"A Fat Rant"

[Kingswood]

Originally Posted by Kitsune

Insurance companies might soon have a different view. Regardless, I'm fairly certain that most of the nearly one quarter of Americans who suffer from obesity and the full 50% of the population who are categorized as overweight didn't get to where they are due to a "genetics issue".

Imagine the outcry if insurance companies refused to cover light-skinned people for skin cancer.

You were also quoting me out of context. You deleted the first sentence of the paragraph:

People who eat a healthy diet and get enough exercise may still be overweight because they have inherited an efficient, thrifty metabolism. For such people it is as wrong to vilify them as it is to vilify someone on the basis of race or gender: people cannot change the genes they inherit.

If everyone ate a healthy diet in moderation and got enough exercise, there would still be fat people. Some people have very efficient metabolisms, and others have inherited appetites that make it difficult to avoid gaining weight.

However, it seems you have completely missed the point that I was making. The difference between dark skin and light skin is about seven genes. A similar number of genes may be the difference between someone with a moderate appetite who can maintain a healthy weight easily, and someone who eats like a sparrow and still gains weight or someone whose appetite becomes ferocious if they lose five kilograms. Such people are only the unlucky recipients of a bad deal from the genetic deck, yet such people are often discriminated against to a degree that is not dissimilar to Apartheid-era South Africa or the Southern USA during the slavery era.