[quote=ocrenter][quote=AN]Fixing over eating is easy. Just tax food at an extreme level where people can only afford to buy a little bit of food. Obesity is a first world problem. The solution is to get people to eat like a third world person. You can’t really get them to do it voluntarily, so force them to do it. Kind of like what we are doing with cigarettes.[/quote]
+1
if you think about it, the food industry is following the same playbook as the tobacco industry of the past. Government just need to dust off the same playbook as well.
we already have the same analogous pictures in front of congress. Tobacco industry sitting with a straight face stating that tobacco is not addictive. And food industry sitting with a straight face stating potato is a vegetable.[/quote]
I don’t think anyone would argue that morbid obesity is healthy. It’s just that we’ve gone to such an extreme with respect to how one is supposed to *look* (not having anything to do with health), that we need to re-examine how we define health as it relates to weight.
The youngest person we know who had a heart attack was a fitness buff. He is the only person we know who’s had a heart attack under the age of 50. It happened while he was in the middle of stenuous excercise. He and his wife (who suffered a stroke in her 40s) were/are both extremely concerned about their appearance, taking care to never become “fat.” They really, really hate fat.
I know two people from high school who were always overly concerned about their weight. They are in their 40s and are suffering from osteoporosis and other serious medical conditions. One has already had her hip replaced. She also broke her back when she simply fell on the floor. The other has had various bone breaks in her hands and arms. It’s almost spontaneous, with very little to cause the breaks.
Another person I know from youth has lost most of her teeth (bulemia) and her esophagus is very heavily damaged, and she will likely get to a point where she will have to eat via feeding tube.
Just look at what goes on in Hollywood. Even the ones we’re supposed to aspire to look like can’t do it without the “coffee and cigarette” diet or the “carrots and celery” diet. And they can afford the time and money it takes to have nutritionists and personal trainers.
We need to focus on health, not appearance. There are plenty of skinny, malnourished, unhealthy people out there; and there are plenty of “overweight” people who will never have a serious health complication in their lives. I’ve known plenty of both.
