Results tagged “fat”

There is bad, if unsurprising, news for moviegoers who routinely stuff their faces with incessant handfuls of popcorn: Not only does your maddening snack rustling ruin the delicate movie magic, but you're making yourself morbidly obese and prone to heart disease, too. Lab tests conducted by the Center for Science in the Public Interest have determined that popcorn at the major movie chains has way more calories than cud-chewing plebes are led to believe. For cinema snack-hounds, these lab results are more horrifying than The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past:

Taking cheap shots at the overweight prosecutor in court can be costly: Defense lawyer Raphael Scotto, 62, has been fined $2,500 and barred from city administrative court for mocking husky prosecutor Victor Muallem and making other inappropriate remarks. According to court papers obtained by the Post, Muallem was squeezing between two desks during a sexual-harassment hearing when Scotto cracked, "Tough fit, there, huh?" Real mature.

In the close, nasty NJ governor's race, Republican challenger Chris Christie said on Don Imus's radio show yesterday that NJ Governor Jon Cozrine should “man up and say I’m fat.” He was referring to Corzine's suggestive ads; Christie also told Imus, "I'm pretty fat," and predicted he would be a "a big fat winner" next Tuesday. The NY Times looks at the candidates today—"the two rivals made no apologies for the ugly tone of the campaign."

These are tough times for the high-end dining industry, and the seafood restaurant Oceana could have made a cool $275 just for tossing a septuagenarian lobster into a pot of boiling water. Because lobsters' age can be determined by weight, the Oceana owners believe the 11 pound crustacean, nicknamed "Peter," is approximately 70 years old. This guy was old enough to bite a infantryman's foot at Omaha Beach; does that make him too old to eat?

The NJ's governor's race is being fiercely fought, with incumbent NJ Governor Jon Corzine (D) trying to hold onto the seat while challenger Chris Christie (R), a former U.S. Attorney, attempts to capitalize on the poor economy and possible Obama-discontent. Christie has been leading in polls, though Corzine has been catching up, so it's no wonder that the campaign ads are getting very nasty. So nasty that Corzine's campaign might be drawing excessive attention to Christie's physical appearance.

Do you enjoy soda and other delicious sugary beverages? If so, you may as well raise a cup of human fat to your lips and chug, according to a new public awareness campaign by the NYC Health Dept. The print ads depict, in graphic detail, human fat mottled with blood vessels being poured from a bottle of cola; a plastic "sports" drink bottle that looks like Gatorade; and a glass bottle of iced tea resembling Snapple, New York City's "official beverage."

After news that Manhattan is—relative to the rest of the NYC—the thinnest borough, with just 42% of its residents overweight, a NY Times reporter stalked the svelte, why. One Upper East Sider said, "My mom always says, 'The smaller the dress size, the larger the apartment,'" while a painter, "attributed his slim frame (5-foot-11, 160 pounds) to a combination of healthy and unhealthy habits: daily two-mile walks, weekly soccer, and breakfasts of coffee and cigarettes." Simon Doonan, creative director of Barneys, seen leaving the gym, said, "Our closets are filled all these expensive clothes that are like swords of Damocles, because we may not fit into them anymore." He also added he wasn't "fatist" but, referring perhaps to some in middle America, "I’m appalled by people my age who can’t get through the airport without a wheelchair.

A new report [pdf] from the NYC Health Department and Department of Education finds that physically fit students tend to outscore their less-fit peers on academic tests. During the 2007-2008 school year, students who scored in the top 5% on their fitness tests outscored the bottom 5% by an average of 36 percentile points on standardized academic tests. But it's also possible overweight kids score poorly on those tests because bullies are constantly kicking the backs of their chairs. The new report further examines childhood obesity in NYC and finds that 21% of kindergarten through eighth grade students are obese, and nearly 40% of all students are overweight or obese. In a statement, NYC Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley said, "When four out of 10 school kids are overweight or obese, the city has a problem." Part of that problem is that 14% of middle- and high-school students hadn't even been offered a physical-education class this school year, according to a recent survey cited by the Post.

Starting today, extremely overweight passengers on United Airlines may be forced to buy an extra seat to accommodate their extra padding. A spokeswoman for the airline tells Bloomberg News the policy is being implemented in response to "hundreds" of complaints, and that until today more svelte customers had no choice but to "share their seat with the oversized guest." According to the new rules, an obese flier may be required to pay for an extra seat if he or she can't buckle the seatbelt (even using the seatbelt extender) or can't put the armrests down when seated. If the flight is not fully booked and two empty adjacent seats are available, flight attendants will relocate the passenger, free of charge. But if the flight is full, the passenger could be bumped to another flight or charged for an upgrade. Similar policies are already in effect at eight other domestic airlines, including Delta and Southwest. But up in ever-courteous Canada, the Supreme Court ruled that airlines must provide an extra seat for wide ends free of charge.

The IACP Awards, or more informally—the “cookbook awards”—were given out somewhere in Denver over the weekend. A few Gothamist interviewees from the past year were honored: The big Chanterelle book, by David Waltuck, Andrew Friedman, and photography by Maria Robledo, won for Food Photography & Styling. Bottomfeeder, a first person chronicle of the sustainable seafood movement by essayist Taras Grescoe, won the Literary Food Writing award, and Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, by Jennifer McLagan won in the Single Subject category. Eat Me Daily’s Helen Rosner offers some smart criticism of the judges’ choices and how they'll inform the future of cookbooks; here’s a decent-sized preview of the award-winning Chanterelle. Meanwhile, we’d be remiss if we failed to mention another Gothamist interviewee’s ascendancy to some kind of specially selected, niche list: Food Party host Thu Tran has just been named one of Paper magazine’s Beautiful People 2009.

Governor David Paterson met with students at Morrisville State College yesterday to talk about the budget, and was forced to admit that his proposed "obesity tax" was all but defeated, Newsday reports. In response to a student's question about the "foolish tax on soda," Paterson said he doesn't "think the legislature will pass it...But often publicity is as important as legislation." The plan would have put an 18% tax on soda and other sugary drinks containing less than 70% fruit juice, raising an estimated $1 billion for the state while discouraging the consumption of such crap. But the beverage industry was prepared to fight it in court, and yesterday the governor spun the failed proposal as simply part of an ongoing effort to raise awareness. He also warned students who think diet cola is the health-conscious choice: "Sure there's sugar in regular soda, but the chemicals in diet soda will kill you, too." Apparently, the students were just too mature to ask him to elaborate on the dangers of Coke.

Between the 2002 and 2004, New York City residents gained 10 million pounds, becoming Rubenesque at a rate nearly three times that of other Americans, according to a survey by city health officials. Obesity and diabetes rates in the city soared 17% between 2002 and 2004, compared to a 6% rise in obesity rates nationwide, where there was no marked increase in the rate of diabetes.

A 63-year-old woman and her 34-year-old son were found dead in their Silver Lake home Tuesday morning. The Staten Island Advance reports that Doris Newsome and son Martin both had health issues and needed to use oxygen tanks. The pair seemed to die of natural causes at around the same time, but it's not clear what the exact cause was (the ME's report will take a while), so their simultaneous deaths seem mysterious and bizarre....