Philip J. Goscienski, M.D.
February 2007
It doesn't seem so long ago that famine threatened large segments of the world's population. Things have changed. According to the International Congress on Obesity more people in the world are overweight than are undernourished.
British and German government officials openly decry the rapid fattening of their countries. Twenty-two percent of residents in the United Kingdom and Germany are obese. Asian countries are not far behind: the obesity rate in China, long the poster child for famine, has tripled since 1990. Japan has boasted of the highest life expectancy in the world for decades but young Japanese, seduced by the fast food phenomenon and closely tied to computer games, will not live as long as their grandparents.
Affluent malnutrition takes a toll on everyone from the pre-born to the deceased. Pregnant women who develop gestational diabetes because of overweight and underexercise suffer from more complications of pregnancy and their infants are more likely to have diabetes as adults. And the cost of their care goes up.
Seventeen percent of schoolchildren in this country are obese and school systems are waking up to the fact that school performance suffers as a result. Some states — at taxpayer expense, of course — are developing strategies to reverse the trend. A healthy cafeteria menu might not be much of a financial burden but someone has to pay for reinstating physical education classes and for nutrition programs.
American cars are guzzling more gasoline because American drivers are guzzling more calories. The Engineering Economist reported the obvious: a heavy load lowers gas mileage.
American tourists in Europe and Asia have had to face unfavorable dollar exchange rates for several years. Now air fares to those destinations are increasing, partly because of the high costs of security but also because as passenger weights increase it takes more fuel to keep the planes in the air.
If you've been unlucky enough to be hospitalized in the past couple of years you may have noticed that the doorway to your room was wider, there was a hoist above the oversized bed and the commode was mounted on the floor, not on the wall. These are expensive modifications. The old furniture and fixtures can't handle the now-common 500-pound patient. Neither can nursing personnel. Mechanical lifts prevent back injuries.
Has your health insurance premium gone up? Of course it has! The twin epidemics of obesity and type 2 diabetes have more than doubled the cost of health care in less than a generation and employers are passing some of the cost on to new hires.
Obesity has even pushed up the cost of dying. When I was a kid, the term double-wide referred to those mini-mansions in trailer parks. Now the term refers to coffins; some are even triple-wide. The London Daily Mail reports that pallbearers in the United Kingdom sometimes must sign a disclaimer in case of injury now that coffins are so wide and heavy that trucks must occasionally replace the hearse.
It's time to examine the cost of obesity. In the end, we're all paying for it.
Philip J. Goscienski, M.D. is the author of Health Secrets of the Stone Age, Better Life Publishers 2005. Contact him at drphil@stoneagedoc.com.