A Mathematical Challenge to Obesity

For instance, I just tried http://caloriecount.about.com/cc/calories-goal.php (after googling it out of the blue) with starting weights of 300 and 200, ten pounds to lose both ways, everything else the same. The calculator suggested the 200 pound guy needed to eat 500 calories a day fewer than the 300 pound guy did.

Cut food production, food prices rise, people can't eat as much. It's an extreme solution, perhaps, and one with more political obstacles than I care to think about right now, but it seems "addressable" to me. What if we stopped some of the farm subsidies that don't make sense? What if we significantly increased taxes on unhealthy foods, which is probably justified since unhealthy foods probably directly lead to a rise in healthcare costs down the line? (Now I get to sit back and wait for someone to post facts from one or more of the localities that have tried raising taxes on e.g. sugary foods. I love the Internet!)

In other words, suppose the obese guy needs 3500 calories a day to maintain his weight, and the skinny guy needs 2000. Then I guess it might be true that if the obese guy eats 3510 calories a day, he will gain weight faster than the skinny guy eating 2010. That seems counter-intuitive but at least plausible.

  "And it’s something very simple, very obvious, 
  something that few want to hear: The epidemic was 
  caused by the overproduction of food in the United 
  States."

If we take the "overproduction" assertion as fact, this begs the question: Why is this happening?

One answer is that consumers have more money to spend and they are choosing to spend some of it buying (and consuming) more food. Fair enough.

Another answer could be that, in certain segments, government geniuses decided they know better than to let free market work. They go in and throw money around to make producers do what they would not under normal circumstances. That triggers over-production of certain goods. Which triggers lower prices. Which triggers higher consumption. And so on.

Another possible answer is a combination of the above. I am, admittedly, against government meddling in our lives. I want them out of nearly everything. Go throw parties for foreign dignitaries and balance our books. Maybe do a few more things. Oh, yes, those borders. Deal with them will ya? Any time these guys dip their ignorant toes into the water of our lives they invariably create a mess that our children and our children's children will have to pay for.

Of course, this philosophy extends to self-responsibility. In my family we might have a soft drink or two at parties here and there. Just like having ice-cream, in moderation it is an occasional treat. Aside from that, water only. What the hell is wrong with people that go into a gas station and order a 64 ounce soft drink? That's like consuming a cup full of sugar while you drive to work.

This is where another angle in this equation comes into play: A third-payer system of health does not penalize bad behavior. Someone who is a complete moron when it comes to how they take care of their bodies and what they put into it should suffer the financial consequence of having to pay a lot more for healthcare. Today, those of us who try to be sensible are paying for the idiots who are not. That is fundamentally wrong.

If you want a healthy and slim population, again, get government the hell out of the way. Yes, it can be that simple. Don't manipulate markets and don't get involved in healthcare. People should buy and pay for their own health insurance, just like they do car insurance. If you drive like a mad-man and get tickets and accidents your insurance goes up or it could be cancelled. The end result is that people modify their behavior to what is a financially sensible state.

The same would happen with healthcare if people were directly responsible for their own insurance and suffered the consequences of their dumb decisions. Smoke and destroyed your lungs? Your insurance should cost you $50K per year. Enjoy. Drink alcohol like an animal and turned your liver into mush? $75K a year. Have fun. The rest of us would have sensible policies which would reward us for being responsible while covering us in the case of catastrophic events or serious illness outside of our control.

To be clear, I don't have a problem contributing to the pot to help out those afflicted with cancer or similar horrible diseases. A portion of everyone's premiums would cover these out-of-the-norm cases. Then there's the case of obesity caused by diseases like Cushings Syndrome (pituitary gland tumor) that's potentially deadly and has nothing to do with over-eating. We need to collectively help those people. Nothing wrong with that.

I do have a problem supporting the moron who has a Double Big-Gulp every day chased by a large pizza and no exercise other than playing XBox for hours every day.

That said, the app for the model looks interesting. I had my basal metabolic rate measured last year before I started a Master's Swimming program. I like numbers and wanted to have some data. It was 1850 kcal/day. According to the Human Weight Simulator I have to consume 2576 kcal/day to maintain my weight. That, for some reason, feels way too high. I haven't counted calories in a long time, but might do it for a few weeks just to get a sense of what this model is doing. I doubt that I am consuming much more than 1700 kcal/day on average. But, I could be wrong.

I'd be nice if they released a paper with this equation the article mentions. Is that published anywhere?