What if there were no fat people?

Makalakumu

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Interesting article...

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Insurance/Advice/WhatIfNoOneWereFat.aspx?GT1=33004

In the United States today, 66% of adults are overweight. Almost 33% of adults are obese, and 4.7% are morbidly obese, or more than 100 pounds overweight. But . . .

What if nobody in America were fat?

We'd save billions of dollars in gas. Airlines would double their profits. A dearth of diabetes and other diseases would save billions of dollars more -- and put thousands of doctors on the street. McDonald's would sell not Big Macs but little steamed chicken snacks -- or watch its profits melt away. Productivity would rise, potentially creating tens of thousands more jobs or higher wages all around.

Add up the savings up on health, food, clothing and efficiencies, and you could buy a professional home gym for every U.S. household -- or hand each $4,270 in cash.

Does the US need to crackdown on obesity like it cracked down on ciggarettes?
 
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Makalakumu

Makalakumu

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What did the US do about cigarettes?

Many states are making it illegal to smoke indoors in public places. A few have general indoor and outdoor public area smoking bans in the works.
 

MA-Caver

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Many states are making it illegal to smoke indoors in public places. A few have general indoor and outdoor public area smoking bans in the works.
This is true as more outdoor bans are cropping up in various places. Some amusement parks and wild-life sanctuaries here where I live are non smoking anywhere on the property.

But the topic is fat people.
If the government is going to step in and tell us how NOT to be in our personal appearance and body mass then we might as well give up all the other freedoms that we so dearly love.

Some people are fat (lets throw PC out the window shall we?) because of glandular problems that can't be helped. The rest are basic over-eaters and under-exercisers. Some have obtained their weight through over-eating but now developed muscular-skeletal problems that doing fat-burning workouts would do more harm than good.
Yet there are those who a good 1 mile jog or even a brisk walk would do a world of good. But it's their choice/freedom to do so or not.

If we're going to create a nation of well and fit people then we might as well convert our government into a fascist nation like Germany in the 40's where there are rows and rows of well and fit people ready to do the nation good.
We'll have to hire modern day equivalent of Gobbels to create propaganda ads to "encourage" people to exercise more, eat more healthy and to do it for the common good.

Heil Comrade! A new age in America is dawning.
 

FieldDiscipline

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Many states are making it illegal to smoke indoors in public places. A few have general indoor and outdoor public area smoking bans in the works.

We've done that now too. I think the only reason they havent banned it completely is because it brings in a lot of tax money.
 

ackks10

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obese.jpg
what was that you said about fat people, my niece's came to visit for a week, what the hell do i do now:roflmao:
 

Kacey

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Smoking in most public places was banned because of the scientifically proven negative effects of second-hand smoke on other people rather than the effects on smokers themselves. The government has not attempted to ban smoking - only to prevent smokers from affecting others with their habits. They have attempted to reduce smoking through public education campaigns and steadily increasing taxes, in addition to public smoking bans.

So to get back to the original question
Does the US need to crackdown on obesity like it cracked down on cigarettes?
I would have to say no, in the sense that it is apparently meant in the article. The US has not made smoking illegal - just less convenient - and has attempted to make it less socially acceptable to smoke in public. The comparison between smoking and being overweight would only be acceptable if smoking had been completely banned... but that's been tried with alcohol (Prohibition) and if anything, more people drank then than before it was illegal - if only because it was illegal.

There are a variety of reasons why people are overweight - some are because of health problems, some cause health problems, some are side effects of health problems (all these health problems, you understand, include both physical and mental), some are, indeed, laziness. There are similar reasons why some people are sufficiently underweight to have health problems. None of this can be legislated; how would you enforce it? How would you create exceptions for people whose weight is caused by health problems?

Better to encourage people to be healthy - which may or may not include a specific weight range - than anything else. There are people who are naturally thin; there are people who are naturally stocky; there are a wide range of bone and muscle structures, as well as metabolic norms, that affect weight and build that are, in many ways, of greater influence than calorie intake and activity level. I will never be the slender, svelte body type seen in models - I'm too short, and I don't have the bone structure for it - but at the same time, many of those models are horribly unfit (thin by starvation, with or without drugs), while others are, luckily for them, naturally that shape.

Health is, indeed, an issue - but so are societal norms and expectations. The body image projected by American society for women- as typified by those models - is impossible for the vast majority of women to attain, because we just don't have the bone structure to do it, no matter what.

So a better question, I think, would be "what if there were no unhealthy people" - because there are some really healthy people who are overweight by the norms of society and doctors' height/weight charts, and some who are right where the charts say they should be who can't climb a flight of stairs without panting.
 

Bigshadow

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First, I wouldn't be here LOL.

Second, if the government were to step in and try to control it, they would have to change the business world from capitalism to something else more Orwellian. At the same time our technological advances work against our very basic physical needs. Aside from genetics, we have done this to ourselves. A world driven by capitalistic greed, has caused great leaps in technology and industry that automates our lives, make machines do the jobs of people, so companies can make more money by doing things faster, more efficient, and creating a society dependent on disposable items. Cars get us to work faster, computers make it so we can transmit files and reports rather than distributing paper. Everything is instant now-a-days.

The government would have to re-engineer commerce which would change the lives of the people who live in the societies.

Productivity would rise, potentially creating tens of thousands more jobs or higher wages all around.
That sounds like a oxymoron. Productivity rising and creating jobs and higher wages don't belong in the same sentence. I don't think that is how that works in capitalism. :p
 

Big Don

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Smoking in most public places was banned because of the scientifically proven negative effects of second-hand smoke on other people rather than the effects on smokers themselves.
Don't you need a control to prove something scientifically? That is, a person who has NEVER been exposed to smoke, or any of the dozens of compounds in cigarette smoke, like, for instance, carbon monoxide, which, is in car exhaust. Since such a person doesn't exist...
 

CoryKS

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It happens all the time, and it's fascinating to watch how they get their hooks in us. I'm not sure if it could even be considered "unintended consequences" anymore, because we've seen it so many times.

Somebody got the bright idea that we should give medical treatment to anyone whether they can afford it or not, and people just love that because it's a nice thing to do right? *beams* Yay, we're all so nice. And then they start looking at the costs and realizing that some people are racking up more medical expenses than others. So they start taking away freedoms using the rationale that it's a burden on the taxpayers.
So you end up with compulsory helmet laws. Smoking bans. Now they're going to go after fat people. God knows what's next. Prohibition II? Yeah, but it'll be okay because we're doing it for the greater good, not for some backward concept of morality. Besides, personal liberty is such a small price to pay because we're being nice. Smiley-smiley.

Some folks keep nattering on about the fascism of the far-right, but the fascism of the socialist left cannot be discounted either. Face it, Americans love them some fascism. It's just a question of which hand they want to see clenched into a fist.
 

Kacey

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Don't you need a control to prove something scientifically? That is, a person who has NEVER been exposed to smoke, or any of the dozens of compounds in cigarette smoke, like, for instance, carbon monoxide, which, is in car exhaust. Since such a person doesn't exist...

Sure they do... in the past, when the incidence of lung cancer was much lower; the contributing factors are, therefore, harder to prove. However, I will state that I have asthma, and it is triggered by cigarette smoke - and I've never been a smoker. My mother was, all of my childhood - and the thing I loved most about college was that my roommate didn't smoke, and I didn't have to be around smokers.

My point is that smoking in public places was limited because people complained about it - people like myself, who have asthma attacks in places where people are smoking, people like a friends of mine, who has coughing fits around cigarette smoke, a couple who get nauseous - we all complained, because smokers in our vicinities were negatively affecting our lives... that there were studies which provided scientific support for our symptoms (whether you believe them or not) merely added fuel to our fire.

Unless an overweight person sits on you - how does that person being overweight negatively impact your life? By raising your insurance rates? So does the man on Viagra, and the child with Type 1 diabetes, and the woman with an at-risk pregnancy - are you going to legislate against those people too? After all, they're also raising your insurance rates. And as I said previously, some people are fat because they are lazy, but others are fat for reasons beyond their control - how would you differentiate?

Here's another difference: you can live without smoking. The compounds in tobacco are not necessary to survival. You cannot, however, live without food. Many people can live without the type or quantity of food they eat, but if you quit ingesting calories completely, you'll die. That makes it a much more complex problem than limiting smoking, which limits people's comfort rather than their survival.
 

MBuzzy

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I think the best place to start would be to somehow make healthy food more affordable. Every corporations seems to have made a business of shaving off 10 calories, labeling it healthy and raising the price 40%. It is so much easier and more time saving to go buy the $4 bag of breaded chicken tenders that I can nuke for 3 nights in a row.
 

Kacey

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I think the best place to start would be to somehow make healthy food more affordable. Every corporations seems to have made a business of shaving off 10 calories, labeling it healthy and raising the price 40%. It is so much easier and more time saving to go buy the $4 bag of breaded chicken tenders that I can nuke for 3 nights in a row.

Healthy food is affordable - what it's not, for most people, is convenient.
 

Big Don

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I think the best place to start would be to somehow make healthy food more affordable. Every corporations seems to have made a business of shaving off 10 calories, labeling it healthy and raising the price 40%. It is so much easier and more time saving to go buy the $4 bag of breaded chicken tenders that I can nuke for 3 nights in a row.
They must sell bigger bags where you shop...
 

MBuzzy

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Healthy food is affordable - what it's not, for most people, is convenient.

Very good point....I would like to alter my previous statement. Either make convenient affordable healthy food or make the convenient unhealthy food less affordable and/or accessible. Although I don't see it happening, I'm just trying to think of it from the perspective of how it would even be possible to go about controlling weight.
 

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