Healthy people cost more. Obese people have a higher yearly cost but they die quicker and therefore require less healthcare spent on them than say a 90 year old person who lived a healthy lifestyle but now needs complete care givers for the next decade.
I was watching a talk show on the I Channel many years ago (90's I think) where they were discussing tax on tabacoo ... the were saying smokers cost the healthcare system something like 2 billion dollars a year at that time and the tax they collected from tobacoo exceeded that number by a lot , can't remember by how much .... they also said facts are smokers die younger and the longer you live the more you cost the healthcare system ... also agree with incentives to encourage healthy lifestyles ...
Hungry & in a pinch? There are 13 take out places in your vicinity with ready to serve you high carb meals loaded with highly processed ingredients.
Waiting in line at the store? Whole thing is lined with every form of carb and a fridge with soda and "vitamin water" which is actually just sugar water with flavoring.
Going through a mall? Enjoy Cinnizero and Kernels pumping the most intoxicating smells your way as you walk past.
Even grocery stores have a very limited organic/health section which have much heftier price tags. If you want eggs or protein that's pasture raised, enjoy the 3+ dollar difference from your eggs from chickens raised in a box with dyed yolks (to cover up their pale unhealthy colour).
Meal prepping to be healthy over a full week without breaking one of the 700 times you encounter the temptation of convenience over a day takes real honest to god commitment and concientiousness.
The good thing is if you're strong willed enough to keep on it, you'll look and feel way better than your peers over time, because most people break and resign to stress eating #### food in some form once or multiple times a day because it's so damn easy to.
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Just a few comments:
- "The Obesity Epidemic" is pretty made up. The definitions of "overweight" are mostly pretty non-scientific and were heavily lobbied for by the billion dollar weight loss industry to use unscientific definitions of what is "normal" and what is "overweight".
- Longest living expectations are actually for people in the "slightly overweight" category, which tells you all you need about the labelings of those categories. If you're "slightly overweight", you're actually normal.
- The "costs of the obesity epidemic" are also almost completely made up by lobbyists.
- Statistically, the biggest health threat to fat people is hatred of fat people. It stops them from being able to exercise at public without being harassed, and the constant commentary people around them "offer" about what they eat or don't eat is a significant cause of eating disorders and other mental problems like depression and numerous anxieties.
- Weight is an extremely unreliable measuring stick for unhealthiness. You can be healthy and overweight or unhealthy and normal weight or skinny. Sure, being overweight statistically correlates with several unhealthy things, but first of all let's remember, correlation does not mean causation, and more importantly, since we don't live in the middle-ages, there are much better ways to monitor someones actual health, and there's really no reason to use weight as a measuring stick for health anymore.
- If you actually want to create health benefits on the social level, encouraging exercise is good, encouraging weight loss is bad and is more likely to create massive amounts of eating disorders than anything else.
- If you want to encourage exercise, the best way is to directly support organizations and schools who want to organize sports, especially among the youth. Tax breaks have been tried and all they do is give extra tax breaks to people who are already paying for exercises.
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Highly recommend watching this documentary which is on netflix. Diet is at least as big or an even bigger factor than exercise when it comes to health outcomes.
Last edited by doozwimp; 05-13-2023 at 03:21 AM.
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I would be in favour of schools at the elementary level starting the day with some sort of exercise.
I’m with you on this, specifically if it’s something fun. The point of school physical education should be enjoyable activities that also happen to be exercise so that kids want to do these things as they get older. My kids have no interest in sports (despite my wife and I both enjoying sports and wishing they would!), so we just want them to enjoy things that are active. It’s not about the competition, or being a professional athlete, it’s just plain healthy (along with the teamwork benefits, learning to be a good sport, etc.)
- Longest living expectations are actually for people in the "slightly overweight" category, which tells you all you need about the labelings of those categories. If you're "slightly overweight", you're actually normal.
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I’m with you on this, specifically if it’s something fun. The point of school physical education should be enjoyable activities that also happen to be exercise so that kids want to do these things as they get older. My kids have no interest in sports (despite my wife and I both enjoying sports and wishing they would!), so we just want them to enjoy things that are active. It’s not about the competition, or being a professional athlete, it’s just plain healthy (along with the teamwork benefits, learning to be a good sport, etc.)
Out of all my school years, I think there was one semester where we started the day with gym class, and then it was a brain numbing 45 min of 'practice' before allowing us to actually play whatever we were practising.
But funny that so many in this thread are focusing on gym memberships when the solution is to find a way to get more kids & adults for that matter into sports. And sports are expensive. Especially hockey.
And yet a lifelong love of hockey will probably equal someone being active in the sport for many years.
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Out of all my school years, I think there was one semester where we started the day with gym class, and then it was a brain numbing 45 min of 'practice' before allowing us to actually play whatever we were practising.
But funny that so many in this thread are focusing on gym memberships when the solution is to find a way to get more kids & adults for that matter into sports. And sports are expensive. Especially hockey.
And yet a lifelong love of hockey will probably equal someone being active in the sport for many years.
And hockey should be focused on lifelong beer league players as opposed to pushing kids to be the 1/1,000,000 professional. I know that’s not likely a popular opinion, but it’s probably better for the sport and for the people playing the sport.
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How can anyone going for a walk in any public and not immediately come to the conclusion that there is a clear and obvious obesity epidemic? Maybe 1/10,000 people have some condition that forces them to be obese, the rest of them are just plain ####ing up their lives and the lives of the people around them just because of poor self control. Nobody wants to be obese, every single one of them would wish it all away if they could. They've given up so much just to chase fleeting mouth pleasure. It's shear madness and we've all just gotten used to it.
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And hockey should be focused on lifelong beer league players as opposed to pushing kids to be the 1/1,000,000 professional. I know that’s not likely a popular opinion, but it’s probably better for the sport and for the people playing the sport.
And its not just hockey either.
There are tons of sports that kids & adults can play and be involved in their entire lives.
We just focus on hockey because we live in Canada.
So what can the government do?
Funding for more recreational centres.
Funding for more arenas.
Grants / tax incentives for equipment / league signups.
Grants for sporting schools (summer goalie league, summer skating school).
etc, etc
There are literally dozens of ways to try and break the cost barrier that many families have with getting their kids into sports.
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Just a few comments:
- Longest living expectations are actually for people in the "slightly overweight" category, which tells you all you need about the labelings of those categories. If you're "slightly overweight", you're actually normal.
Everything else equal we know the most defining factor for health is wealth. The vast majority of the underweight would be made up of people from poor countries but I would bet a large majority of the upper middle class white collar office workers making their six figures (i.e. Calgarypuck users) would be in the slightly overweight category. So this shouldn't be a surprise at all even before factoring in any typical other "health" metrics.
But also from a completely anecdotal experience based on my own loved ones, it does seems like at a certain age it seems to shift into being beneficial to have a little added cushion. When you start getting to that point where you're significantly more susceptible to cancers and you can see how quickly the treatment and disease can wither people, having that little extra of energy storage might make the difference.
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Oh, and let's also be clear on what "slightly overweight" is. A 5'10'' is "slightly overweight" if he is 175 pounds based purely on a BMI calculator that doesn't factor in muscle content or fat%. Almost all the "gym-fit" people we see fall into slightly overweight to obese on a BMI scale.
Except it disproportionately affects poor people. Tough thing to fix without changing underlying habits and bad nutritional education.
While true I think it’s relatively easy to design this tax with a carbon tax style rebate system that could be progressive. Certainly it’s a concern but I think it’s relatively easy to handle.
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Everything else equal we know the most defining factor for health is wealth. The vast majority of the underweight would be made up of people from poor countries but I would bet a large majority of the upper middle class white collar office workers making their six figures (i.e. Calgarypuck users) would be in the slightly overweight category. So this shouldn't be a surprise at all even before factoring in any typical other "health" metrics.
But also from a completely anecdotal experience based on my own loved ones, it does seems like at a certain age it seems to shift into being beneficial to have a little added cushion. When you start getting to that point where you're significantly more susceptible to cancers and you can see how quickly the treatment and disease can wither people, having that little extra of energy storage might make the difference.
Being slightly overweight but still playing sports / working out 3-4x per week likely puts you into the top 5% of healthy people for your age.
I think there is also decent research saying that exercise & eating healthy is more important than BMI in terms of longevity.
But I'd also venture a strong guess that the more overweight people are, the less likely it is they exercise.
Everything else equal we know the most defining factor for health is wealth. The vast majority of the underweight would be made up of people from poor countries but I would bet a large majority of the upper middle class white collar office workers making their six figures (i.e. Calgarypuck users) would be in the slightly overweight category. So this shouldn't be a surprise at all even before factoring in any typical other "health" metrics.
But also from a completely anecdotal experience based on my own loved ones, it does seems like at a certain age it seems to shift into being beneficial to have a little added cushion. When you start getting to that point where you're significantly more susceptible to cancers and you can see how quickly the treatment and disease can wither people, having that little extra of energy storage might make the difference.
I’d also be curious how the study was done and screened out things like cancer, drug addiction etc that can lead people to being underweight and unhealthy. At first glance I’m getting Minnesota diet study claims from it.
I hear people say that "they want" to lose weight sometimes.
My usual reaction is no, maybe "they'd like" to lose weight, but they have no dedication, will power or strong desire to actually become healthy, they don't "want" it.
I ride my bicycle to work. It's about 5-10 minutes longer than driving to get to the office. That's it. All flat. No hills. My 4 male co-workers all live near me. They're all in various stages of being overweight. They have bicycles (and if they didn't, they make about 150k each and could get one). I encourage them to bike with me all the time, or to ride their bikes period. None of them ever want to and no, it's not the magical "I have to pick my kid up from school explanation". They could easily regularly go to a gym or eat better, but they don't.
I see people always stop/starting diets that will never last. There's no commitment to a healthier lifestyle.
Most people just don't care. We're a society of complainers (about nearly everything) with relatively little action. Will power doesn't really exist anymore.
Last edited by Johnny199r; 05-13-2023 at 11:44 AM.
Yup, the best exercise you can do is one that fits your daily routine. Commuting in an active way really does make it easy, and doesn't take much time out of your life. Plus you get exercise twice each day.
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Yup, the best exercise you can do is one that fits your daily routine. Commuting in an active way really does make it easy, and doesn't take much time out of your life. Plus you get exercise twice each day.
Yes as opposed to a fad diet that won't last and/or joining a gym (which is great!) but often results in the individual giving up on going after a month or two.
Hell, if people had to acquire their food without the use of a car (walking, cycling or any other kind of physical movement), we'd see consumption drop and fitness levels in our country explode.
