Each day, the American public is greeted by the news that yet another product or service is becoming either painfully expensive or increasingly impossible to obtain at any price. Periodically, we are met with unwelcome surprises. For example, it has recently come to the world’s attention that to build and maintain the hardware needed for immense Artificial Intelligence citadels will raise the price of both water and electricity to levels terrifying to contemplate.
At the same time, the astute reader will have noticed that certain words occur frequently in the titles and posts here at Childhood Obesity News. Those words are “cost” and “price,” along with several other appropriate synonyms, adjectival variants, and even polite euphemisms.
This site has discussed individual costs, institutional costs, societal costs, financial costs, psychological costs, emotional costs, and more; all paid directly or indirectly by the parents of obese children and, of course, by the kids themselves.
The crux of the matter
Here is the problem. “On the ground,” as the expression goes, those different types and degrees of prices are actually paid by pretty much everybody (except for a tiny percentage of villains who design and maintain the system, and profit from it). Among the vast majority of the population, many varieties of prices are paid.
The point being pursued here is that the vast majority can also jolly well decide to do something about it. One way or another, we really all need to take some responsibility. This does not mean trying to make laws to control the behavior of individuals. (They tend not to react well, so trying is usually a waste of energy.)
However, corporations are not people and are not entitled to human rights. We humans, especially the ones who hope to prevent childhood obesity, can take it upon ourselves to discipline manufacturers. Among other points of contention, they need to stop adding certain ingredients to their purportedly edible products.
We are well within our rights to insist that corporations behave themselves. We could easily take some of the energy we use to tsk-tsk at the parents of overweight children, and apply it to curbing the worst instincts of our corporate oppressors.
Oh, those prices
The vast majority of the population consists of many more types than just obese children and their responsible adults. Directly or indirectly, recognizably or covertly, one way or another, all sorts of prices are paid — and not just by these children and their parents but, eventually, by everybody who belongs to the whole society — yes, even the skinny kids and the childless adults. Still, maybe we could recognize the futility of picking on obese people and cut them a break. A lot of that energy could be constructively redirected.
Let’s back up for a minute and glance at a very recent item of medical news, which says,
Researchers from the UK and Finland said that people with obesity were seen to have a higher risk of being hospitalised or dying due to SARS-CoV-2 infection during the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to the venerated journal The Lancet, obese people may be as much as 70% more apt to be hospitalized for — and even die of — an infectious disease like pneumonia, flu, or COVID-19. The professionals behind the study ask readers to exercise caution before generalizing, because, of course, many factors are involved.
No scientists want the public to read more into their published work than what they intentionally placed there. Still, the study did encompass well over half a million subjects and…
“As obesity rates are expected to rise globally, so will the number of deaths and hospitalisations from infectious diseases linked to obesity,” author Solja Nyberg, from the University of Helsinki in Finland, said.
Like so many other studies, this one also demonstrated the futility of being mean to obese people, who may not even be around long enough to feel the effects of that wasted negative energy.
Your responses and feedback are welcome!
Source: “Data centers for AI use huge amounts of electricity, water, driving up costs and climate concerns,” CBSNews.com, 02/13/26
Source: “ Obesity Raises Risk Of Hospitalisation, Death From Infections By 70%: Study,” NDTV.com, 02/11/26
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