Last year, researchers at the University of Wisconsin and Northwestern University found that 90 percent of the college-age women they studied engaged in "fat talk" going on with friends about how "fat" they were, regardless of their actual size.

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His books always seemed to come out around election time, almost as if he were using a potential candidacy as a reason to go on chat shows and talk about his latest proposal to outsource Medicare to Mars or give fat people tax credits for gastric bands.

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But she says although she would never use the word fat in her surgery, as it has "childhood playground associations", she thinks talk of banning overweight is "political correctness gone mad".

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