Fat Tax

apr28-192,apr29-157,apr30-390,may1-290 total 93,959
weight 194.5 bf%20
calories left to burn 55738

A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.Francis Bacon

yesterday MSN had a rather interesting article on the financial cost of obesity in America. I was searching for it today-couldn't find it. The article was talking about the various areas obesity was causing an increase in costs in America. Two areas were related to fuel costs, particularly in the airline industry. Instead of finding the original article I found an interesting globe and mail article. The article states that obesity costs the health care system in Canada about 1.8 billion in direct costs. Below is an excerpt from the Globe article. Essentially related to a ruling that airlines could not charge -essentially a "fat tax"

A ruling made last month by the Canadian Transportation Agency, ordering airlines to provide the same fares to disabled passengers, has elicited much discussion about the implications with respect to the clinically obese. Let's face it — looking at such people is not fun; their oversized bodies betray years of overindulgence and lack of self-control. Obese people are the victims of their own poor lifestyle choices. Society, and certainly the already struggling airline industry, should not be forced to pay for their unchecked gluttony.
If you find yourself agreeing with these assertions, you are likely a member of a not-so-silent majority. You are also a significant part of the problem that obese people face every day.
At the simplest level, obesity is about the balance of caloric intake and expenditure. It is tempting for us to simply conclude that its cause is lack of control, or gluttony. The fact is that such a conviction, while perhaps providing us with some level of self-satisfaction, is quite wrong. We know there are many factors that go well beyond individual levels of self-control. Obesity researcher George Bray said it best when he asserted that "genes load the gun and the environment pulls the trigger."
But even if we assume that at least a substantial part of the obesity epidemic does lie in individual lifestyle choices, this is by no means unique to obesity. The full article is at :
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080206.wcomment0206/BNStory/National/home/