Obesity is the biggest threat to our nation’s health and will contribute significantly to the skyrocketing healthcare costs in our country. Ultimately, an ever-increasing percentage of our GDP will harm our nation’s competitive advantage in the global economy. We as a nation are gluttons. And we’re eating ourselves to death.
Cigarette smoking was causing the same problem until the Surgeon General’s Report published in 1964 made it official that smoking was killing us. It took over 40 years for our country to now thumb our noses at smokers and stigmatize them by throwing them out of bars and restaurants to “go do their thing” out on the sidewalks.
I wonder if we, as a nation, will do the same thing for the obese? Secondhand smoke kills. Secondhand “you’re-obesity-keeps-making-my-insurance-premiums-and-our-nation’s-healthcare-spending-skyrocket” is just as harmful. In 40 years, will the obese be made to eat out on the sidewalk?