Being Fat or Smoking: Why is One Worse Than The Other?

i dont think i will ever drink milk again. that sounded so disgusting. we have yoder's dairy around here, anyone familiar with it? they deliver milk, is that any better than milk from the grocery?

Why are obesity rates high in Alaska, Wisconsin and the Dakotas?

Because of the high percentage of poor American Indians who have not had time to develop any genetic immunity to a Culture of Plenty.

Ditto the observation that Upper Midwesterners eat some phenomenally fattening food. There's a bar here in Madtown, WI -- and it's by no means an anomaly -- that serves up deep fried mac and cheese. And deep fried Snickers bars aren't uncommon, and fried cheese curds are about as common as ice in January. Not to mention oceans of beer and brandy...

And the last thing you want to be in the middle of the deep freeze is bone skinny. Food in the dead of winter is a wonderful thing. So's summer sausage (about 50% fat, I think)...

Is that theory well supported by research?

I know it has been touted as a possible reason why Aboriginal Australian have a staggering rate of diabetes and heart disease and such....and I have heard it discussed about other populations.

Being obese, meh nothing's going to happen to me. I don't think there's PASSIVE OBESITY (if there was then that'd suck) but I don't like the whole idea of passive smoking. I mean, if someone lights up and then I end up getting the cancer or whatever because they decided to smoke and breath fag ash all over me... Plus. Smoking stinks. Fat people don't if they use deodorant. But that goes for everyone.

Dlowan--

I can't cite chapter and verse for a genetic defenselessness of American Indians towards the Culture of Plenty and alcoholic beverages, but I've heard the hypothesis over and over again: AA, AMA, Diabetic Groups....

I am certain about the high rate of obesity (and all the diseases that come with obesity) on Indian Reservations.

I've heard the same.

Still, I can attest to a high rate of obesity among the other hues of folks in the great lakes states, as well.

this must be specific to the U.S.

Here's a cite for First Nations vs. European ancestry. It doesn't say anything about availability of food, just a different distribution of body fat and hence higher levels of obesity, as it is measured.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=9822953&dopt=Abstract

I remember seeing somewhere (so this is not at all a credible statement, given my memory) that though folks indigenous to Greenland ate very high fat diets and were, by the standard definition, relatively overweight, they did not suffer as much from diseases that typically affect overweight folks of European ancestry.

Many grains of salt with that last paragraph, if not with the first.