Bit's of original article!!
http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2008/02/calling-for-cease-fire.html

Most “costs of obesity” figures — elaborate fabrications of computer models — have had so many flaws* as to not be taken seriously. But few have calculated the medical costs attributed to “obesity” over an entire lifetime ... and compared them to “healthy” people with government-recommended BMIs.

Public health professionals from the Netherlands just did. They found that the ultimate lifetime medical costs are highest for healthy, nonsmoking, “normal-weight” people.

In the long run, obese people cost the healthcare system less than nonobese, and smokers cost still less...

The Netherlands study, just published in Public Library of Science Medicine, was motivated by public health programs that are focused on prevention of illness, under the belief such interventions will reduce healthcare costs.

This basic promise of better health equaling lower costs, they wrote, isn’t new. But it is debatable.

Prevention may actually induce more healthcare costs in the long run than they save in the short run, they said, when we work from assumptions, claim effectiveness for prevention programs based on risk factor reductions, and don’t consider cost increases related to increases in disease in the life years gained.

Over recent years, many estimates have been made of healthcare costs attributable to obesity. These authors found them flawed, such as not taking into account the additional costs of diseases that come with aging with longer lifespans.

Their findings held with all scenarios. In essence, healthcare interventions may prevent deaths from that targeted disease, but people will die of something different that may be less lethal but more expensive.

This study, they concluded, “demonstrates that sound estimates of medical costs in life-years gained should be taken into account in cost-effectiveness analysis of prevention.”

An editorial in this same issue by Kim McPherson, who helped create the UK Foresight Project, said this study’s cost estimates don’t mean government health interventions are unwarranted just because they have no benefits.

The lower “quality of life” associated with fat people and smokers may justify public health programs.
(NOTE:It matters not that I am happy with my life; 'THEY' are not happy about my life and that is all that really counts!!!--GK)
While this new study can provide a much needed balance to the “costs to society” being assessed on fat people and anyone else not perceived as following a “healthy lifestyle,” hopefully, it will also serve as a call to end all such cost estimates.

They are used to point blame and lodge wars against those seen as costing too much or “using more than their fair share” of resources ... under the guise of health promotion and the common good. But, in reality, there are only two truisms:

1. Shit happens and no one gets out alive.

2. No one really knows how to change #1.



© 2008 Sandy Szwarc


* How bad are they? If you’ve examined the various “costs of obesity” reports purportedly showing skyrocketing healthcare costs attributed to obesity, you’ve caught them doing things like: failing to account for age (!) or socioeconomic status; tallying any condition that’s ever been “associated” with obesity, and even others that aren’t (like dental services and eye glasses); double counting of the same conditions (the same health risk factor used as the “cause” for as many as 4 different diseases); redefining obesity to overstate risks associated with it; piling on productivity and lost work hour estimates; not reporting that fat people actually cost less than thinner people; not factoring for weight loss pills and interventions imposed on fat people; including the iatrogenic consequences of obesity “treatments”; and failing to reveal that skyrocketing costs aren’t rising in numbers of cases, but rising costs per treatment — 70% of costs due to more expensive drugs and technological interventions

quote:

(NOTE:It matters not that I am happy with my life; 'THEY' are not happy about my life and that is all that really counts!!

Yes. That's precisely what it is.

The health relationship between smoking and mortality has a firm footing in public health that really took off over forty years ago, so we have some, but little to go on in terms of challenging this relationship.

Today, though, we find ourselves firmly planted in the information age during the obesity debate.

If you care to look, you'll find the truth.

First, it appears that public health relies very heavily upon perception. If you are out in public, you'll quickly notice that you have alot of heavy, if not obese, people around you.

However, we are selective in our perceptions, while the historical timeframes we live in are not. In 1988, no one was talking about this, so you probably didn't take the time to notice.

Neither did anyone else. So, when they hear that there's an "obesity epidemic" in the major media, they tend to believe it. If they want proof, they just go into public where, of course, they see fat people. Or even just watch some sitcoms.

See that? It's true!

You'll never be successful in talking people out of this. Once it was pointed out to them on television, they looked for the match-up in everyday life and readily found it. They completely neglect the fact that they just hadn't bothered to look so closely before.

20 plus years after "The Jane Fonda Workout" craze, we still have alot of fat people.

Here's the thing; we probably don't really have more fat people.

Yes, I have seen the completely impossibly obese people. But the truth is that they've been around for many years.

It's called "the power of suggestion". Anti-smoking holds it near and dear to its black little heart.

In reality, the National Institute for Health, with full compliance of other health agencies, simply dropped the BMI for what is considered "obese". In other words, a person who wasn't obese in 1988 or 1996, is today considered obese.

According to today's weight charts, Will Smith, Matt Damon, Hugh Jackman and Denzel Washington turn out to be overweight. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger stacks up as obese, as do Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis and Tom Cruise.

Even if you are "obese", recent scientific studies have shown that obese and overweight heart surgery patients recover better than their thinner counterparts. Also, if you are well into your sixties or older, there is no benefit in your losing weight in terms of increasing your life span. Last, losing weight and regaining weight, then losing it and regaining it, repeat cycle, puts a tremendous strain on your heart and cardiovascular system.

For purposes of full disclosure, I am now well into the "obesity" range. However, this hasn't been a lifelong condition for me, and earlier in life, you'd be hard pressed to find a better trained athlete.

Still, I'd feel alot better pscychologically if I lost 30 pounds.

I have a gym membership. Today, at about 11AM, I was ready and determined to go. But when I got done working at 8PM, after a 12 hour work day between two jobs, and hadn't even eaten dinner yet, I looked hard for the urge, and found it gone.

Instead, I went onto the internet and wrote a few posts here.

Perceptions of a healthy weight changes over time like fashions. If you remember or review what people looked like in the 1950's, they were fat in comparison to the views of the majority of the 1960's and 70's. The Camelot era of the Kennedy Administration has a dramatic effect of this country and the world. We were all thin and tailored in appearance. Because there wee a lot of us, we effected everyone else. Youth was power and youth is thin. As we aged, we started buying comfortable clothes and we grew into them.

Liability lawyers and working mothers reduced the time spent on the children. Everyone had help raising the children. At fat child was a happy and healthy child. Time restraints reduced outdoor activities for children and adults. Law suits and their threats reduced school and volunteer sports programs. With more mothers working neighborhoods no longer had security and the children were kept indoors for their safety and security.

With the age of low cost computers the social engineers were able to accumulate statistics on everything. Guilt ridden mothers became advocates for everything they felt their children needed that they were unable to provide. Instead of spending time with their children they spent what little time they had working on social services, instead of with their children.

Maintaining house and home was turned over to the government. Schools turned into day care centers and given authority to decide what the children needed. Childless bureaucrats became experts in what parents and families needed. Every tick and bruise became the perview of government. Bureaucrats need something to justify their existence.

We have given over the power of nagging mothers to these bureaucrats. We did it.

If you look at pictures of Marilyn Monroe, or Jayne Mansfield, they would be considered fat in today's world. But I think (even though I'm a woman)that Marilyn and Jayne are much more sexier than say Brittany Spears or Jennifer Anniston. Don't you?