If being obese and not fitting into your favorite clothing wasn’t already a reason to lose weight, here’s another. French researchers claim to have found a link between obesity and the decline in a person’s cognitive function.

A study was performed on more than 2,200 adults in which the researchers found that people with a Body Mass Index – a measure of body fat – of 20 or less could recall 56 per cent of words in a vocabulary test, while those who were obese, with a BMI of 30 or higher, could remember only 44 per cent.

The fatter subjects also showed a higher rate of cognitive decline when they were retested five years later: their recall dropped to 37.5 per cent, whereas those with a healthy weight retained their level of recall.

Some suggestions of why being fat can actually make you dumb are:

• Hormones secreted from fats could have a damaging effect on cerebral cells, resulting in decreased brain function.
• The thickening and hardening of the blood vessels in the brain.

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If you've got a beer belly and it's hot as hell outside but you'd like to take off your shirt and you're not afraid to do so, would you do it?  I might go for it, depending on whether or not any ladies around.  However, this brave act of revealing your beer belly in order to cool off might become banned in the UK.  Local lawmakers are considering banning middle-aged shirtless man nudity simply because "no one wants to see that."

"There is a problem," government minister Nicholas Bennett said. "In my part of the country we are trying to revitalize the main shopping precinct.”

"But one of the things that is depressing for anyone going shopping is the numbers of shaven-headed men, mainly in their 30s and 40s, who seem to think people want to see their torsos."

"It is an unfortunate thing, but those men who like best to bare their stomachs are the ones who have too much stomach," Bennett said.

Thank goodness I live in America, where proudly walking around in public with my beer belly won't cause anyone to become depressed.  Well at least it shouldn't.

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Look at that six pack! Those are some killer abs. This is Takeru Kobayashi, the world champion of the Nathan’s International Hot Dog eating contest. On July 4, Takeru took home his 6th straight win, but not without a tough fight. For the first time, an American eater by the name of Joey Chestnut actually came close to beating Tarkeru by scarfing down 52 hot dogs in 12 minutes, just short of Takeru’s 53 3/4 hot dogs. You can tell Takeru Kobayashi is a serious athelete, he trains all year round for eating contests and has a rigorous training program to increase his metabolism.

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A new study presented at the American Heart Association Conference has found that strength training may help prevent belly fat.164 overweight and obese people were split into two groups.  One gropu did an hour of weight training twice a a week and the other group did 30 to 60 minutes of various exercises a day.  The researchers found that the weight training group had an average of 7% increase in intra-abdominal fat whereas the other group had a 21% increase. 

Link  

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I've never been a really big fan of mock meat, or better known as imitation meat made from soy.  In fact, I give my vegetarian friends the hardest time for eating that stuff rather than real meat.  However I found out today that there's a new stuff coming out called SoleCina.  This new type of imitation meat from Solae Company is converted from "a proprietary blend of vegetable and meat protein into a nutritious hybrid with the consistency of cooked, whole muscle meat."

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