Wow, good thread. For me I remember an occasion when my cousin, in her early 20s at the time, I must have been less than 5, had to stay with my gran for a while. She was there for a few months and at some point I heard a conversation about her weight. "She's always offering me food ever 5 minutes. I've been eating a lot more here than back home. I'm getting a really fat belly, look!" and she'd stick out her belly and squeeze it for emphasis. At the time I remember thinking that there wasnt anything wrong with her belly and it looked good bulging over her jeans. When you're a child you don't really consider what other people find attractive, its meaningless to you, so your uncorrupted mind can be free to choose.

I used to doodle a lot when I was a kid. My favourite things to draw, before I had any real objectives, were things that where big and round and big, sometimes as big as a page just because thats as big as it gets. This later developed into big women, I remember drawing fat girls and then erasing parts of them and redrawing them bigger, repeatedly, until I was satified I had ruined my picture and should have stopped long ago. Quite similar to feeding, as you may think that you want a girl to be over 500lbs but you dont know what they'll look like or act like so what if you're wrong? what if you liked her better at 400? Ahhh its tricky stuff.

So yes, fascinated at a young age.

Its really cool to watch them run when you chase them.

I read in the newspaper today that there were findings that suggest that people who are overweight perform worse in memory testing. In previous tests samples of people with healthy BMIs were compared to people who had higher BMIs. It was found that overweight people performed less well than their smaller counterparts. A more recent study was carried out and this time the BMIs were larger in the overweight group and they performed less well than the previous group, while the sample of people with healthy BMIs attained similar scores.

I know it sounds vague but i can't remember exactly what the article said so I'm just saying the just of it.

They believe that this may be due to the hardening of arteries in the brain as this is expected to happen in other parts of the body of an overweight individual. It may also possibly relate to fat cells releasing chemicals that interfer with thought processes.

I know that it is perfectly possible to be fat and healthy so it is possible that they sample wasn't representitive of fat people in general. It may also be possible that the people they chose incedentally just happened to have better memory retrieval than the other group. It may also be possible that fat healthy people are a distinct minority.

I'm just interested in the news stories that play for or against obesity. Its amazing to see propaganda at work affecting how people think. I personally feel that this is quite fear enducing, as its a bit of a flimsey study conveying the idea that fat people are inferior to people of average size.

Since the late 80s early 90s I've been interested in the extremely obese people that occupy the world of Judge Dredd. I first saw them on the cover of the paperback Judge Dredd vs The Fatties and last year I finally got my hands on a copy. Unfortunately its quite a bit of a hetrosexual anticlimax because all the stories center around fat men but it does have some interesting ideas.

In one of the stories food is going to have to be rationed which throws the overweight community into chaos. They firmly believe that the larger you are the more food you should be alloted. I suppose if you were starving and someone was eating excessively you'd feel pretty angry, which brings in the idea of animosity towards fat people. I like the idea of a society that has the technology and health care to support people who gain to extreme proportions. The Fatties in these stories ranging from a modest 700lbs to well into the thousands, the only thing affecting their mortality being extreme hunger pangs that lead them to trying to consume cast iron bed frames and choking. They are also so large that in an effort to improve their mobility they use a belly wheel, like a unicycle propped under their stomach, or a sort of frame that goes between their legs. Which I think is totally awesome!

However, I've not read all the stories that were published later than that so I was wondering if anyone else had. I also heard a rumour that Judge Dredd had them all killed and I was wondering if anyone could confirm this and add any reasons as to why?