Great Places to Hide Fat

According to study conducted at England’s world-famous University of Oxford, it’s healthy to have a big butt.  All I can say is, it took a team of top-flite researchers led by somebody named Konstantinos Manolopoulos to figure this out?


University of Oxford:  Dept. of Booty Studies is at lower right.

 

Memo to whomever funded this scientific breakthrough:  Next time, save yourself some money by conducting your research at what we in America call a “sports bar.”  Or do a Google image search for “Kim Kardashian.”


Double-blind, control-group test subject.

 

It’s encouraging to know that the lower-body fat is more healthful than stomach fat, which releases substances called “cytokines.”  “Wake up to Good News,” an msnbc.com feature sponsored by Folgers Coffee, translates this finding for lay readers as “junk in your trunk is healthier than a spare tire around the gut.”  This elegantly simple principle will take its place alongside Newton’s First Law of Motion and the Bernouilli Principle in the pantheon of scientific literature.

This discovery is timely, because a few years ago the Great State of Alabama, as its delegation used to call out to begin the roll call at political conventions, gave its overweight state employees a deadline to slim down.  If they didn’t, they’d have to start paying $25 a month for insurance that would otherwise be free.

Maybe I’m being a stickler, but I believe this violates the legal principle expressed by the Latin phrase “In hoc signo vinces,” which is found on Pall Mall cigarette packs.  That is, you can’t hire someone, give them free health insurance, and then tell them to stop eating pork rinds.

Personally, I like fat.  I may buy lean pork chops at the grocery store, but after I grill them, the best part is that thin little ribbon of cholesterol that remains after the butcher has trimmed them down to fit the fashion of the season.  I like chicken fat, which as you may know is concentrated in the skin of the bird, so much that I wrote a poem about it:

Ode to Chicken Skin

I can’t imagine a world without chicken skin–
It wouldn’t be one I’d want to live in.
People who want to stay or become thin
Will often eat their poultry sans skin.
I may be (and am) fatter than them
But I eat the skin, and I’m a happy man.

 

Not very good poetry, I’ll admit, but chicken without skin isn’t very good, either, so there.  In deference to my wife’s preference, we now eat grilled, skinless chicken breasts marinated in salad dressing, which is just not right.  If that were the proper thing to do, the bottle would say chicken dressing, but it doesn’t.

Fat may be making a comeback, however.  There is a cookbook out–“Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, With Recipes.”  Just the sort of thing to give your mother-in-law on the fourth Tuesday of October, which as every good son-in-law knows is Mother-in-Law Day.  Be sure and take a picture of the expression on her face when she unwraps it–you’ll need it as evidence when you ask the judge for a restraining order.

But to get back to Alabama–even if you’ve never been there–what are state employees supposed to do if they don’t slim down?  Here are four great places to hide fat now that the day of reckoning is here:

Thighs:  Say what you will about the thighs, they’re a great place to store fat!  Why?  Because they are easy to conceal under tightly-wrapped fabric.  You can also wear spandex biking shorts–underneath your pants, that is.  Wearing spandex visible to the world will make you look like a Jimmy Dean Pork Sausage making a break for freedom from the meat section.  Or, to use an old country expression, “like two hogs fighting under a sheet.”

Upper Neck:  Many man who have chosen to shave their heads in order to de-emphasive male pattern baldness have unwittingly exposed rolls of neck fat to public view.  Very few males are bald back there, so now is the time to grow a South 40 pasture of hair to cover those waves of “bad” cholesterol cascading down your neck.  There is actually a term for this hairdo:  a “skullet.”

Your brother-in-law:  Contrary to what you may have been told by smart-alecks behind you in line at Shoney’s Big Boy, fat can be transmitted to others, although efforts to ban so-called “trans-fats” are gaining ground in many urban areas due to lack of parking spaces.  How is it done?  By distracting the proposed “receptor” with an alarmed comment.  “Oh my God–Teena Marie just put a prairie dog in her mouth!” is a good “ice breaker” if you are visiting the Six Flags Over a Desolate Stretch of Barren Dirt amusement park.


David “Fathead” Newman

 

Your head:  The term “fathead” has fallen into disuse, but the concept remains valid; by breathing exercises perfected by the late tenor saxophonist David “Fathead” Newman, excess fat can be sucked into the skull where it will not form unsightly “muffin tops” at your hips.


“Thanks–it was the Jenny Craig frozen lasagna that did it.”

 

You’ll find that your friends are much less likely to comment on the weight you’ve put on when they think you’ve developed a supersized brain that will devastate them with a snappy comeback.

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