Fat Fantasy

Ah... a little bit of balance for all the John Tierney's and David Brooks' of the food world. Not enough, mind you, but some is better than none.

Smug commentators went wild attacking "the food police," while the food and beverage front group Center for Consumer Freedom practically gloated itself to death with an obese $600,000 newspaper advertising blitz declaring "Americans have been force-fed a steady diet of obesity myths."

Fumento hits several of the other studies that have been done that have disparate results, and then homes in on some items that I have been shouting about:

There are also many disturbing considerations that Flegal's team didn't look at. One is that so many in the overweight and obese population are children and adolescents. How can we know the long-term effects of type 2 diabetes or permanently enlarged hearts when they afflict butterball 10-year-olds?

Nor did Flegal's group consider non-fatal illness or health-care costs. But the Rand Corporation found a direct connection between obesity and disability, and a just-released study shows that a mere 27.5 BMI (the middle of Flegal's "healthiest" category) can triple the need for knee surgery. Is that 1,800-calorie Ultimate Colossal Burger from Ruby Tuesday really worth titanium joints?

Further, expenditures for medical conditions caused by being overweight or obese accounted "for 9.1 percent of total annual U.S. medical expenditures in 1998 and may be as high as $78.5 billion ($92.6 billion in 2002 dollars)," according to the journal Health Affairs. It noted, "Medicare and Medicaid finance approximately half of these costs."

Strange how something that's good for you can be so costly. But believe what you will as the Grim Reaper bears down on you while you try desperately to waddle away.

Nice ending.