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.
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...
Thermodynamics disagrees with this assertion.
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.
It's hard, I get it. I am losing weight right now. But I don't say I can't lose weight.
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).
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".
it probabbly "works".
Also is enough to get someone kicked out of office, as the public loves sugar.
You (unless you are bedbound) choose what goes in your mouth. You, thus, have control of your own weight.
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...
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.
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.
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).
Smokers die in there's 60s from a heart attack or lung cancer. Healthy people die in their 80s after collecting Medicare and social security for 25 years having spent the last 10 years in memory care.
The predictable consequence of American lives is that you'll get serious medical conditions and spend a lot of money addressing them at the end of your life. Changing out one for another won't necessarily make things cheaper.
You seem all too happy to tell everyone what they can and can't do and ready with all of the exceptions for the things you personally like.
Eating is a requirement for life, and there is no meaningful way to make a nutritionally complete diet available (especially at "feeding society without devoting your entire GDP to food production and distribution" scales) while making it impossible for people to gain unhealthy amounts of weight. It is fully a sliding scale.
Even the most pro-nicotine people can't argue that smoking is a necessary component of human survival.
Breathing is a requirement for life and smoking is a category of breathing in the same way that eating soda and candy bars is a category of eating.
I'm not arguing that in good faith. I'm pointing out that your argument doesn't hold up either.
Reduce the insane amount of sugar, empty carbs, and saturated fats in the food available to an average American, and subsidize vegetables and fruits and whole grains. Incentivize the mass-producing manufacturers to use healthier ingredients.
It's possible that smokers actually end up saving Medicare and Medicaid money, because they die sooner. I've seen articles that estimate it both ways.
Saying things like this do not help.
You can tell me to stop doing X and/or Y, but if I do stop them, then it would be equivalent to me stopping antidepressants that help me get out of bed and do my damn job (which is helping people) and be able to live my life instead of driving myself nuts and end up hanging myself. It is NOT WORTH IT to me (and to society, since I contribute this way much more, but you may rather prefer I was dead) to stop doing X and/or Y. FWIW the reason for this is that my brain is physically damaged.
Plus I would advise you give them any tips (not just any random ones though) as to how to do that exactly.
---
At any case, why are we so eager to tell people what to do without knowing anything about their life anyway?
I smoked cigarettes for a long time, and it really does boil down to just... not smoking anymore. I think the average number of quit attempts prior to success is 6 or 7, which seems about right. Some people find success with the gum, some people like to do cold turkey and push through it. I weaned myself off to the point where the last couple cigarettes in a pack were so stale it lost its enjoyment. I think a big part of why it takes a bunch of attempts is finding the method that works for you because a lot of them are mutually exclusive.
If all you’re worried about is Medicaid expenditures, seems like you should be encouraging people to start smoking en masse.
I’m terribly sorry your government had forced you to pay for these things, I don’t agree with that either. I suggest you take it up with them.
I wouldn't care the least bit what you put in your body if it didn't have disastrous public health and finance implications. How many tens or hundreds of millions are spent annually via medicare and medicaid on old and poor people with COPD, emphysema, lung cancer, etc?
Hell, I'd be happy with loosening e- and combustible cigarette regulations if it meant smoking permanently banned you from both medicare and medicaid. If you really want to smoke that bad, fine, but don't expect me to pay for the extremely predictable consequences please.