Second Opinion: Catching Fat Like a Cold
Aug. 17 -- Be forewarned: this is scary stuff, particularly if you happen to be obese. It’s bad enough that fat people in this thin-obsessed culture are often treated badly or like they belong in a zoo, but now watch out for signs of more extreme discrimination.
New scientific evidence screams out that fatness may be contagious! That’s right, one day you are svelte and really cool looking in your designer threads and then someone (possibly a very fat person) sneezes on you and bingo bongo a virus attacks you and you’re soon fat too.
The Obesity Contagion? What am I talking about? Last month, scientists reported in the International Journal of Obesity that inoculating chickens and mice with human adenovirus, or a virus that typically causes colds, causes them to put on fat. The researchers raised the question that humans may catch the fat virus, too.
This nightmarish idea that I can catch a fat virus is cascading through my brain as I sit in a crowded food court in a shopping mall in northern New York State. Nervously, I observe a steady stream of obese people strolling by merely several feet away. In fact, I’m also beginning to feel surrounded by fat people who are eating triple-cheese, all-dressed pizza or fries with gravy.
I begin to sweat profusely at the thought of contracting the obesity virus from one of these possible carriers.
The news reports I have been reading on this new horror give me the chills. For example, one pull-out quote in the magazine New Scientist (”The Obesity Bug,” Aug. 5) squirts up like a dollop of spicy ketchup, reminding me that “Should you be unlucky enough to get the virus, you’re overwhelmingly likely to end up fat.”
Catching Fattiness From Co-workers?
Another large-type quote in that magazine reads: “What does this mean for people who share buses and offices with carriers?”
No kidding. And what about being kissed by a fat person? Or hugged? Or even you know what?
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