The cruelty and taunts from those who aren’t fat aimed at those who are have crushed confidence and led to many a suicide.
Fat people are the target of many a joke, and it is a prejudice that lives on in our society.
Indeed, it is an accepted part of television, as was shown only too well when grossly obese Jonathan Antoine waddled onto the stage in front of Simon Cowell in an audition for Britain’s Got Talent. At first glimpse Cowell sneered and assumed that what he was about to hear would be awful. This can only be a prejudice against fat people, since all Cowell had seen was the size of the contestant.
For me, I cannot remember a time when I have ever ‘received’ the ‘Full‘ signal. Yet, I’ve not really experienced the ‘Hungry‘ signal either. The loudest the latter ever gets for me is ‘Peckish’. Indeed, it stays on ‘Peckish’ almost all the time, a point that was made in the horizon programme.
In comparison, it appears that ‘ordinary’ people get quite acute signals. They will even ‘crash out’ in a panic if they don’t respond to the ‘Hungry‘ signal. They get aggressive and ratty. Usually they have to eat at set times, otherwise they can’t concentrate and they feel unwell. None of that working through a lunch break to get something finished and then eating, for them.
Strangely, when they do eat, very quickly they’ll get a ‘Full‘ signal. In a lot of cases the ‘Hungry‘ signal will force them to all but over-fill their plate, and then after a few mouthfuls the ‘Full‘ signal will tell them they can’t eat any more. This is how strongly they receive both signals.
People like me, however, perfectly capable of working for many hours without a break for food, never receive the ‘Hungry‘ signal, so never really ‘crash out’. We always feel ‘Peckish’ so there’s no change, no sudden alarm bell going off at ‘lunch time’, no feeling of ‘must eat or will die’. In a way, we are designed to graze all the time, or just go without for a long time without panic. Neither matters, for us the ‘Hungry‘ signal never intensifies beyond ‘Peckish’.
Similarly, we never receive the ‘Full‘ signal. And it is this that is the real problem, and why we overeat without being aware of it.
Food tastes nice. It probably tastes extra nice for somebody who has had the ‘Hungry‘ signal but not yet had the ‘Full‘ signal. Once they get that ‘Full‘ signal, the appeal of the food just disappears. So, somebody getting the ‘Hungry‘ and ‘Full‘ signals at the right times will input the ‘right’ amount of food to keep them healthy, alive and, well, slim. With no ‘Full‘ signal, the eating continues, far too much is taken in, and the excess is stored as fat, so the person gets fatter.
With no ‘Hungry‘ signal at all (not even set to ‘Peckish’) a person will under-eat and become anorexic with all the dangers that come with that too.
It seems to me that overnight the obesity problem could be solved if they can work out how to fix the hormone imbalance that masks these signals, or synthesize them. Why isn’t this being done as a top priority?
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