Brawndo said:
I don't know how it is the UK and Australia, but in the United States, smokers have developed a pariah-like status over the years. There are all kinds of anti-smoking campaigns, city ordinances not allowing smoking within X number of feet from a building, etc. But at the same time in the US, it is politically incorrect to criticize those who are overweight and obese. Some might argue: "Second hand smoke harms other people, but it's my choice to eat what I want and this doesn't harm other people."
Erm...not really, no. In my experience, it's predominantly dickish people who openly criticize others for smoking on the basis that it might be harmful to the person doing the criticizing/people around them. It's the equivalent of telling someone that if they're going to kill themselves, they sure as hell better do it in their own home instead of jumping in front of a train or something: the only reason anything's even being said is that the person decided that another person's habit was destructive enough to warrant protecting
themselves from, but they couldn't care less about the person doing it.
Brawndo said:
However, it DOES harm other people, just not in the same way as second-hand smoke.
According to a recent study, annual spending on obesity-related diseases is expected to rise by 13-16% in the US by 2030, leading to 2.6% increase in national health spending. Total medical costs associated with treatment of preventable diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, stroke, and coronary heart disease are estimated to increase by $48-66 billion a year.
Whoawhoawhoawhoa.
Hold up there. Diabetes in on that list? I can name three coworkers of mine right off the bat who all have insulin injectors in their pockets. Two of them are fairly thin, and the other is actually really fit. None of them were ever morbidly obese, or even overweight. So why are you including diabetes on a list of "only fat people get these" diseases?
And stroke? Shit, my first
driving instructor once had a stroke. Again, no obesity, and he resumed his life with a speech impediment, but nothing else. How are these diseases that you can attribute entirely to fat people?
Brawndo said:
That means as a fit person, my taxes will be higher and my insurance premiums will go up to fund increased health care costs associated with an increase in obesity. Also, children with fat parents are less likely to have access to healthy foods and are more likely to be overweight themselves. Other people ARE harmed by you being overweight.
So...in other words, you're equating "higher taxes" with "personal harm"? Do you also think that poor people are harming you for receiving welfare?
Brawndo said:
But instead of a nationwide effort to promote healthy eating, there is a culture in the United States of being fat and proud of it. Facebook groups promoting concepts like "big women are beautiful" have millions of followers, and
criticism of fat people is called "hate speech". Clearly some overweight people don't want to feel guilty about their behavior choices, so they try to make others feel guilty or embarrassed for criticizing them.
Except those groups generally aren't for the morbidly obese, ie, the people who have significantly higher health risks than those of closer-to-average weight. They're not about trying to get obesity switched from "health risk" to "thing of beauty." They're women who are above average weight, but by no means are actually morbidly obese. There's a very distinct difference between those two.
Brawndo said:
Let make this perfectly clear: being fat should not be a protected class like race, gender, sexual orientation, or ethnicity. Unlike those categories, being fat is almost always a choice. Only a small percentage of people are overweight because of a legitimate medical condition like hyperthyroidism. And sure, eating disorders with psychological roots exist, but let's be honest: most fat people are fat because of poor food choices and because they lack the willpower and motivation to exercise regularly.
Yes, yes, we know. Fat people are fat because they're lazy pigs, poor people are poor because they're lazy drunks, blah, blah, blah.
Do you have numbers for this? Some means of confirming your blanket statement that "fat people," whatever arbitrary weight classification you've decided that is, are overwhelmingly spineless gluttons?