You may reject the argument, but you sure didn’t provide a meaningful reason why. The existence of mandatory health insurance knots us together in a way that makes your health my concern, because if someone chooses to become obese and racks up a huge healthcare bill then I’m paying for it. I have a vested interest in not having my money wasted, and that’s the mechanism whereby the health of someone else’s body becomes my business. Don’t like that fact? Then get rid of universe healthcare, for one. But as long as we have it, one person’s obesity “actually affects others”.
People say this. They may believe it. But I think most are hypocritical.
I used to work with someone who was heavily involved in marathons. She completed the Iron Man and ran in every local race that she could get into.
The girl was always in physical therapy, because she was always pulling or straining something. She kept her weekly PT appoints on the Outlook calendar for all of us to see and “judge”. Which no one ever did. Instead, we praised her for how awesome she was to take such good care of herself.
I have another coworker who is having a “high risk” pregnancy. She’s in and out of the doctor’s office. A person such as myself who will likely never have kids should be full of self-righteousy judgment. Why should we have to have more expensive premiums because women who decide to carry high-risk pregnancies to term? But yet, amazingly I don’t care. Maybe it’s because no one else seems to care either.
As Wesley said, a lot of us fall into some lifestyle category that is associated with elevated risk. If you eat meat, consume sugar, drink alcohol, live close to the expressway, sit for long periods of time, don’t socialize, don’t make a lot of money, don’t manage stress well, don’t get enough sleep…you’re driving up healthcare costs for someone else. I’m not going to stress out over obesity more than the eleventy-billion other risk factors–some of which I have myself.
That article does not say anything about diet not impacting one’s weight, health, or life expectancy. It makes an argument against being focused on weight per se and is a promotion of the “Health at Every Size” philosophy. It specifically acknowledges that what we eat matters while arguing that is not by way of weight per se.
Indeed the argument that what we eat and how we exercise matters more than what our BMIs are is a good one.
The meaningful reason is that I have a right to be as fat as I want to be. The purpose of the public health system is not to give you control over my life. It’s purpose is to prevent unnecessary death, illness, and financial calamity for people who cannot afford healthcare.
You also have a right to smoke and to drink. Probably should have a right to do other drugs too. Society does have a vested interest though which competes with those rights and allows for some controls on them and some disincentives for unhealthy behaviors that cost the system, such as by taxation and regulation of where and when certain behaviors are permitted. And by other means attempting to incentivize healthier choices.
I italicize “behavior” with intent. We, at times, tax and regulate what we do, not what we are. Right now the idea of a Big Gulp tax bother more than a tobacco tax.
monstro, do you really think that marathoners as a population group cost the system more than being sedentary does?
More pertinent to the larger point, we are not completely rational about what we attempt to regulate and what we do not, but that does not mean that all efforts to impact poor behavior choices should be tossed out. Each should be discussed according to the impact the behaviors have on society as a whole and the burden upon individual freedoms that specific actions would impose.
I agree with you DSeid, in general that is. But do you think what I eat and my weight should be regulated? How will you do that? What measure of weight will you use to determine that I need to be regulated? And then what actions will you take if I don’t meet your standard?
If someone designs their product to be addictive (as much of food designed today is), choice goes out the window.
Judging is easy and no one is perfect (except, of course, for Jesus and Superman), and that makes us all hypocrites to some extent. But that’s not a justification for abandoning efforts to improve public health. Moreover, your argument is an ad hominem attack against the supporters of measures to improve public health, not against the argument itself. The proponents of an argument can be the most despicable, morally contemptuous people possible, but that doesn’t in any capacity affect the veracity or lack thereof of the argument they espouse.
Now, as for why we should tackle obesity over and above other public health concerns? Part of the reason is that obesity is distinctly quantifiable; a person’s weight and height are objective facts, while their number of friends is not. Moreover, a person’s level of obesity can generally be easily and accurately approximated by looking at a person. Another part is that obesity can be changed by taxes applied to unhealthy products and incentives attached to insurance while an issue like quantity of sleep can not be changed. Finally, there’s the fact that the costs of obesity [$147-210 billion/year] are greater than the costs of something like sleep loss [$63 billion/year]. In short, it’s easier, more effective, and more pressing to tackle rising obesity than other issues right now.
The purpose of a universal healthcare system is not to give society some level of influence over people’s bodies, but that is an intrinsic and inalienable side effect of making strangers financially responsible for one another.
I’d be curious to learn more about this right to be fat. From what part of the constitution does it derive? Or is it based on an interpretation of natural law, or some religious text? What philosopher first promulgated the idea of complete authority over bodily integrity?
Or, as I suspect, was it created out of whole cloth c. 2015 by someone arguing on the internet?
Explicitly not weight. That is the point of my comment that we attempt to impact what people do not what they are.
OTOH the Food Industrial Complex has invested lots in figuring out exactly what combinations fats sugars and salts are most likely hit on the eat as much as possible centers without hitting on satiety hardly at all, and taxing those foods. Making those foods in particular less available to kids seems not unreasonable to me. Restricting how much those foods are available in public venues. Not cutting PE programs in school and encouraging active recess times. Zoning to control the density of fast food outlets and the availability of grocery stores that sell produce in areas that don’t have them … these make sense IMHO.
I don’t mind the fact that some life insurance policies are offering the option of a discount if you wear a FitBit (that they provide) which documents a minimum amount of physical activity per week and would be completely fine if that spread to health insurance as well.
Our created environment is obseiogenic and we can, through incentives and disincentives, impact the nature of that environment.
Have you seen Buddha statues? 
Here is a reason why obesity should not be a major public health concern. We do not know how to treat it in a way that works for the majority of people.
Sure calorie restriction and more activity can fight obesity, but most people are unable to maintain that kind of lifestyle modification for life. More than that, many people who attempt to lose weight end up fatter/heavier than they were before they started.
There are various things you can do for your health that are enjoyable. Hiking is enjoyable (to me). Having healthy friendships is enjoyable. High quality sleep is enjoyable. Keeping stress under control is enjoyable. Fighting your biology tooth and nail is not enjoyable. I would wager that most people would be more open to public health efforts that involve socialization, stress reduction, more/better sleep, etc. This would probably require among other things changing how our workdays are set up. Maybe offering people longer hours and shorter workweeks or something, or publicly funded social events or whatever. I would much prefer a healthy work life balance, low stress, healthy relationships, decent sleep, etc to anti-obesity efforts even though all will improve my health.
Point being, of all the things people can do for their health trying to fight obesity seems like the least effective. Plus, unlike other health interventions, there is a risk that fighting it will make it worse. If you try to quit smoking there is little/no chance you will end up smoking heavier than before. If you try to reduce your stress there is little/no chance you will end up even more stressed than you were before. If you try to lose weight there is a decent (better than even I believe) chance you will be fatter than you were before you started when you go out 3-5+ years. If a doctor wanted to treat my hypertension by giving me a pill that would work at first, but after 3-5 years my blood pressure would probably be higher than it was before I started (and permanently stay that way) I wouldn’t take the pill except as a total last resort. The chances of losing weight and keeping it off are roughly equal to the chances of surviving stage 4 lung cancer.
Our bodies are designed to survive famines. Until medical science comprehends the endocrinology of obesity enough to find effective treatments, most people will be unable and unwilling to lose large amounts of weight and keep it off. Even highly motivated people whose entire social and sexual self worth is tied into their weight have serious trouble losing weight and keeping it off. What chance does a middle aged person with kids, a full time job, other health problems, a household to run, parents to look after, etc. have of losing weight and keeping it off permanently via lifestyle changes?
No, I don’t think this. But I know my Iron Man coworker was costing our insurer more money than the average person, and no one gave her a hard time about it.
Do you personally know people who engage in high-risk behavior but receive no criticism about it because they aren’t wearing the scarlet letter of obesity? Listening to some people around here, if you aren’t living the lifestyle that confers the lowest risk of health problems, you should hang your head in shame. But it’s only the fatties who are expected to really do this.
I never intimated otherwise. I don’t think society should throw up its hands about combating obesity. I just don’t see the point in getting worked up more about obesity than, say, lack of physical fitness or malnutrition. The skinny, sedentary guy who only eat junk foods is going to cost a lot of money in the long run as well. Good on him for being skinny and thus more virtuous, right? Yet, I don’t hear anyone talking about eliminating the junk food aisle to reduce health care costs. If we were really interested in our collective wallet and not just fat-shaming, we would do this without hesitation.
But that’s falsely conflating personal measures to improve health with public measures. I’m not going to wade into the morass of debate over dieting, but that’s not the only option available, or even one that I was improving. A foolproof option could be something like instituting a pigouvian tax on unhealthy foods. If the tax discourages people from eating those foods, then it improves public health; if not, the proceeds from the tax can be used to subsidize the costs of obesity on our healthcare system. Either way, the cost of obesity on the public at large can be lessened. Throwing our hands up in the air and declaring “this problem is intractable, let’s give up” is rarely the best solution.
Please read my posts.
No, I am not advocating fat-shaming. Unless asked none of should be commenting on others body shapes, eating habits, exercise excesses, etc. And the op was not commenting to her friends or attempting to shame them; she was bitching about it here. Criticizing people because they are fat is as stupid as it is rude.
In point of fact my post explicitly states that any efforts must not be focussed on fatness/obesity (let alone BMI) as the target but on behaviors. The direct goals are to facilitate healthier behaviors and to disincentivize unhealthier ones. These behaviors are of impact for the fat and thin alike even if statistically the fat will have them more often. Yes, precisely nutrition choices and exercise are the target behaviors. Get people making better choices on both those items and the average amount of fatness will go down, but more importantly even for those that it does not, health outcomes improve.
And if you have not heard of efforts to control access to junk food and to improve access to healthier foods and of efforts to increase physical activity, well I don’t what to say. They have been going on and continue with the usual objections about personal choice and self-control and “nanny state” being made.
The loudest anti-fat folks tend to also be the staunchest libertarian “get yer hands off my Cheezy Poofs!” types. They are much more concerned about making people feel bad about their bodies than actually making societal changes. Because societal changes will constrain their freedom, and that is a big no-no.
Sorry you’re not understanding the points I’m making. We’re actually 100% in agreement on this–as usual whenever this topic pops up.
One problem I haven’t seen mentioned is that there’s a lot of profit in junk food. Frito-Lay would go out of business if we were all to switch to healthier eating habits. There’s revenue in keeping people fat!
I’m not saying I support seatbelt laws, etc. Being very libertarian in my outlook, I agree that my " reasoning could be used to control any aspect of my life." But the reasoning is the same. Telling a person they must wear a seatbelt or they must not smoke is no different than telling a person they need to lose weight.
“Healthy” is such a difficult concept to pin down anyway.
However, there are a boatload of people who are slim and work out who still have high cholesterol, who have heart attacks, and so on. So one day, everyone assumes they’re healthy, then WHAM! and they’re getting a stent put in their heart. Or the doctor tells them they need cholesterol meds. Or whatever.
Many of the illnesses we have in the US are illnesses of long life and wealth, anyway.
I’d go into more detail, but sleeeeepy…
Again, don’t misread what I’m saying as advocacy of government telling people how to live their lives. But it’s clear that the adverse effects of obesity, especially with the advent of the ACA, are born by society at large.
If one accepts the premise that society has a right to meddle in an individual’s personal habits because of the negative impact those habits have on the community, there is no compelling reason obesity should be exempted.
Being hypocritical isn’t the same as being wrong.
The only consistent policy is to let people be to live as they see fit, or do what’s possible to mitigate the damage any particular lifestyle choice causes. Compared to increasing everybody’s income or relocating every person who lives near an expressway, cutting the obesity rate would be much more doable.