What should we do about obesity?

Great Debates
61

Personally, I try to not work under assumptions.

Obese people do live shorter lives. See:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/511421.stm

The extra years are almost always cut off from retirement, when the individual would be taking out of social security and pension funds while putting nothing back in. Thus, obese people probably save society money.

Now if you want to find a group that costs society money, consider the childless. Because they won’t have children to support them in their old age, there is increased risk of their becoming a public charge. Plus they increase the ratio of retirees to workers, which must have the effect of either increasing taxes or reducing retirement benefits. So we should urge everyone to have kids, right? Despite being a thoroughgoing anti-Malthusian, I think not, but that is where some of this kind of thinking would lead.

P.S. The BBC article does not differentiate between the life expectancy of obese persons who are try hard but fail with diet and exercise, obese persons who resist all that, obese persons who permanently lose weight due to weight loss surgery, obese persons who undergo unsuccessful weight loss surgery, and the, I suspect, smallest group, obese persons who actually lose weight and permanently keep it off due to diet and exercise. Therefore, this kind of article provides zero evidence that we should “do something” about obesity.

62

All these things have been done for years. (Well, OK, the co-op idea may have not been done much outside of college towns, but fresh produce tends to be cheaper than a lot of other food.) Plus other things, such as the growth in youth sports leagues designed for kids who are not stars, are happenning. At the same time, obesity prevalence in most Western nations – including Japan – is rising.

Is the sedentary life style and fast food (both of which came in decades earlier than the obesity boom) to blame? Or does pressure to diet actually increase weight by putting people on the yo-yo? Or is there a completely unknown cause, possibly related to the ebb and flow of infectious disease. I suspect the last, but no one really knows.

I still like the analogy with homosexuality. Rates of homosexuality are hard to pin down, but they seem to vary greatly from place to place and time to time. Yet, rightly, few here would seize on that as a reason to describe homosexuality as a social problem in need of a cure.

63

Ah. I have become much more tolerant of this issue when I realized that it won’t apply to me. It has no chance in hell of working. Look, if you ban something that there is demand for, you create a black market. We can’t even keep farking drugs and cigarettes out of schools. If kids want to eat unhealthy, they will. I say make lo-cal items such as fruit and veggies available and cheap. Don’t bother with trying to remove the existing foods.
[asbestos suit on]
Hmm. Has anyone considered a massive propoganda plan to convince children that fat kids are horrible, and deserve to be shunned and ostracized?
[asbesto suit… actually, I think I’ll keep it on, for a while]

64

Anyone who has been to a school recently would see that said propaganda campaign is thriving already. Doesn’t seem to reduce obesity, however.

65

Thank you, Maeglin, I think society in general has already decided that fat = undesirable.

66

You try not to work under assumptions, but you then make the assumption that the savings in Social Security etc. more than off sets the added costs that the obese may incur during their lives. I don’t see why that is necessarily the case. For example the person who dies at 65 and collects no SS but has been on insulin drugs for their obesity related diabetes for 40 years, among other assorted problems, may still cost society more.

Re the childless people, the answer is fairly straight forward. We should do away with SS entirely. People should provide for their own retirement. Despite your assumption to the contrary, in some ways childless people are in a better position than most to care for themselves, since they have not incurred the costs of raising children.

You make some good points, but the truth is that we are all relying upon assumptions in this discussion.

67

Everything Rhum Runner wrote in his most recent post is true. I have been looking around the net for solid information on this whole topic, mostly without success.

For example, one would like to have long term trend lines on human weight to see whether the rise of automobiles, radio, television, fast food, or other modernity factors are actually correlated with weight. But all I can find are stats going back to the early 1980’s. Pretty useless for these purposes.

As for the idea that obesity is due to infectious processes, this is more plausible to me than the idea that sloth brought on by modern conveniences did it. Links such as the following are, I admit, hardly convincing:

http://www.cnn.com/2000/HEALTH/07/28/fat.virus.ap/

One hint that it is an infectious or other external process is that childhood and adult obesity rates seem to be going up in tandem. Check at various links on the subject of weight trends at google. If cultural trends were the cause, I would have expected them to hit the young first, but instead both adult and childhood obesity in Western countries has gone up substantially and together in the past 15 years.

More convincing is evidence that dieting does not work long term, despite lots of clever people having spent lots of time devising weight loss regimens. See:

http://www.turner-white.com/pdf/jcom_may00_obesity.pdf

We have as much of a clue to as to what to do about obseity as eighteen century blood-letting physcians had about what to do about bacterial infection. Stop the unwarranted assumptions that the thin are that way because of their virtue, and leave these poor people, especially the children, alone. As for advocacy of exercise, that’s fine so long as no faulty assumptions are made that link it with long term weight loss.

P.S. In earlier posts I mentioned weight loss surgery, implying that it is more effective than dieting. Well, earlier today I read a bit about such surgery, which I had previously imagined to be a reasonable treatment. After reading, I am almost in a state of shock as to the pain and suffering people go through with such surgery in return for good results in only a minority of cases. Check out:

http://gastricbypass.netfirms.com/

.

68

What right do you have to force other members of society to live in such a way that they present no burden to public or private institutions? Homeless people cost society money – should we kill them? Old people cost your insurance company money – how about we cut off insurance benefits beyond the age of 60? That would drive your premiums way down.

We have emergency rooms and welfare and insurance for a reason – because we want to know that if shit happens to us, we’re not going to just die in the street. Choosing as a society to provide these safeguards does not give us ownership over each others’ lives.

I think we should worry about obesity because of how it affects the people who suffer from it, not because it costs us money. Lots of things cost us a lot more money than obesity-related health care.

69

Wait a minute. Are you SERIOUSLY suggesting that this is the only way to prevent homeless people from presenting a burden to the public? Methinks you’re invoking a false dilemma.

Once again, are you SERIOUSLY suggesting that this is the only way to compensate for the additional risk that they impose on the insurance company?

Here’s a thought. How about computing their premiums and benefits based on their age and a host of statistical data? Oh, wait a minute… We already do that!

70

:rolleyes:

71

Regarding the court’s rulings against the tobacco companies:

Oh, come on. The cigarette manufacturers had to pay large settlements and/or judgements. And, yes, the cigarette manufacturers turned around and raised the prices of their cigarettes in an attempt to recoup those substantial losses. This is not at all the same thing as forcing people who bought cigarettes over the last 20 years to cough up* the settlement/judgement amounts themselves!

[sub]*) pun intended[/sub]

72

Oh? Did they all quit smoking?

73

No, but even the demand for cigarettes is not completely inelastic. Tobacco companies cannot raise prices and expect demand to stay the same; if it did they would already have raised prices to $1,500 a pack. The original price for cigarettes was the dieal profit-maximizing price and anything else means less profit. If in fact they are forced to raise prices - an economically questionable assumption, but I’ll run with it - then they’re pushing prices beyond what was already a well-researched market clearing price. They’ll make less money and so are worse off.

74

Ever tried to get auto insurance with six speeding tickets on your record? What kind of rates did you have to pay? Is that ‘unfair’? We have every right to ask people to pay their own way as much as possible, and to adjut how much they pay based on their actions.

I think obese people should worry about obesity because of the way it affects their lives. Some obese people are quite happy with the way they are, who am I to think they should change?

75

I usually enjoy these so-called “great debates”, but I really don’t think this qualifies.

The social costs of these fat-asses is well documented, but this is the trade-off of having (partly) socialized health care. So, deal with that or vote Republican.

What is maddening are the people who want to provide people with tax-payer funded health plan and then tell them that they can’t eat and can’t smoke or can’t hang-glide or whatever because society is paying the tab for their irresponsibility. I mean, I think fat people are killing themselves slowly, just like smokers, but it isn’t my business.

Private insurers will take this into account and charge people accordingly, but if goverment attempted to do the same in a government run health-plan, everyone of the bleeding-heart liberals would go nuts. The end result would be that “The Rich” would be funding this plan almost entirely and receiving little or none of it’s benefit. (Kind of sounds like out current plan, huh?)
So, what to do about obesity? Stop sticking everything you goddamn see in your fat friggin mouth ya fat ass. And don’t expect me to pay for your friggin bypass surgery or your dialysis treatment.

76

Or if that isn’t inspiring enough for you, individually, a person is able to take this approach to their own obesity

Of course, that involves discipline and owning up to reality. So, I guess that is out, what we need is a governmental solution.

77

I wonder if the rise in obesity isn’t also connected to the decline in people cooking at home. Cooking has become less of a life skill and more of a hobby–an optional thing for those so inclined. But when I cook, I control the amount of butter and oil in my diet, and I can make sure I’m eating plenty of whole grains and veggies. When my dinner comes out of a box, I’m getting a whole lot of preservatives, additives, and extra calories that I don’t need or want. I think the Slow Foods movement and increased emphasis on preparing your own food could be indirect ways to combat obesity.

I agree with those who argue that obesity is ultimately the problem of the individual, but I think schools could take steps to combat the problem. When I was in school, the emphasis was entirely on competitive sports. As a result, I hated gym classes with a passion. It wasn’t until college that I realized that hiking and dancing–two non-competitive activities that I love–were also easy ways to incorporate exercise into my weekly routine. Making physical education less about winning and more about having fun would be a big step in the right direction.

78

Auto insurance premiums are not based on some sense of social justice whereby people are asked to “pay their own way”. They are based on statistical analysis designed to minimize losses for insurance companies. Big difference.

I’m not arguing that obese people should automatically have the exact same health insurance premiums as everyone else. I am arguing that we should not be trying to legislate increased premiums or taxes for obese people, solely based on our perception that they are costing us money. I don’t think we should be legislating behavior and lifestyle choices.
**

Here, we are in complete agreement.

79

Hey Giraffe I think we are in agreement then, upon reading my last post I see it was a bit more confrontational than was required. Apologies for that.

80

Ultrafilter, you are missing a colossal point. The fact is, none of the diets and exercise regimens work. None of them. Haven’t you been reading the papers? It’s been reported umpteen times that 95% of dieters fail. 95%! How much time is it going to take for you to face up to this fact?

It’s time that reality is faced, and idealism given up. If you’re one of the 5% who can keep weight off permanently, then kudos to you. You’re the envy of millions of people. But for myself, I can attest that every single time I’ve gone on an exercise regimen, yes, every time, I’ve gained weight. Why? Use your common sense for a moment. Exercise breaks down muscle fibers, which, in order to rebuild the muscle, increase the appetite causing weight gain! Has any of the other posters have this experience?

I have an alternative theory, little known except in alternative therapy circles, as to why we are so much more overweight than our ancestors. Animal products obtained on a farm used to have heavy levels of a chemical called CCL, which fought fat; beef, pork, dairy, etc, all used to contain oodles of this chemical. But in the 70s and 80s, they began injecting animals with growth hormones to make them fatter for the market. These hormones destroy CCL so that modern animal products are bereft of the chemical. I believe this to be at least a factor in our successive weight gain in the last couple of decades.