (which starts, "These hips are big hips") to fatness as a form of political resistance to "the fit black slave." More»

New research award asks companies for a way to generate 'good' brown fat

(NEWSER) - The Army thinks its troops are getting too fat, and it's hoping to solve that problem with science. In its latest round of small-business research awards, the Army has asked companies to find a way to slim down its soldiers by injecting them with fat. Confused? Well, as Wired explains, your body has two kinds of fat cells, or adipose tissue: white adipose tissue, which is what we normally think of as fat, and brown adipose tissue, which helps you lose weight. More»

U-S-A! U-S-A!

(NEWSER) - Hey, America, you're not even the best at being the fattest: The US does, however, make GlobalPost's top 10 list of fattest countries, according to 2010 WHO statistics. The breakdown, by percentage of population classified as overweight (more than 25% BMI):

1. Nauru (95%)
2. Micronesia (92%)
3. The Cook Islands (92%)
4. Tonga (92%)

Standards aren't that extreme, either

(USER SUBMITTED) - US military recruiters have a big fat problem: "Almost one in four applicants to the military are rejected for being overweight," says a Cornell researcher. Some 6 million men and 17 million women were rejected as too porky for combat between 2007 and 2008, reports LiveScience. It's the No. 1 reason that applicants are disqualified, and top brass fear it will gut our military readiness. More»

Of 33 with developed economies, we're No. 1

(NEWSER) - The US is ranked the fattest nation among those with developed economies in a new survey. With two-thirds of Americans either overweight or obese, the US tops the analysis by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, USA Today reports. Mexico and Chile are the second and third fattest. More»