Minimalist poet, minimalist lifestyle

The BBC website has published a list of towns with the highest incidence of obesity and the neighbouring town of Barnsley is included.

This doesn't surprise me. Barnsley is a poor town with a legacy of poor health due to its mining/industrial heritage - like the rest of the towns on the list.

When you're poor you don't have easy access to cheap, nutritional food; or the appropriate sporting/exercise facilities, you can't eat healthily and live a healthy lifestyle. Additionally...what about the ex-miner (a coalface ripper for example) who needed to consume over six thousand calories a day just so that he could do his job; when they closed the pit was he supposed to start eating salads?

By the way; I've just checked my own details, and at 6 ft. 2 ins. tall and weighing just over seventeen stones I'm classed as obese myself.

According to the chart my ideal weight should be between eleven and thirteen stones...what a joke - if I were to lose six stone in weight I'd be bloody malnourished!

Because people used to smuggle it in from Illinois, all yellow butter substitute is banned.

Condoms were considered an obsene article and had to hidden behind the pharmacist's counter.

At one time, margarine was illegal.

State Law made it illegal to serve apple pie in public restaurants without cheese.

The state definition of rape stated that it was a man having sex with a woman he knows not to be his wife.

While all cheese making requires a licence, Limburger cheese making requires a master cheese maker's licence.

It is illegal to kiss on a train.

It is illegal to cut a woman's hair.

Margarine may not be substituted for butter in restaurants unless it is requested by the customer.

The elevator must know.

Hot Walter, Cold Walter.

Pakistani troops beat off militants.

Ruck suck 3045 Yen.

This cute mild curry uses 100% Japanese apple and cheerful hamster.