If you think your diet is bad, you haven’t seen anything until you take a look at the menu for The Heart Attack Grill, a popular Las Vegas restaurant.

With foods like the Flatliner Fries, Double Bypass Burger, and the Quadruple Bypass Burger, which is in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the highest calorie burger in the world at 9,982…

Wow.

So the restaurant’s spokesman, an avid proponent of their oh-so-healthy menu, John Alleman, at the ripe old age of 52, dropped dead from…..wait for it….yes..a heart attack.

Shocker, I know.

I can understand the novelty of purposely creating a fat inducing themed restaurant because:

1. It’s funny and unique
2. It’s Las Vegas and anything goes there

I’m sure I’d even try some of their food if I was there. Once.

Anyway, not that there isn’t already plenty of proof out there that eating food that is terrible for you leads to health problems, but it’s an ironically tragic story.If you want to read the whole thing, it’s here.

It seems like every day  brings a new health problem associated with obesity. I was reading CNN.com today and came across this article about the relationship between a woman’s weight and body shape and her memory.

Apparently, a large scale study was done on women ages 65 to 79 and it was determined that for every 1 point increase in their body mass index (BMI) there is a correlating 1 point decrease in their memory score. The article fails to mention the significance of a 1 point drop in this score. It could be negligible, it could mean that they will be forgetting their grand children’s names.

The more a woman weighs, the worse her memory the study claims.  Also, having a pear shaped body (and associated abdominal and hip fat) leads to more memory problems. It seems that there is a possible link between body fat and a restricted blood flow to the brain.

From a memory standpoint, having an apple body type is superior to the pear body type. Unfortunately, nothing was said about watermelons…….

The bad news is that mid section fat is linked to diabetes, strokes, and now decreased memory function. The good news is that you will probably forget all about it….

I actually wasn’t planning to write about this article, but when I saw the popularity of it (check out the Facebook shares!!), I figured it might be worth a mention.

Move over Lance Armstrong, there’s a new breed of over-achiever and her name is Donna Simpson. Donna is a woman with unbridled passion, awe-inspiring determination, and has her eye on one goal and one goal only…..to join the Guinness Book of World’s Records as the fattest woman on the planet. Now that’s a lofty goal! Donna, currently at 602 pounds already holds the world’s record for the heaviest woman to give birth (only a measly 530 pounds). Imagine the joy of the lucky 30 hospital staff members who needed to assist with her C-section delivery. Damn you schedule……

Donna’s 150 pound husband is very supportive of her eating habits and wants nothing more that for her to reach her milestone goal. She simply needs to eat 12,000 calories each day and do absolutely nothing to keep gaining fat weight. Unfortunately, she often has to chase after  her 3 year old daughter which is burning up those much needed calories and setting her back.

They are also managing to spend over $3,000 each month on food, mostly baked goods (it’s hard to resist that box of donuts) and fast food. It’s not clear what her husbands line of work is, but Donna has been trying to earn food money by appearing on her website. Her website charges a fee to allow us the pleasure of watching her stuff her face full of greasy food! Apparantly she doubles the audiences viewing pleasure by wearing a bikini…..And no, I have not visited her site, nor will I ever (you just can’t take some things back).

Aside from her anti-healthy, pro-heart failure lifestyle, Donna insists that she is in perfectly fine health (aside from the Type 2 diabetes, of course). She is also an avid member of the “fat acceptance community” and is inspiring women all over to to adopt her motto of  “the bigger your butt is, the bigger belly you have, the sexier you are”.

Don’ get me wrong here, I’m not bashing overweight people at all. There are millions of overweight folks out there who are trying to make a positive change in their lifestyle and I applaud them. People like Donna can certainly do what they please to their bodies, I just don’t advocate the complete disregard for one’s health or the message it sends to the public.

I could rant about this for hours and break down all the heath related issues at hand here, but I won’t. The next time I update this post, it will be with her obituary.

My article yesterday discussed the harmful effects of second hand smoke, especially on children. I came across this video, which was  on most major news channels this week, and couldn’t believe it.

Meet Ardi Rizal, a 2-year old boy from Indonesia. He likes playing with his friends, digging in the mud, and oh yea….smoking 40 cigarettes a day. How does this even happen? How is a little boy like this introduced to the wonderful world of smoking? I vote for excellent role models for parents. Apparantly, his parents have yet to hear of lung cancer or heart disease (or portion control).

You think your child throws a nasty temper tantrum when they don’t get what they want. How about a jumbo sized man-baby who is addicted to nicotine. This is just plain nuts!!!

This seems like a rarity, but I’m not so sure it isn’t happening much more frequently. The ironic part of all of this is that this kid will probably live to be 105 years old…..

In Other News

The world’s dirtiest city was revealed today and it’s Washington DC………just kidding.

It’s actually Linfen, China, a coal mining city in Shanxi province. As it turns out, residents don’t need to smoke since breathing in the polluted air is the equivalent of smoking 3 packs of cigarettes. Below is a picture of this lovely city. Forget sunny Hawaii, call China Air instead to book your flight here….

Meningitis, you’ve heard of it, but you may not know exactly what it is. Meningitis is potentially fatal disease caused by an inflammation of the membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord. The inflammation is caused by bacteria or a viral infection and can come from multiple sources. One such source is a slimy little slug. They are hanging around our gardens and in our leaf piles, but how many of us have ever thought that instead of flicking them off, we should instead eat one?

According to an article published yesterday, an Australian man decided to eat one of these tasty gastropods on a dare. One month and one disease called rat lungworm, which is a form of meningitis later, he is still in the hospital. Apparently, this has prompted health officials to issue warnings about eating raw slugs or snails. However, if you simply cannot refrain from eating them, physicians have advised people to clean them thoroughly.

Moral of the story…..Wash Your Slugs!!!

Well, The annual list of our fattest cities has been posted on MSN and the winner (and by winner, I mean highest concentration of overweight people and type 2 diabetics) is Corpus Christi, Texas. What are they eating down there? They always seem to end up at or near the top of this list. Actually, 5 of the top 10 are in Texas. I think they should change their state bird to fried chicken.  Also, the very lovely, clean, and safe city of Baltimore comes in at # 8. Not only do you have a 1 in 78 chance of getting mugged, carjacked, or assaulted there, but if you do manage to avoid being victimized there, you may just end up dying of coronary heart disease or diabetes. Quick, call the movers…..

As far as the fittest, San Francisco wins again! It’s the hills….gotta be the hills.. Our own Washington DC did manage to come in at # 3, which is a little surprising given the fact that there is a vendor selling nitrate laced hot dogs on every corner, but who am I to judge??

Meet the Chawner family from Blackburn, England. Philip, his wife Audrey, and their 2 daughters weigh in at a mere 1,160 combined pounds.
This lovely family has recently found themselves in the news and the subject of much ridicule. There is a good reason for this.
The problem here is not that they are all obese, but rather that they all claim that they are too fat to work. Even better is that they are receiving more than $30,000 per year in government funding because of this absurd claim. Not only that but they are asking the government for a raise now. Apparently, eating 3,000 calories each per day is getting too expensive and they might have to cut back. We can’t have that. Also, according to Philip, fruits and vegetables are too costly and besides, they don’t like the taste.

According to Philip, they all got the ‘fat’ gene and are powerless against it. There is simply nothing they can to to stop it! Do you see a problem here?
Philip has developed type 2 diabetes because of his weight and his wife now has asthma and epilepsy. They also have government funded health care.

The best part is that they spend ALL day watching television and sleeping. Philip says that when they get too bored with watching tv, they have to take a nap for a reprieve. Emma, 19, is a college student who claims she does not have the time for exercise and has no idea how to lose the weight. How about getting off the couch and moving!

It’s only a matter of time before stories similar to this one start popping up in this country. The sheer laziness and ignorance of these people just add to the many fundamental sociological problems this world faces.