Would other choices include heart disease, diabeties, and premature death?
I'll choose a different lifestyle.
And here in this article, is the mentality of entitlement that contributes to modern rising healthcare costs. To wit:
"When you have a first-rate medical system that can cure the diseases that obesity promotes, you no longer need to worry so much about being obese," he told AFP.
"With our ever-advancing modern medicine there helping to save the day (at least for many people), are government and the media blowing the magnitude of the 'obesity crisis' out of proportion?" his book says.
Oh, diabetes is bad for me? But I want that extra Ding Dong! Bah! Who cares about the health consequences! I'll get just get the doctor to take care of it at the expense of all the taxpayers. We'll call it "insurance" but of course the only thing we are being insured against is my own stupidity.
Why can't we just let stupid people die?
Smoking gun wrote:
Why can't we just let stupid people die?
They will, don't worry.
I don't want to pay taxes to help fat lazy people to get health care...
Take care of yourself, you fat %?&%?!
Yah but not before sucking the health-care coffers dry in a noble and brave attempt to live, LIVE! LIVE!!!
Excuse me while I shed a tear
Too bad for the rest of us they weren't willing to do all along in life the simple things that would have prevented their diabetes/heart disease/etc in the first place.
But hey, that was their "lifestyle choice"
A study in which Finkelstein and colleagues at the RTI International, an independent research institute in North Carolina that works on social and scientific problems, asked overweight, obese and normal weight people to predict their life expectancy came up with a total difference of four years.
Normal weight respondents predicted they would live to 78, the obese to 74, and the overweight 75.5.
Hey sweet! We can predict when we die! This is probably the best news I've heard all year. I hereby predict that I will live to be 150, and I will be able to get a raging hard on until my final day. My fiance will be pleased, I'm sure. :-D
But seriously what is this guy trying to accomplish by stating this opinion, besides shock value? Just because we can cure the ill's of the Great White American Hippo doesn't mean we should encourage it.
I betcha most obese people would rather be skinnier. That's not much of a choice. Their choice is to be skinnier....they just happen to be not.
Alan
Runningart2004 wrote:
Their choice is to be skinnier....they just happen to be not.Alan
The reason they\'re not skinnier is because of the lifestyle choices they make.
Similarly, I wouldn\'t mind being wealthier, but I don\'t choose to make the lifestyle changes that would be required to earn a lot more or spend a lot less.
Deathstyle choice.
Runningart2004 wrote:
I betcha most obese people would rather be skinnier. That's not much of a choice. Their choice is to be skinnier....they just happen to be not.
Alan
Most obese people would rather be skinnier yes, but as shows like The Biggest Loser show us, you can drop HUGE amounts of weight in less than a year with proper diet and exercise. Continuing to eat more calories than you burn is a decision. I know a guy who is a Type II diabetic. He told me he would for sure be diabetic because both his parents were and his grandparents were..."I had no choice in the matter". Meanwhile he's about 60 pounds overweight, doesn't exericse at all other than racquetball once a month, and he eats M&Ms by the bucketful. He could probably be diabetes free within 10 months if he exercised every day and quit eating too much and too much of the wrong stuff. So what that his parents had Type II diabetes? They taught him their lifestyle habits.
I know a family with an adopted child from China. The parents are fat, and guess what, the child is fat too. Not even genetic. She just eats what they provide in their house.
Almost without exception, being fat is a choice. Who else makes the decision what to put in your mouth and how much to exercise other than yourself?
This is great news. If obesity is a choice, then maybe we can make it a crime.
Ozzie wrote:
This is great news. If obesity is a choice, then maybe we can make it a crime.
"If" obesity is a choice. Of COURSE obesity is a choice. Or rather it is a million little choices.
I think I'll eat that extra dessert
I think I'll eat that slice of pizza
I think I'll sit on the couch instead of exercising
Personally I am willing to keep it legal as long as we don't spend any public funds on healthcare for obese people. Let them pay their own way or perish.
This is a tough issue. I know that there are plenty of people considered obese who don't have complete control over it, wether from genetic factors or whatever. But there are just as many who could easily control it but choose to be obese and that's where the increased costs come in.