So I guess I hit a nerve with my food fight post, or rather, several of them. I think it's worth breaking down some of the comments and sub-discussions into a longer series. One topic that seemed to bring out the very Correntian best in folks: how we define "obese."

Reader Jeff W points us to this helpful link from the CDC, in which they have determined that there have been "noticeable increases" in the number of overweight or obese people in this country. Reader Aeryl questions the methodology with this link. Other comments in that thread had other definitions and methods to measure the size and number of "healthy" bodies.

I'm a long way from my scientific research days, but I'll say that generally, I think obesity is both a "nature" and a "nurture" issue. On the Nature side: I fully recognize that the FSM has been kind to people in my family; we're generally tall and thin with only a modicum of exercise effort and don't tend to "overweight"-edness until quite late in life, if at all. I doubt I could find the link for it now, but I recall reading a fascinating report about a group of indigenous people from South America, recently relocated from their ancestral lands to a reservation. Apparently, in a single generation they went from thin and fit to outrageously overweight. The report's conclusion was that they had evolved to live on a fat-poor diet for thousands of years before being relocated and fed "government cheese" instead of their previous natural, "jungle food" diet, and as a result their bodies were incredibly efficient in terms of fat storage. "Too" efficient when fed a more modern diet, and thus their current obesity.

I'm tossing out those two examples and asking for your thoughts, because before we can make policy progress on the "nurture" argument, it's important to correctly frame the "nature" part.

How do you define "fat" and "obese?" How should government, for the purposes of health and food policy? How important is identifying obesity as a public health "problem?" Then there are questions about how Big Industry (Fashion, Food, the Exercise-Industrial Complex, etc) define "fat." Definitions generated by the discourse of the Patriarchy play a role as well.

And once again, consider this an open thread for recipes, especially those good for people who want to reduce or change their body's shape. Warning: I will delete comments that are inappropriately insensitive to people who don't conform to mainstream body shape standards. Consider this is a safe space for people of all body shapes to contribute.