From: raithnor	Date: September 12th, 2009 02:48 am (UTC)		(Link)

There's slightly overweight and there's being 400+ lbs and type 2 diabetic at age 26 or younger. If this was a "slightly overweight" crisis it wouldn't be a "crisis", it's an obesity crisis. Either there's a serious problem with obesity or it's media hype that's blown the issue out of proportion. The point is the massivly overweight are going to have shorter lifespans, than the thin and slightly overweight.

Is there money to be saved if there were less people were overweight and not diabetic? Probably, but it would take several years for any benefits to manifest and that's if something was done beyond what is being done now.

We live in a society of cheap, unhealthly food, and we have to reprioritize what we value as a society.

	From: norroway	Date: September 12th, 2009 03:37 am (UTC)		(Link)

The obesity (boooga booga) "crisis" actually targets a lot of people who most people would say to "but you're not fat!" because they're using BMI as the grading scale. So yes, I'd say it's media hype that's thrown everything way out of proportion, especially because the "crisis" began when the threshold for "overweight" was changed from a BMI of 27 to 25 in the late 90s and suddenly millions of people were overweight without gaining a pound.

A great place to start is by looking at women who are actually considered "obese": http://kateharding.net/bmi-illustrated.

And, as noted by others above, sometimes fat is a symptom, not the disease. I am hypothyroid, for example--when my thyroid is out of whack, no amount of exercising or starving myself is going to make me lose weight.

I agree that we have cheap, unhealthy food. That should be addressed by our food industry especially--especially because the poorest of us can't afford to buy actual healthy food. Sometimes it's not about information or education--plenty of people know what they *should* eat, but if cereal and pasta and other processed foods are the cheapest things to buy and you don't have any money, why would people spend money that could go to rent or utilities on fresh fruits and vegetables? I can get two meals out of a $1 box of Pasta Roni, or five or six meals out of a 50 cent box of spaghetti (and then there's ramen...), and only a meal or two out of $5 worth of produce, so...