Shortly after learning that half of all Americans will be obese by 2030, the Times has decided to investigate the pressing issue of fat Americans on public transportation. It's a real problem, you guys! Just ask Kevin Smith. more ›

Nanny Bloomberg had some relatively good news to brag about today. Bucking national trends, the overall obesity rate among NYC kindergartners through eighth graders has dropped 5.5 percent in the last five years. Of course it has gone from 21.9 percent obese in 2006-07 to 20.7 percent in 2010-11, but still! Notably, the sharpest decline has been seen in kids aged 5-6, which has good implications for the long term. So naturally hizzoner took the news as proof that "years of pioneering policies to improve child nutrition and encourage exercise" (and maybe scary ads!) were behind the drop. more ›

With crowded flights on the mind of many travelers this week, as well as gluttony, one airline passenger's seven-hour flight on US Airways has struck a chord: Arthur Berkowitz says he had to stand for the flight from Alaska to Philadelphia because a morbidly obese passenger made nearly impossible for him to sit in his own seat. more ›

The rapture is still right around the corner, but even if we somehow get past that cataclysmic event, America has other problems—like the fact that half the population will be obese by 2030. But there may be a solution: start smoking marijuana! more ›

This week, the one-month-old child of a Long Island TV news host, as well as the infant's babysitter, were both found dead in an incident police are calling "a tragic accident." Authorities now believe that baby Michael, son of reporter Michael Baldwin II, died after the obese babysitter collapsed on top of him. "The woman was described as extremely heavy. She was extremely large-breasted...Because of the amount of flesh, it could have caused the baby to suffocate," said Detective Lt. Gerard Pelkofsky. more ›

New Jersey woman Donna Simpson, who dreamed of hitting 1,000 pounds (and came close, too), is going on a diet, she announced this week. more ›

A 416-pound robbery suspect has been granted a new trial because of the lack of 400 pound guys in the city. An appeals court judge ruled that the lineup he was picked out of was unfair because all the other guys were just too skinny. "Although the fillers were large men, there was a very noticeable weight difference between defendant and the fillers," said the judge. more ›

A new study in Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism says that sometimes it is totally healthy to be fat. Really! While studying the uses of the Edmonton Obesity Staging System (EOSS), a recently proposed means of measuring obesity that is more complex than a Body Mass Index (which has problems), researchers at York University found numbers that "challenge the idea that all obese individuals need to lose weight,” according to lead author Jennifer Kuk. more ›

Yesterday, NJ Governor Chris Christie suffered a severe asthma attack and was hospitalized for a few hours. The rumored 2012 presidential candidate—or VP candidate—admitted his weight causes problems. "I think the weight exacerbates everything," he said last night. "The lighter I am, the healthier I'll be... I feel a pretty big sense of urgency [to lose weight]. It's one of the major struggles of my life. I'm working on it." more ›

Obesity remains a huge problem in America—especially with one third of our our nation's children being classified as overweight or obese—but a number of large restaurant chains are now teaming up to do something about it. Of course, let's not go overboard: they're teaming up to cover themselves in case the government ever gets too worried about our nation's girth. To that end, more than a dozen chains, including Au Bon Pain, Burger King, Chili's, Denny's, Friendly's, IHOP and Outback Steakhouse, have created a "Kids LiveWell" initiative that aims to bring healthier fare to kids trays. more ›

Seeing unattractive photos of fat people in the media is (part of) why you are fat, according to a new study out of Yale's Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. According to the researchers, online news sources tend to use negative images of overweight people in stories about obesity (i.e. eating fast food, wearing tight clothes or shown with their heads cut off) and those images in turn perpetuate obesity's bad reputation, which may contribute to obesity itself. more ›

Over the weekend the body of a 400-pound man was found stuffed inside a large bag in an apartment at the Justice Sonia Sotomayor Houses in Soundview, and police have identified the victim as apartment resident Angel Rondon. Rondon, 52, reportedly lived alone, and one neighbor said she last saw him on March 14th. Since then she had knocked on his door a few times: "I could hear the TV, but no one came to the door." more ›

The body of a 400-pound man was found stuffed in a duffel bag in an apartment in a Bronx housing project yesterday. Police decided to check out the apartment in the Justice Sonia Sotomayor Houses in Soundview after they smelled a strange odor while responding to a different incident there. And what awaited them inside was like a scene out of Dexter: blood covered the kitchen floor, cleaning products all around the room and a bloody hatchet lying nearby. more ›

The families of two New York women who received lap-band surgery—a procedure meant to help severely obese people lose weight—are suing the respective hospitals where their kin received the surgery, after both women died due to surgical complications. Both Rebecca Quatinetz, 27, and Danielle Delango, 25, died two months after their surgery; Quatinetz's suit claims her lap-band was defective. more ›

Donna Simpson, the 604-pound NJ woman whose "fantasy" to be 1,000 pounds, is now the toast of the town. According to the Star-Ledger, "Two days after the 42-year-old Simpson announced she intended to eat her way into the record books, 'Entertainment Tonight' was at her door. Her manager was fielding phone calls from 'Oprah,' 'Dr. Phil,' and 'Inside Edition.' And she’s been offered a reality show and book deal." more ›

Yesterday, British newspaper the Daily Mail reported on an Old Bridge, NJ resident's current goal: To weigh 1,000 pounds in two years. But now she tells the Post that it might be an impossible dream. Donna Simpson, 42, who is currently 604 pounds, says, "When you have a 3-year-old daughter and you’re trying to run a household, things like this tend to be a fantasy... This whole thousand-pound goal has gotten blown way out of proportion" more ›

After a photo emerged yesterday of an overweight man on an American Airlines flight, flooding the aisle with flab, Federal aviation authorities investigated the image. Apparently before being airborne, flight attendants gave the man two extra seats, which is in line with safety rules, according to the NY Post. This was accomplished by offering another passenger a ticket for a later flight, so the overweight man could have an entire aisle to himself. more ›

A man accused of murdering his son-in-law in Ramsey, NJ is claiming that he couldn't have committed the crime because he's too fat. William Ates, 65, is on trial for the 2006 shooting death of 40-year-old Paul Duncsak, who was shot six times in his NJ home, and who was in the middle of a bitter custody-dispute with Ates' daughter. more ›

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. more ›

Rescuers responding to a 911 call Sunday night from Long Island shut-in David Schock, 57, were forced to cut a hole in the wall of his mobile home to remove him. Andrew Donnelly at the local fire department tells Newsday, "He definitely wasn't coming out through the door." Because Schock weighs over 600 pounds, at least 10 firefighters—wearing plastic suits because there was fecal matter in the house—were needed to hoist him onto a custom-built wooden backboard and slide him through the hole. A neighbor says Schock got around his mobile home on a wooden box affixed with wheels, adding that "he did everything on his computer but he couldn't move." It apparently took him two days to reach his phone on Sunday evening to call for help after falling. A sad story, but it still doesn't top the woman who got stuck to the toilet seat after two years on the throne. more ›

The woman who had to give up her 44-pound cat--who took the country by storm as Princess Chunk when it was thought she was a girl (but actually he's a boy named Powder!)--spoke out, hoping to set the record straight. Powder was found wandering around Voorhees, NJ before the Camden County Animal Shelter took him in, and some have wondered why the cat wasn't sent to the shelter in the first place. more ›

Quick, what New York City neighborhood has the greatest percentage of obese residents? Wrong! It’s Williamsburg, which is confusing, because everyone knows the only people who live there are the proverbial skinny hipsters. more ›

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. more ›