So as part of my Biology A-level we did a module on ‘healthy living’ - you know, cholesterol, BMI, exercise, the works. After a lesson about how high blood pressure and high levels of low-density lipoproteins (bad cholesterol) in the blood can increase the risk of cardiovascular disease, the connection to BMI came up. It wasn’t really clear how this actually fitted in - my teacher just seemed to bring it up as a side point. With everything else the causal relationship had been explained, but neither my teacher nor the textbook explained the causal relationship between being fat and getting heart disease, apart from the idea that fat people were more likely to have high blood pressure and cholesterol, 'because of their diet.’

A bit confused, I asked: “But what if someone was fat, but they didn’t have high blood pressure, or high cholesterol, or any other risk factor? How would being overweight [as in having a lot of subcutaneous fat] actually cause them to develop CV disease?”

I think her answer was literally something like, “The fat would get squeezed into their arteries.” I am not kidding. She clearly had no idea how to answer the question, but because she was insecure about the idea that someone might ask her something she didn’t know the answer to, she made up this obviously fallacious response.

I didn’t question further because she really didn’t like it when I asked questions, but I guess also it didn’t bother me that much because I was thin, even though I knew she was wrong. I can’t remember whether there were any fat people in the class, but if there were it would have been a pretty poor answer to what essentially could have been the question: “Why have I been made to feel like shit this whole module?”