Via Patrick Appel, a new study out of John Hopkins suggests that, based on current trends. 9 out of 20 Americans will be "overweight" or "obese" in 2030. In other words, it's going to look sort of like Wall-E, but without the Star Trek fashion. Meanwhile, as a result of our added bulk, health spending will shoot up by $956.9 billion. Also, “Due to the assumptions we made and the limitations of the available data, these figures are likely an underestimation of the true financial impact.” I know the snap response to this will be to say that the BMI index for "overweight" is crude, and often meaningless. Which may be true. But what the numbers capture in the aggregate is a massive waistline expansion in society with almost incomprehensibly large associated spending -- and, let's not forget, actual ill health and pain and immobility and early death. And universal health insurance won't stop it. It's not likely that simple educational initiatives will change the trends, either. But if we stopped subsidizing corn (and thus, high fructose corn syrup), sugar, meat, soybeans, and related foods, and put that money instead towards subsidizing fruits and vegetables, towards increasing the accessibility of healthful food, towards making cities more walkable, towards putting calorie information on menus, you could probably make a dent.
