Tackling obesity

[gela]

As a hardcore democratic socialist I take capitalist economics with a grain of salt and sometimes the whole shaker and yes you are right, but the fact of the matter is that raising a ton of organic tomatoes requires much much more work than raising a ton of inorganic tomatoes. Remember the supply is less because the bugs ate half your tomatoes so you had to plant twice as much. Planting extra, as well as using tedious methods of organic pest control so the bugs only eat half (I am guilty of manual genocide against slugs and can speak on this with authority), puts a very nonmagical extra cost on organic produce.

Studied this in earth and environemental science.
There is alot of alternatives that can hugely minimalise crop loss due to pests.
Probem is, they require labour and they give long term results, rather then short term results.
So pecticide is chosen over them.

[Trotsky]

Quote by: Chancellor Of course, if you had actually read what I wrote instead of presuming to interpret what I wrote, you would have said that I didn't specify what type of diabetes it was (Type II is not the only type). And I don't give a rat's behind about statistics (I agree with Mark Twain on that one: "There are lies, damned lies and statistics"). Just stick to what was written.

I did read what you said, I just disagree with it strongly and think you are wrong.

Quote by: Chancellor So what if fat people are more likely to get one type of diabetes. It does NOT logically follow that it costs more to treat fat people with that type of diabetes than skinny people with that type of diabetes. You must show the fat actually causing the increase in cost in order to rightly say that it costs more to treat fat people with that condition.

It doesn't cost more to treat a fat person with t2dm than it does a skinny person with t2dm. I never claimed it did. Take your own advice, read what I wrote.

Quote by: Chancellor The cost of medical insurance is rising because insurance companies want to make more money and can get away with it. You have not proven that people's fat is somehow magically causing the cost of healthcare to rise. You have not proven that any illness has ever been directly caused solely by an individual weighing more than some arbitrary number.

I don't need to prove that, far more intelligent people than I already have, pick up a medical text book, read a few medical journals.

[Sweet Katie]

Quote by: Compugasm Don't eat so much, fatty!

Thanks for the laugh!

[Barnicals]

I think we could solve two problems here. In france (If I remember correctly) they have exercise bikes linked to power generators, which can provide your house with however much energy you exert and is subsequently put into the machine. We have used similar things before, such as pump powered torches, watches that run off body heat, and various other things.
An alternative would be for a gaming console, similar to the wii, where characters of games brought out would have the physical abilities of the character. The success of it is debatable though.

[Okieslims]

Quote by: Chancellor Their bodies are their responsibility. Code for "we can't get as much work out of him as we can get out of the skinny people we coerce into doing more and more work without increasing their pay and benefits." Nonsense! Show me how it costs more to treat a fat person's diabetes than it does to treat a skinny person's diabetes (and you must stick to only treating the diabetes). So, being obese somehow magically forces the government to raise taxes, eh?

I found your stipulation "and you must stick to only treating the diabetes" funny because fat people have more cases of diabetes. Ofcourse it costs the same to treat.. But, fat people require that cost to be paid more often than skinny people. Not to mention that they have elevated risks of just about every type of cancer and heart disease.

I think the problem could be greatly reduced if we followed china's example and made exercise an important part of our communities. In chinese parks, there is low maintenance stationary exercise equipment. Furthermore, I think having regional government funded dieticians that meet with groups of people for free, would pay for itself in reduced unpaid medical bills 100 fold.