I have a completely different take on the obesity as medical problem angle.
In the past couple of months, I've developed Type II diabetes. The best way to cure that is to lose weight. The alternative is expensive medicine, including insulin. If I don't get it under control, or maybe even if I do, the future includes twice the risk of a heart attack, as well as blindness, and other vascular diseases which can lead to amputations. It's an expensive disease. In fact, it's one of the most common causes of death.
I haven't had a soft drink for decades, don't often go to fast food restaurants, almost never eat french fries, have never "supersized it," but like many people of my age, the weight just sort of crept up on me as I got older and more sedentary.
If you, as a taxpayer, would rather pay for my coronary bypass and insulin than weight loss because you think I just want to look cute in a swimsuit, that's just short-sighted, IMHO.
Not that I personally need Medicare or Medicaid, I've got Kaiser, which, by the way, you also help support as taxpayer (hubby works for Uncle Sam) but that's another story. Kaiser is perfectly thrilled to send me to special classes to learn about nutrition and even provides exercise classes. |
