Fat has become the ultimate insult in our culture. It is the last 'safe' characteristic to make fun of, unlike other physical attributes like skin color, height, or national origin.

Yes, this author realizes that she sounds like a whiny bitch, but she is merely tired of seeing fat used as an unjust vilification in so many different circumstances.

I may be fat, but I can lose the weight. You'll always be a jerk.

perhaps the last "safe" insult in the American culture. Using the term "fat" as an insult is about as silly as using the term "black" as an insult; "fat" is not a cuss word. It does not translate into the term "ugly"; society (specifically, American society) has interpreted the term to mean "ugly." The current hullabaloo over body image supposedly began back in the early 1900s when clothing companies modelled their clothing on thin women to draw attention away from the feminine bodies and towards the actual clothes. Naturally, years of this kind of activity has caused a backlash; there are now preteens who are already dieting and suffering through anorexia and bulimia in an attempt to feel attractive. However, larger people are slowly becoming accepted; there are actually a fair number of fat admirers in existance, and magazines like Mode Magazine (http://www.modemag.com) display models with full-figured forms.

FAT is also short for Factory Acceptance Test. The factories are generally quite a distance away, hence requiring the FAT, rather than just on site acceptance test. So some engineers see FAT as a bonus sightseeing trip either overseas or domestic.

Fat was the name of an early EP by everyone's favourite nerd punks, the Descendents. Released in 1981 on Greg Ginn's legendary SST label, a year before their defining debut album, Milo Goes to College, it was a typical slice of SoCal hardcore: six minutes of bruising guitar, warped humour and teen angst.

Tracklisting:

My Dad Sucks (0:36) - Very loud, very angry teenage rant, finishing as quickly as it opens, almost before the listener has time to breathe. Try and guess what the lyrics are about.

Mr. Bass (2:06) - Twisted surf rock with bizarre lyrics about fishing. Contains the memorable line: "They were biting at an alarming rate / Mr. Bass, he was irate."

I Like Food (0:18) - "I like food, food tastes good / I like food, food tastes good / Juicy burgers, greasy fries / Turkey legs and raw fish eyes / Teenage girls with ketchup too / Get out of my way or I'll eat you / I like food, food tastes good / I like food, food tastes good / Gonna turn dining back into eating / I like food, food tastes good / I like food, food tastes good."
(The Descendents were not an overtly political band.)

Hey Hey (1:33) - The foetus of punk-pop. Milo perfects his early, booming vocal style over a brutally simple three-chord punk backing.

Weinerschnitzel (0:13) - More warped, food-based humour: "Welcome to Der Weinerschnitzel, may I take your order please?" "Yeah, I want - TWO LARGE COKES, TWO LARGE FRIES, CHILI-CHEESE DOG, LARGE PEPPER SUPER DELUXE WITH CHEESE AND TOMATO!" "You want bill sperm with that?" "NO!"

Global Probing (1:07) - Classic hyperspeed teen angst singalong. "It takes a long time to get what you want, no matter how hard you try..."

Fat was the band's first release with singer Milo Aukerman, and stands in stark contrast to the much gentler surf-pop of their only previous release, the "Ride the Wild" single. They grew up somewhat before the Milo Goes to College album, so this is definitely the loudest and most "hardcore" of their early records.

Besides sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and umami, yet another taste has been found and researchers said that it would be likely to find even more in the future.

The taste is fat. Yes, fat. Researchers had been debating on whether fat is a taste or not for half a decade, and according to Newsweek, they decided. Purdue University, after much speculation concluded that fat is not only a taste carrier (carries and amplifies taste), but a taste all its own, meaning that receptors on the tongue pick up the prescence of fat as one of the elemental tastes.

This is likely the reason why french fries, meat, potato chips, and the like are so tasty— they have a taste all their own (this research comes hot on the heels of another study that found that the taste of fat will cause people to synthesize fat within their own bodies— just tasting cream cheese will cause one to gain fat!). This knowledge may be used to explain why fat-free versions of food just don't taste as good and may help us eventually find ways to improve fat-free food.

Sources:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/12/011204073223.htm
http://www.cfs.purdue.edu/html/alumni/spr2002/tasteimprovement.htm

A fat is one of the three categories of macronutrient, along with carbohydrate and protein. A fat can also be called a lipid. Fats from vegetable sources are usually liquid at room temperature, while fats from animal sources are usually solid at room temperature, although exceptions exist.

"Fat" is a very old, plain English word, and it is perhaps an unfortunate accident of language that a word with the colloquial meaning of "obese" or "large" has a fairly technical meaning.

All life that we commonly encounter stores or uses energy in the form of carbon chains. Plants produce these carbon chains out of solar radiation and carbon dioxide. Both plants and animals combine molecular oxygen in the atmosphere with carbon chains to create usable energy.

Since our cells are filled with water, the main molecules that is used for making energy are various sugars. Sugars are water soluble, which means a sugar molecule can travel easily through both the cytosol inside a cell and through the bloodstream of larger animals.

But the reason that a sugar is water soluble is because its carbon chain is festooned with hydroxy groups, where an oxygen atom takes a place between a carbon atom and a hydrogen atom. This makes the molecule soluble in water, but it also means that a sugar atom has half the energy it could have. Since the body makes energy by burning carbon chains, a sugar molecule is in effect already half-burnt. This means sugar has half the caloric value of fat, which also means that the body would need twice as much volume to store energy as sugar.

And that is why living things have fats. Fats are a much purer form of energy, consisting of nothing but carbon and hydrogen, ready to be oxidized. (Technical Note: For structural reasons, fats are actually stored as fatty acids, which have a few oxygen atoms in them, but that doesn't change their nutritive value). . When your body has excess sugar, it stores it in the more concentrated form of fat, and when your body needs sugar, it changes that fat back into the water soluble form of sugar. There is a lot of metabolic machinery in all living things designed to shuffle chemical energy from one form to another.

And that is the basic reason for fat. There are other uses that fat is put to, including things like insulation, but the main biological reason for fat is to store concentrated energy.

And how concentrated it is! One of the major dietary problems confronting modern people is just how much energy a small amount of fat can have. For tens of thousands of years, getting too much food was not a problem, and the concentrated energy in fat might make the difference between making it through a cold winter, or not. But in modern times, we have an almost limitless supply of concentrated food energy. Fat has 9 calories per gram. A gram of fat is about one cubic centimeter. This means that a cube 6 centimeters on a side has 216 grams of fat in it. This means that a cube six centimeters on a side of pure fat has around 1950 calories, or about as much as a normal adult would need to eat in a day. The amount of fat needed to sustain life in a day would easily fit in the palm of your hand.

Not that people go around chewing down on pure lard, or sipping table spoons of canola oil, but it does show just how quickly a small amount of fat can add up to many calories. A few tablespoons of oil added to a dish can add 200 or 300 calories. Over time, this fat accumulates and makes people...fat. Since fat is concentrated, it is easy to forget that this is happening.

So fat is a simple biochemical solution to the problem of storing energy, that has made living easier for plants and animals for hundreds of millions of years, and which just in the past few decades has become a major health problem for those of us living in the first world.

Fat (?), n. [See Vat, n.]

1.

A large tub, cistern, or vessel; a vat.

[Obs.]

The fats shall overflow with wine and oil. Joel ii. 24.

2.

A measure of quantity, differing for different commodities.

[Obs.]

Hebert.

 

© Webster 1913.


Fat, a. [Compar. Fatter (?); superl. Fattest (?).] [AS. f&aemac;tt; akin to D. vet, G. fett, feist, Icel. feitr, Sw. fet, Dan. fed, and perh. to Gr. pi^dax spring, fountain, pidy`ein to gush forth, pi`wn fat, Skr. pi to swell.]

1.

Abounding with fat

; as: (a)

Fleshy; characterized by fatness; plump; corpulent; not lean; as, a fat man; a fat ox.

(b)

Oily; greasy; unctuous; rich; -- said of food.

2.

Exhibiting the qualities of a fat animal; coarse; heavy; gross; dull; stupid.

Making our western wits fat and mean. Emerson.

Make the heart of this people fat. Is. vi. 10.

3.

Fertile; productive; as, a fat soil; a fat pasture.

4.

Rich; producing a large income; desirable; as, a fat benefice; a fat office; a fat job.

Now parson of Troston, a fat living in Suffolk. Carlyle.

5.

Abounding in riches; affluent; fortunate.

[Obs.]

Persons grown fat and wealthy by long impostures. Swift.

6. Typog.

Of a character which enables the compositor to make large wages; -- said of matter containing blank, cuts, or many leads, etc.; as, a fat take; a fat page.

Fat lute, a mixture of pipe clay and oil for filling joints.

 

© Webster 1913.


Fat (?), n.

1. Physiol. Chem.

An oily liquid or greasy substance making up the main bulk of the adipose tissue of animals, and widely distributed in the seeds of plants. See Adipose tissue, under Adipose.

Animal fats are composed mainly of three distinct fats, tristearin, tripalmitin, and triolein, mixed in varying proportions. As olein is liquid at ordinary temperatures, while the other two fats are solid, it follows that the consistency or hardness of fats depends upon the relative proportion of the three individual fats. During the life of an animal, the fat is mainly in a liquid state in the fat cells, owing to the solubility of the two solid fats in the more liquid olein at the body temperature. Chemically, fats are composed of fatty acid, as stearic, palmitic, oleic, etc., united with glyceryl. In butter fat, olein and palmitin predominate, mixed with another fat characteristic of butter, butyrin. In the vegetable kingdom many other fats or glycerides are to be found, as myristin from nutmegs, a glyceride of lauric acid in the fat of the bay tree, etc.

2.

The best or richest productions; the best part; as, to live on the fat of the land.

3. Typog.

Work. containing much blank, or its equivalent, and, therefore, profitable to the compositor.

Fat acid. Chem. See Sebacic acid, under Sebacic. -- Fat series, Fatty series Chem., the series of the paraffine hydrocarbons and their derivatives; the marsh gas or methane series. -- Natural fats Chem., the group of oily substances of natural occurrence, as butter, lard, tallow, etc., as distinguished from certain fatlike substance of artificial production, as paraffin. Most natural fats are essentially mixtures of triglycerides of fatty acids.

 

© Webster 1913.


Fat, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Fatted (?); p. pr. & vb. n. atting (?).] [OE. fatten, AS. fttian. See Fat, a., and cf. Fatten.]

To make fat; to fatten; to make plump and fleshy with abundant food; as, to fat fowls or sheep.

We fat all creatures else to fat us. Shak.

 

© Webster 1913.


Fat, v. i.

To grow fat, plump, and fleshy.

An old ox fats as well, and is as good, as a young one. Mortimer.

 

© Webster 1913.

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