2/9: 363.2

Back to pinhead land, I am. Foster gets back to 29.

"Wade" wrote:

"Wade" wrote:

New Zealand: Expats fat wife refused visa 

November 20th, 2007


A British man, Richie Trezise, who moved to New Zealand has been told by officials that his wife is too fat to join him according to a report from the Daily Telegraph. His wife, Rowan, 33, a photographer, has been battling for months to shed the pounds so they can be reunited and live Down Under but has so far been unable to overcome New Zealands weight regulations.

Mr Trezise, who moved to Auckland in September after shedding two inches from his waist on a crash diet, said that if his wife was not allowed to come out by Christmas they would abandon the idea of emigrating.

His employer-backed skills visa was initially rejected by immigration officials when they discovered that his body mass index, or BMI, was 42, making him morbidly obese under New Zealand regulations.

BMI measures a persons weight in relation to their height. Anything over 25 is regarded as overweight, and 30 or above is obese.

Mr Trezise, a submarine cable specialist and a former soldier, said: My doctor laughed at me. He said hed never seen anything more ridiculous in his whole life. He said not every overweight person is unhealthy or unfit.

The idea was that we were going to change our lifestyle totally and get outdoors and on mountain bikes and all sorts of activities.

The couple, who both lived in Barry, Wales, were all set for a new life after Mr Trezise was headhunted by New Zealands Telecom.

New Zealand is critically short of skilled workers, and many large firms are intensively recruiting in Britain.

Mr Trezise was recruited to supervise the Southern Cross Cable, which links New Zealand with Australia and the west coast of the United States. He is one of only four highly qualified specialist technicians working on the improvement of the cable.

The New Zealand Immigration Service said it did not know how many people were denied entry to the country because of high BMI readings.

However, comments posted on the Emigrate New Zealand website reveal that many people have been turned down after medical tests revealed that they were obese.

Mr Trezise has private health care in New Zealand and his employer, Telecom, has a gym membership scheme.

UK fatties demand 'hate crime' status for lardo-baiting
 
German study shows 'overweight' BMI perfectly healthy

By Lewis Page

Woebegone British swingbellies have launched a campaign against anti-lardo "hate crime" and discrimination, even as a survey of possibly gutbusting Germans has revealed that being "overweight" is actually not a health hazard.

The British flab-lib campaign is reported today by the BBC, which quotes Kathryn Szrodecki - described elsewhere (and pictured) by the Beeb as "a full-figured woman firm in her belief that to be big is not to be bad" as saying that the long-belted community face a grim life of discrimination and abuse in Blighty.

"I have been discriminated against - I am a YMCA qualified fitness instructor, but I have gone for jobs and been laughed off the premises," the rotund campaigner told the Beeb.

"I have been punched, I have had beer thrown in my face," added globular persecutee Marsha Coupe. "They say 'Move out of the way fatty!'"

"Someone being beaten up should be a crime," commented Szrodecki.

Meanwhile in Germany, most people are judged "overweight" by the famously unreliable Body Mass Index (BMI) method. Top Teutonic boffin Matthias Lenz of the Faculty of Mathematics, Computer Science, and Natural Sciences of the University of Hamburg decided to look into this, compiling 42 different German health studies together to find out if being in the "overweight" BMI range (as opposed to "ideal" or "healthy") had any negative health consequences.

According to Lenz and his co-authors, being "overweight" (BMI 25 to 30) "does not increase death rates" at any age range, though being "obese" (BMI of 30 or more) does.

Regarding less serious outcomes than death, being "overweight" means an increased risk of heart trouble, but a decreased risk of bone and hip fracture. "Overweight" German men even had a slightly lower risk of dying from cancer.

In summary, the German study-of-studies found that "overall mortality is unchanged by overweight, but increased by 20 per cent by obesity, while extreme obesity raises it by up to 200 per cent... an increased morbidity and mortality risk has been confirmed for being underweight".

The results appear to chime with a recent study out of Canada which showed that being "overweight" was actually somewhat healthier than being "ideal" in terms of lifespan. Being "extremely obese" or "underweight", as in Germany, was a bad idea.

The German study can be read in full here (English pdf).

Meanwhile the UK porker campaigners are demanding San Francisco-style anti-fatscism laws, designed to prevent lardos being unfairly denied housing or jobs. In the UK there is currently no special legal protection for fatties as there is for those persecuted on religious, ethnic or sexual grounds.

Full disclosure: The author is 6'3" and 16 stone, ie one of the overweight. He feels able to survive in today's hefty-hating climate without special legal protection, however; though the memory of being refused a place as cox of a ladies' rowing team many years ago still stings.

Obese woman gives birth in Romania 

By ALINA WOLFE MURRAY, Associated Press Writer Thu Feb 18, 8:19 pm ET

[img_r]http://d.yimg.com/a/p/ap/20100219/capt.51db3526c7814d5f99226770c23e6016.aptopix_romania_obese_mom_xvg201.jpg?x=400&y=286&q=85&sig=vTw5UI_psSVTorxxsqaR9g--[/img_r]BUCHAREST, Romania A 25-year-old woman weighing 528 pounds (240 kilograms) gave birth to her first baby on Thursday in what one expert called a rare and risky case. "I wanted this child with all my heart, whatever the sacrifice," the Adevarul newspaper quoted the mother, Victoria Lacatus, as saying.

Her healthy baby girl, born by cesarean section, weighed 6.4 pounds (2.9 kilograms), said Bogdan Popescu, a spokesman at Bucharest University Emergency Hospital, which is equipped to treat obese people.

Dr. Daghni Rasasingham, of Britain's Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in London, said the case was rare, given the mother's weight and height of 5.25 feet (1.6 meters), and that she would be at risk of clots, diabetes, post-birth bleeding and infection.

Popescu said Lacatus was being carefully monitored because she suffers from a thyroid problem and post-surgery complications could develop because of her morbid obesity.

Florin Costandache, who helped perform the operation, said: "It was a real challenge because she needed four times the anesthetic a normal person needs."

The chief surgeon, obstetrician Valeriu Horhoianu, said at least 10 obese women have given birth at the Bucharest hospital, but they all weighed less than 352 pounds (160 kilograms).

Nicolae Cernea, a doctor from the southern city of Craiova where Lacatus was hospitalized for a month before delivery said her case was unique in Romania.

In August 2008, a heavier obese woman 560-pound (255-kilogram) Leanne Salt gave birth to triplets in Britain.