Obama Loves Fat Americans
Ricardo de la Luna
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has just released its 2013 international findings on Health for its member countries. The complete .pdf file may be accessed here.
Let’s start with the not-so-surprising finding that the United States ranks Number One for Obesity: 36.5% of our population. If our 330,000,000 citizens were to lose an average of 30 pounds each, thus reducing substantially the percentage of Fat people running about the supermarket in motorized carts after being paid their monthly Disability checks for the many symptoms associated with Obesity, America would become 9,900,000,000 lighter. Nearly Ten Billion Pounds lighter, countering the effects of coastal tidal rise due to Global Warming by lessening the load on our continent.
Americans are fatter than anyone. Nowhere else in the world may one see this much Morbid Obesity. And, it’s deadly, obviously, but Obesity has been relegated to the same category as AIDS/HIV: something I’ve never quite comprehended1.
One might suppose that all of these well-fed Americans would lead longer happier lives. Not so. In fact, the US is far behind Switzerland, Japan, Italy, Spain, Iceland, France, Austria and even Greece: Most of which have a much higher incidence of Tobacco use. Greece’s Tobacco use, by the way, is about twice again that of the United States. So is Spain’s, Switzerland’s, and every country listed as “Longer Living.”
It makes one wonder why Tobacco users in the United States are singled out by Obamacare and subject to substantial increases in penalties while Fat people are not, and neither are those who consume alcohol. (Perhaps premiums under Obamacare ought to be based on BMI?)
Our Cancer Mortality rate is another unexpected reality, exceeding that of Spain (higher smoking), Brazil (same level of smoking), Japan (much higher smoking), and Mexico (higher smoking) among others. Mexico, in fact, experiences about one-half the rate of Cancer as we do here in the United States.
These latest findings cause me to urge the Tobacco companies, so vilified today, to request a refund of all or most of what they’ve paid in extortion money to California, New York, and other states who jumped on the “Screw the Tobacco Companies” bandwagon.
But, reading and thinking is not part of the American way of life: it gets in the way of eating…ask Michael Bloomberg - Archenemy of Tobacco and himself a Fat person.
1 Is it not a (venereal) disease contracted through sexual activity? Why do we not mourn those who have died from the Clap or Syphilis? When we learn of someone dying of AIDS why do we feel as though we must react as though they had died sadly of a Divine bolt from above rather than from having put Tab A into Hole C, where it doesn’t belong?