A Medical Cure for Fat?

Can a day go by without another news story on the obesity front? Apparently not.

I swear, if the press had paid half the attention to WMD that it pays to F-A-T we wouldn’t be in this mess over in camel and goat land.

As a matter of fact, fatness as a news story is emblematic of the obesity problem in general — we’re lazy. People are lazy and won’t exercise, the media are lazy and only covers stories that are — sorry about this — spoon fed to them.

You really expected us to investigate the sub-prime mortgage warning signs last year when there was a new study out reporting that Twinkies might make you fat?

Look at me. I could be doing a meaningful piece on clean coal technologies or the ethics of human cloning, but — you know. That would take work.

So instead, I turn to the story today about how a virus may be responsible for obesity.

Yeah, a virus. Like what causes you to catch a cold.

Whew. So it wasn’t those six pork chops with a banana split chaser after all. It was a bug. You can’t help that.

I don’t get the science behind this, but basically they say there’s a virus that causes stem cells to turn into fat cells.

Be honest, you want to believe this, don’t you? You want to believe it’s that simple. I want to believe this. I want to believe that if I get fat I can just pop a couple fat-formula Sudafed and it will all be over.

Matter of fact, make it night time Sudafed, so I’ll wake up skinny.

Not that I doubt the report, but I still can’t help but notice that people who eat more tend to weigh more. People who eat less tend to weigh less. What does some virus have to do with that?

I mean, I’m real happy that the pharmaceutical companies will have one more pill to sell us, but somehow I can’t help but think this will do more for big business than big bellies.

Gives a whole new meaning to “fat profits.”

But beyond that, what if it’s true? What happens if there’s a medical cure for being a lard-ass?

I don’t know if I want that, truth be told. What’s the point of being thin if everyone is thin? Yeah, there are health reasons, but everybody’s gonna die of something so in the end it’s basically cosmetic.

If you’re a hot babe, do you want all other women in the world to be hot babes as well? ’Course not, because if everyone is gorgeous, your looks ain’t worth jack.

We need fat. We need the contrast. We need a world with John Belushi and Jackie Gleason and — depending on what week it is — Oprah.

If you’re chunky, who cares? Not me. It’s who you are.

Feel free to have a salad instead of a cupcake every now and then, just to keep them from having to take your foot, but beyond that, the stress people go through worrying about their weight is probably more deadly in the long run than the weight itself.