Consider the Duck! - Compare it with the obese human swimmer!

CONSIDER THE DUCK! - Compare it with the obese human swimmer!

Now, everyone who has ever cooked a duck, along with everyone who has never cooked a duck, knows that much of the weight of a duck is fat. - FAT. (In fact, fat comprises almost half of the weight of a duck.) - But when it is swimming, which is how we mostly see it when it is alive, it's a nice compact creature; its fat doesn't wobble about, does it? - Not at all. - And when it is out of its favoured element and moving on dry land, admittedly it waddles because its legs are so short and its webbed feet so big and ungainly on land, but its fat doesn't wobble. And its fat stays nice and compact when it flies as well. And clearly the fat does not make the duck uncomfortable or ill. - To BE a duck entails carrying a lot of fat.

Now consider those poor extremely obese people who have the misfortune to be selected to appear on TV as salutory lessons for the viewer and also to 'entertain' the viewer. Their body parts wobble as they walk or run. Their thighs and knees chafe painfully. Their breathing is laboured. They have large appetites - i.e. they are always hungry because they need extra calories to service the extra weight they have to carry around with them.

Now bring to mind the poor souls among them who have been filmed while swimming, for us to view on TV programmes. The unspoken invitation as we view this, is to be appalled and disgusted at the sight. - What do we see? - It is not the compact, comfortable swimming of the fat duck.

The obese person's swimming body, filmed from under the water, shows rolls of 'fat' moving about in a clearly abnormal way which certainly disturbs, and frequently disgusts, the viewer. - But is this what fat, in fact, does do? - No, it isn't, and it doesn't.

I refer you back to the duck. - No rolls of fat wobbling round when the duck swims...

What we have seen is rolls not of fat, but of excess water held in the distended blood vessels of the obese human swimmers, whose obesity is caused not by over-eating, but by abnormal fluid retention - hypervolaemia, i.e. excess blood volume. Only fluids move as freely as that, not fat.

© Margaret Wilde 2006...(o: