And on Top of Being Fat and Depressed, They Missed the Gorilla Playing Basketball Too...

Nick Gillespie | July 6, 2006

More cutting-edge research from Seattle, this time courtesy of Google News and the straight-shooting truthtellers at China Daily:

Fat people not more jolly, says study

Fat people are not more jolly, according to a study that found obesity is strongly linked with depression and other mood disorders....

The study of more than 9,000 adults found that mood and anxiety disorders including depression were about 25 per cent more common in the obese people studied than in the non-obese. Substance abuse was an exception obese people were about 25 per cent less likely to abuse drugs or alcohol than slimmer participants.

The results appear in the July issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, being released on Monday. The lead author was Dr Gregory Simon, a researcher with Group Health Co-operative, large non-profit health plan in Seattle....

Whole story here. All of us -- sober or drunk fat or skinny, ape or human buff or bloated -- should be on the lookout for the policy terminus to which this sort of research is likely to lead: even more draconian drunk-driving laws inscrutable federal food pyramids and even more second-rate brand extensions for Morgan Spurlock and more of a War on Booze Fat than already exists.