Multitudinous examples illustrate how, ultimately, every sector and group of which our society is composed will ultimately pay the price of obesity one way or another. Before getting into another one of those, here is a generalization.
The victims of it suffer the most, of course. But even people whose personal body weights are healthy will, one way or another, foot the bill that always falls due for the existence of obesity. There are a few essential messages that, for various reasons, need to be discussed repeatedly and by many voices.
What could surpass badness?
An important point is: To blame obese people is not only unfair and ignorant, but it’s worse than bad — it’s useless. If fat-shaming and fat-blaming have not revolutionized the situation in all these years, such a change is unlikely to happen in the future.
As has been discussed here before, what might turn things around is an uprising against corporations that fill up boxes and bags with any old detritus that happens to be lying around the laboratory, rather than with actual, viable food. Of course, we already have that, in a way. Numerous companies and chains specialize in foodstuffs that are scientifically proven to be superior in every way, and some folks pay a lot for them.
Others cannot afford to do that, or rationalize and justify to themselves that they can’t, and either way, the result is the same. The status quo is unfair, but — as many would argue — still preferable to nobody having any choice at all.
Let’s face it
The bottom line is our kids. They grow and get jobs and fall in love, and all that good stuff. Later on, they struggle to support the families that result from those first two milestones. Then, inevitably, one way or another, our children and their children will be handed a bill for a portion of obesity’s cost.
An article titled “Obesity is linked to higher rates of bankruptcy, according to a new study,” published not long ago by a website specializing in success, makes some interesting points. The information source was a study of bankruptcy in 3,000 counties in America, which found that the economic costs of obesity are staggeringly enormous and inescapable.
The medical costs are ultimately paid by everyone, regardless of individual weight status. According to the article,
The Center[s] for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that people who have obesity are at increased risk for many serious diseases and health conditions. This includes high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, stroke, and many types of cancers, to name a few.
Those costs are shared by other insured individuals, patients’ family members, taxpayers, doctors who are pressured into corporate employment rather than private practice, and so on. Here is the technical, financial gist of the matter, as conveyed by economics professor Masanori Kuroki,
A one-percentage-point increase in the obesity rate is associated with a 0.02-0.03 increase (or a 1.0 percent increase) in Chapter 7 bankruptcy rates per 1,000 residents and a 0.02-0.04 increase (or a 3-4 percent increase) in Chapter 13 bankruptcy rates per 1,000 residents.
In addition to the cost of obesity, there is the cost of avoiding obesity, which also fits onto the scale when weighing the overall cost to the public. Childhood Obesity News has previously quoted Dr. Katy Miller, whose words are worth repeating:
We are proposing treatment strategies that are expensive and even in the best circumstances are often unsuccessful. How can we ask someone to diet when we’re not addressing things like poverty, food scarcity and housing instability?
This is true not only of Dr. Miller’s clientele, consisting of teenagers with eating disorders, but of every person in the USA. Furthermore, weight-loss pharmaceuticals will probably not vanquish obesity, and surgery is only suitable and affordable for a small minority of concerned individuals. And the money to pay for treatments of any kind could dry up any day.
Of course, there is the ongoing debate over which is worse: obesity that leads to poverty, or poverty that leads to obesity? The simple answer is that both need to be fixed. So, instead of wasting our breath debating that fine point, we might as well just get on with vanquishing both.
Your responses and feedback are welcome!
Source: “Obesity is linked to higher rates of bankruptcy, according to a new study,” TheLadders.com, 09/13/20
Image by Surprising Media/Pixabay
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