I don't have the numbers to compare, but I suspect banning being fat might even save the US healthcare system more money, if not now - at least at the current trajectory.
If you think "You can't ban being fat, my body my choice".. well, then I don't think you should ban smoking.
>there is a lot of healthy food that can cause people to being fat if they eat enough
Okay, but unhealthy food is unhealthy because it is easy to eat large quantities of it. No one is getting fat because they are overeating fruits and veggies.
You would agree that that is mostly healthy food? And he is eating very large quantities of it. He is not fat, but people who do not do a lot of exercise could eat the same amount of food (or even half, he eats 12,000 calories a day) and gain quite a lot of weight.
Also a diet needs more than fruits and vegetables to be healthy at all.
I agree that there should be less focus on processed and fast foods, but that alone does not eliminate the problem of people eating a lot of food. I could eat a big mac and medium fries for every meal and not gain a lot of weight (3x big mac (563 calories) = 1689 calories + 3* fries (333 calories) = 2688 calories. Which is around the 2500 calorie range for an adult man. That would in no way be healthy, but I would not gain weight quickly.
I never said a diet of only fruits and veggies was healthy. It is significantly closer to being a healthy diet than the average American diet. Add nuts, seeds, legumes, and maybe some meat or starch and then it’s a healthy diet. The problem is processed foods are heavily subsidized and whole plant based foods are not.
I bet if you ate a Big Mac and fries 3x a day, you’re going to be hungry all day too. Some foods are more satiating than others. Eliminating calorie dense foods that are not satiating is something that every healthy diet is going to do.
And yeah, this is true dystopian stuff. But that is exactly where this line of thinking inevitably leads. Once you accept that costs of public healthcare are a valid reason to regulate lifestyle choices, practically nothing is off-limits.
What an ignorant and offensive comment. People do not choose their weight the way they choose to smoke or not smoke.
Weight is an outcome that has many factors outside of diet and behavioral choices. And diet, when it is a factor, is not a simple factor. Many, many people make very good dietary choices and remain overweight. Many of those same people exercise regularly and remain overweight.
Please don't judge people for being overweight -- and don't blame them either.
Thermodynamics disagrees with this assertion.
It's hard, I get it. I am losing weight right now. But I don't say I can't lose weight.
However, that is not true.
Once food enters our bodies -- especially our colon, it encounters our microbiomes. Everybody has a different microbiome -- little bugs/bacteria in our gut. Some of these bacteria convert undigestable foods into usable calories that are then absorbed by our bodies. (Short Chain Fatty Acids.) The amount of food converted by these bacteria varies depending on an individual's unique microbiome.
So, it turns out that no, not all food results in the same amount of calorie absorption. This is something that varies significantly, and not just based on the microbiome, though this is certainly one of the factors.
Let's say you and me eat the same food. I get 2x the calories out of the food as you do due to my super gut biosphere.
Therefore, if I want to weigh the same, I must eat half the food.
Your argument is an argument for why Calories are not perfect, and I 100% agree.
However, you can just pick any calorie amount as as starting number. Weigh yourself on a scale ever day. If weight is going up, decrease calories by 200 per day. If weight is going down, increase by 200 per day.
The exact rate of burning calories is not important. And that is why the 2,000 calorie a day diet is a very very rough guess.
People too often assume that bodies are like cars, and that food is like gasoline. This is not true. Our bodies are far more complex (and interesting) than mechanical machines. The food we eat is also far more complex (and interesting) than gasoline as well.
Oh dear. The vast majority of them most certainly do. I’m stunned to read you think otherwise.
- your parents overfed you while you were a child and now you're fat before you really had agency
- you had a medical condition and your medication is associated with weight gain
- you have a stressful lifestyle and have fallen on eating as a stress relief mechanism, leading you to gain weight
- the food you have available in your neighborhood is all junk and you get fat as a result
- the cuisine in your country is generally junk and portion sizes are out of control (I'm looking at you, America)
- everyone in your community is fat and so you consider that normal
- you do just have slower metabolism than others and so staying lean is just more effort
Not to say that it's outside one's control to control their weight (I live in Japan, practically nobody here is fat), but it's not quite as simple as choosing to smoke or not. Lots of ways you can end up fat "by default" whereas smoking does involve the explicit choice to start (by default you don't smoke).
Regardless, research has show being obese or overweight is by and large preventable.
> Overweight and obesity, as well as their related noncommunicable diseases, are largely preventable. Supportive environments and communities are fundamental in shaping people’s choices, by making the choice of healthier foods and regular physical activity the easiest choice (the choice that is the most accessible, available and affordable), and therefore preventing overweight and obesity. [1]
However, compared to smoking it is an issue that affects more people and has been addresses muuuch less
> The study reveals that obesity is linked to very high rates of chronic illnesses — higher than living in poverty, and much higher than smoking or drinking. [2]
> In 2016, more than 1.9 billion adults aged 18 years and older were overweight. Of these over 650 million adults were obese. [1]
[1]: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/obesity-and...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6368221/
I’m of the opinion that the obesity epidemic and the large decrease in smoking in the US are not unrelated.
You might be bedbound and not in control of your own food. But, the staff could just give you less food.
There is no medical condition that will cause someone in a locked room given a calorie restricted diet to gain weight. That is against the laws of physics.
It's fine to say "losing weight is very very very hard". But it's incorrect to say "being overweight is not a choice".
You (unless you are bedbound) choose what goes in your mouth. You, thus, have control of your own weight.
it probabbly "works".
Also is enough to get someone kicked out of office, as the public loves sugar.
Once you grant the existence of individuals that are outliers in susceptibility to addiction (which I think is reasonable because it's such a highly polygenic trait) I don't see how one could claim that obesity is sometimes not entirely a "choice", while smoking is always a "choice".
It seems that the incurred costs per capita for overweight/obese people is somewhere from $250-$2000 according to this study. [1] So we can use some combination of the carrot (reward people who are healthy) and the stick (tax/penalize people who aren't) and end up more or less in the same place.
> "We haven't developed the data yet to say that it's clearly dangerous, but it probably is," says Dr. Hays.
[1]: https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/mayo-clinic-mi...
This is a stretch. The difficulty of losing weight might be related to genetics and the environment and monetary capability, but it is 100% possible for every person on this planet to lose weight. Bodies cannot create calories.
There are absolutely some medical conditions that make it hard to lose weight, make you retain water, etc. and it's not as cut and dry as smoking (100% of the time it's 100% your fault), but "being fat isn't a choice" is objectively, laughably wrong.
If you make this argument in the future, maybe you should think about comparing it to the banning of a particular type of unhealthy food (which is similar in scope to e-cigs and cigarettes).
I think this entire line of thinking of you and the parent poster is flawed anyway. Denying health insurance to anyone would probably have negative effects for all of us anyway (the insured usually end up paying anyway at different levels, whether that's through higher premiums at the personal level, lower productivity overall at the national level, or dealing with an untimely death/sickness of friends/family at the local level).
No exceptions apart from purely medical (=very expensive) stuff.
Another may be trans-fats. All the revenue -> medical system. Your wallet would be telling you all the time how stupid your eating habits/disorders are. But good luck pushing this through society setup like US (aka impossible).