Fat is Expensive

When your doctor tells you to lose weight, it’s not because they care what you look like in a bathing suit. We used to think that fat was just energy stored against the future, and that someday there will be a famine so the skinny would starve and the chubby would inherit the earth.

But that famine never came. We now know that fat produces a variety of hormones, peptides, and enzymes that can have wide-ranging impact on your health. Overweight people have increased risk of diabetes, dementia, cancer, sexual dysfunction, heart disease and strokes. It costs Medicare 50% more every year to treat an obese American compared to one of normal weight. The problem is only 20% of Medicare patients are normal weight.

If we Americans lost our extra weight, most of the healthcare crisis would disappear right along with the pounds.