Are World Series athletes too fat?

The following news release was issued today by the Center for Consumer Freedom, formerly known as the Guest Choice Network.

The non-profit lobby group receives funding from the fast food and tobacco industries as well as private citizens.

It defends the "right of adults and parents to choose what they eat, drink, and how they enjoy themselves."

************************ Tigers, Cardinals both losing battle of the bulge

Flawed federal government standards label 74 percent of World Series players 'overweight' or 'obese'

WASHINGTON, October 27 - The Detroit Tigers and St. Louis Cardinals are battling it out to see who is the best in baseball, but according to the government, they should be striving to be the biggest losers instead.

Despite the fact that the Tigers and Cardinals have proven to be top-rate professional athletes, the U.S. government officially considers them contributors to the nation's so-called obesity epidemic.

Specifically, 37 of the 50 players in the 2006 World Series are officially overweight or obese, according to the federal standard.

These World Series stars - and many ordinary Americans - have fallen victim to the Body Mass Index (BMI), the same measure used by the government to claim that 65 percent of Americans are overweight or obese.

In 1998 the U.S. government changed the standard by which obesity is measured.

As a result, more than 30 million Americans were shifted from a government-approved weight to the overweight category - overnight!

Albert Pujols, Ivan Rodriguez, Craig Monroe, and Scott Rolen may be able to round the bases, but that won't stop the food police from putting a tape measure around their waists.

These ingestion umpires want "fat taxes" and restaurant lawsuits to force everyday fans like us and hurlers like Kenny Rogers, Chris Carpenter, and Jeff Suppan, to slim down.

"The fact that so many of these athletes are considered overweight is proof that a good deal of the so-called obesity epidemic is based on faulty assumptions and overblown statistics," said J. Justin Wilson, senior research analyst at the Center for Consumer Freedom.

"If you believe the government standards, baseball fans should be singing 'Take Me Out to the Fat Farm' during the seventh inning stretch and players should lay off the peanuts and cracker jacks," Wilson said.

Does the government think you're fat?

Take the test at BMIscale.com.

Plug in your height and weight to get an instant verdict on how you stack up against the national pastime's best!

The Center for Consumer Freedom is a nonprofit coalition supported by restaurants, food companies, and consumers, working together to promote personal responsibility and protect consumer choices.

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