Should the state be able to take your kid away if he gets too fat?

Some retired military officers have formed something called Mission: Readiness to highlight the impact of our unfit youth on national security. A group of retired military officers says high-calorie school lunches are threatening national security. A study by the group Mission: Readiness finds that school lunches are making American kids so fat that fewer of [...]

Adam Ozimek, Alex Tabarrok, Andrew Sullivan, Miss Cellania, and others post this picture of “Human Freight Car” Chauncey Morlan (1869-1906), one of the freak show fatties who traveled with the Barnum & Bailey Circus: Alex wonders, “What would the circus goers of 1890 have thought if they were told that in the America of 2010 [...]

A new CDC study suggests that Americans may have reached the limits of human obesity. Americans, at least as a group, may have reached their peak of obesity, according to data the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released Wednesday. The numbers indicate that obesity rates have remained constant for at least five years among [...]

Ezra Klein enjoys cooking and endorses “Naked Chef” Jamie Oliver’s notion that we’d be a healthier society if we cooked our meals at home rather than eating so much high calorie fare at chain restaurants.  Still, he notes, The problem is that the evidence suggests meals aren’t driving the rise in obesity — snacks are. [...]

Luysii points to CDC data showing that American mortality rates are dropping year after year while we simultantaneously get fatter and fatter. S/he points to several possibilities: #1: More people are exercising than they used to. How many joggers and walkers did you see on the streets 20, 30 years ago? #2: Fewer people are [...]

Since obesity has somehow become our unofficial theme this morning, I’d be remiss not to mention Ezra Klein‘s observations about trying to eat healthy at Cheesecake Factory. On first glance, I would have figure the salmon for the lightest entree, followed by the chicken piccata, the carbonara, and the crispy beef. Not so. The salmon [...]

Matt Yglesias dashed off a quick tab dump post before calling it a night. It began, “It must take a wide Latina indeed to restrain herself from slugging some of these guys.” Commenters are wondering if Matt is suggesting that soon-to-be Justice Sonia Sotomayor is fat. I’m reminded of an infamous convocation speech a decade [...]

Glenn Reynolds passes along news of a Japanese study that finds “People who are a little overweight at age 40 live six to seven years longer than very thin people, whose average life expectancy was shorter by some five years than that of obese people, the study found.” Sweet!  I’ve apparently gotten out of shape [...]

I’ve argued in the past that health care outcomes like infant mortality and life expectancies are not really very good measures of a country’s health care services since such outcomes are also a function of variables that are outside the control of health care services. A person who is morbidly obese and refuses to change [...]

There’s an obesity epidemic in Iraq that’s been fueled by the war, Tina Susman reports for the LAT. For most of the last five years, sectarian violence has drastically altered Iraqis’ lifestyles. Most retreated to the safety of their homes and became increasingly sedentary, rarely venturing out of their neighborhoods. To go out was to [...]

For years, we’ve been told that a few minutes of moderate exercise a day will lead to amazing health benefits. A new study, though, indicates that significant weight loss isn’t among them: Obesity experts agree that daily exercise is essential for good health, but whether it can successfully lead to long-term weight loss is a [...]