Obesity is becoming epidemic in America. E.g.,
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/front/1601247
So, what should our societal institutions do to deal with this problem?
I see no problem with letting us obese people kill ourselves off. We don’t ‘do’ anyting about smokers, do we?
On the contrary. We tax the hell out of cigs. We fund all sorts of anti-smoking programs. We pass laws banning smoking in certain places. While we don’t do anything about smokers, we do quite a bit about smoking.
Zev Steinhardt
What should we do about fat smokers?
Fat tax or, if you prefer, a tax credit for being thin.
Maybe we could set up a market system, you could buy and sell permits for the right to be fat. If you are Fat Without a Permit, (FWAP) you get fined.
Isn’t this the way we regulate people’s behavior in other areas? When we want to reduce the amount people drive, we raise the tax on gas. If we want to encourage people to buy houses, we make the interest on a mortgage tax deductible. When society wants to reduce pollution, we set up a market to trade in emissions permits. If we want to reduce the number of fat people, we ought to just raise the cost of being fat.
If taxing people for being fat is too expensive and difficult to administer, then just put a tax on food. Maybe a calorie tax?
Oh great, just what we need; government control of another facet of our lives.
Kids today are not as physically active as they should be…obviously. Elementary Physical Education has been bumped back to two days a week, in some schools. At home kids play with electronic gadgets instead of getting outside and riding bikes or shooting baskets. Parents probably encourage kids to play inside if they can’t be outside supervising. (safety)
When I was a kid, drinking a Coke or a Sprite was a special treat. Now, almost every family keeps these high calorie soft drinks in the fridge.
Our school cafeteria sells chips, pizza, fries, ice cream, po-boys, chicken sandwiches, cheese cake. Hot lunches with veggies, salad, etc are also available. Few students that are not on free lunch purchase the hot lunch.
The young kids see the advertisements for the toys from the fast food chains. These chains know how to target a market and sell their goods. I would probably spoil my kid by letting them get the toy from Taco Bell or Burger King along with the high calorie meal that accompanies. Or, at least I can see how this happens so easily.
I don’t know exactly how I feel about this. In principle, I’m against government interference in our private lives. If someone wants to be fat, let them. But the obesity epidemic stands to exert a great cost on society, and may have a negative effect on my health insurance premiums. I’m not 100% certain on that last point, though–does it?
Personally, I advocate a program of fitness awareness, wherein the public is made aware of how easy it is to eat well and exercise. The most dangerous myth in fitness today is that you have to eat perfectly and exercise exactly the right way, or else you’re just wasting your time. Dispel that, and I think you’ll get somewhere.
Of course, there will always be people who just don’t care. There’s nothing to be done about that.
Oh, everyone interested in this question should read this.
What’s your take on it ultrafilter? It seems that this particular population has a genetic component to their problem, what do you think that means for the general population?
Just wanna clarify that although the thrust of Malcolm Gladwell’s article is on obesity, and his subheading is, “Can we learn how to lose weight from one of the most obese people in the world?”, the main thrust of the NIH’s research on the Pima has been concentrated on diabetes, not on obesity per se.
http://www.nih.gov/news/NIH-Record/04_03_2001/story05.htm
http://www.niddk.nih.gov/health/diabetes/pima/pathfind/pathfind.htm
http://www.pulitzer.org/year/1998/explanatory-reporting/works/7.html
Some people have an easier time losing weight than others. I don’t think that’s ever been contested. But in the general population, you’d expect a more uniform distribution of fat-storing alleles.
In the end, it all comes down to personal determination. You have to change habits that you’ve had for a long time, and that’s hard. Results will come, but not as quickly as you’d like, and that can be discouraging. It’s very good to have a support group.
But at the same time, it’s easy to start thinking “If only I tried a little harder…”, and then you’re down a very dangerous road.
Like I said earlier, education is the key. It’s really not that hard to eat healthfully, even if you do have to drop a few old habits along the way. Exercise is easy to keep doing once you’ve gotten into it.
More later, but I’m about to head off to the gym. 
I think the cost of food plays into it as well. It costs a lot of money to eat fresh fruits and veggies, lean meats, and low-fat dairy as compared to in-the-box mac and cheese and $0.99/lb. ground chuck. I’m still struggling to shift over to healthier eating habits. But my bad habits that cemented in my childhood years began because I came from a family of eight on a limited food budget.
If the government’s going to get into the diet-watching game, I think they should start by ensuring that the fresh and “healthy” foods are a little easier to come by–for all income ranges.
Where do you live, manniac? Where I live, in the US, the government doesn’t “control” any aspect of my life.
(Nor would I feel “controlled” if local governments took steps to make sure fast food and other high-fat options are kept of schools; and if the schools promoted exercise and discouraged endless TV-watching more effectively.)
Neither do I, except that this is conceding too much. In medical matters, the conventional wisdom, absent solid evidence, is usually wrong. In order for obesity to be seen as a social problem, there would have to be solid evidence in support of BOTH the following propositions:
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People who are unusually heavy and then make serious efforts to lose weight live longer than those who do not diet.
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People who are unusally heavy and then experience long term weight loss (whether from dieting or weigh loss surgery) live longer than those who do not.
I am open to reading well designed scientific studies proving either point 1 or 2 above, but do not believe they exist. Quite possibly, a genetic predisposition to obesity is associated with modestly increased mortality and morbidity regardless of what is done about that predisposition. No one knows. Contrary references are welcome, and yes, I do on rare occasions change my mind and admit it. Try me.
Some may suggest that diabetes prevention should be sufficient without showing of life expectancy increase. I don’t see why. Yes, if 1 and 2 above led to OVERALL decrease in morbidity (illnesses of all kind), that would be meaningful. By contrast, a reduction in incidence of one disease, like diabetes, is meaningless unless one knows that other illnesses are not cropping up instead.
A good page-turner of a book for thinking about statistics and medicine is “The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine” by James Le Fanu.
Life expectancy is not the only issue here. Quality of life is what’s in question, and I don’t think there are any serious objections to the claim that people who are not obese have a higher quality of life than those who are.
I’m not sure I am following you there Steve. What about trying to keep people from becoming obese in the first place? Can’t we show that obesity is a social problem by showing that obesity leads to costs for society that the individual obese person does not internalize?
Oh, and welcome to the SDMB.
Before I get flamed for that, let me explain what I mean. Obesity is very strongly associated with a number of problems, ranging from knee trouble to diabetes. People who aren’t obese don’t experience these problems in the same proportion that obese people do. That’s what I mean by the increased quality of life.
Are we talking about education or indoctrination?
For example, there are studies by leading weigh loss scholars showing that dieting does not work – and other informed opinion to the contrary. Then there are studies showing that eating fat makes you fat, and other studies showing the opposite. Some may want to consult a cover story in the Sunday New York Times Magazine about a month ago regarding the eat fat/be fat debate entitled, “What If It Is All a Big Fat Lie?” Unfortunately, Times articles are not freely available on the Internet after a week. Also unfortunately, the Times author took the side of one particular unconventional diet book author, rather than admiting the extent of medical ignorance.
Dietary advice involves matters of fact, not opinion. One day, we will know the truth. However, today is not that day, and just because most people THINK they know “healthy” food is healthy does not prove they are right. The truth is that medical studies involving long term dietary implications are difficult, because who wants to work on something that can’t be published for 50 years? But in the absence of good research, health education almost always perpetuates falsehoods. Read medical history. Also consider that evolution has selected in favor of humans able to thrive on a wide varieties of diets.
In response to the OP, I think our main focus as a society should be on fighting the increasing obesity rates in children. As has been mentioned, public schools currently sell fatty, high calorie foods and not much else. Soda is not just widely available, but aggressively marketed to kids while they’re at school. I think this is a problem that should be addressed. I would support public subsidies to school cafeterias, if that’s what it took to provide healthy food at an affordable price.
As for obese adults, beyond making information available about healthy eating and exercise habits, I don’t think much else can or should be done. It’s not the government’s place to force its citizens to be healthy, in my opinion. If I want to eat pizza three times a day and die ten years sooner, that should be my right.