Rick Reuben wrote:How does one come to acquire such a giant Ty Webbian blindspot?

rick reuben wrote:I do wonder if the profit in treating the conditions brought on by the poor typical american diet has encouraged the medical establishment to be less aggressive than it needs to be when it comes to stressing the links between food and disease

Ty Webb wrote:The military establishment is relatively easy to identify. But the medical establishment? You're talking about a much more vast, complicated, and diverse web of voices, bodies, and histories.

Ty Webb Logic: The conspiracy to maintain the profitability of poor health and disease is harder to blame on a small number of easily-identifiable villains like Raytheon or Halliburton, so therefore, it probably doesn't exist as a factor in terms of policy.

Brilliant.

moneycentral at msn.com, 5-4-08 wrote:What if no one were fat?

Imagine a lean and healthy America: The savings on medical, fuel, food and other costs would be enough to give every U.S. household more than $4,000.

In the United States today, 66% of adults are overweight. Almost 33% of adults are obese, and 4.7% are morbidly obese, or more than 100 pounds overweight. But . . .

What if nobody in America were fat?

We'd save billions of dollars in gas. Airlines would double their profits. A dearth of diabetes and other diseases would save billions of dollars more -- and put thousands of doctors on the street. McDonald's would sell not Big Macs but little steamed chicken snacks -- or watch its profits melt away. Productivity would rise, potentially creating tens of thousands more jobs or higher wages all around.

Add up the savings up on health, food, clothing and efficiencies, and you could buy a professional home gym for every U.S. household -- or hand each $4,270 in cash.

Yes, it sounds a little wild, but the implications of a leaner, meaner country add up to a weighty $487 billion. That's almost 3.5% of gross domestic product, no small sum.

Mind you, only 1.8% of that is new growth. The rest is a radical shift in resources, away from the needs of our bigger citizens to . . . well, whatever we and our overlords would spend these extra billions on.

Even though there's a creepy pro-eugenics/population management theme to that article, it lays out some solid facts about the profitability of unhealthy citizens.

But, as Ty Webb explains, huge corporations would never create their own customers- just like the defense industries never exaggerated the killing power of the RED THREAT for 50 years, or exaggerate the killing power of the MOOOZLUM THREAT now....