In this the last episode of The Skinny on Obesity, Robert Lustig looks at the societal costs of obesity, including:
- inconvenience
- discomfort
- death
- $65 Billion dollars in reduction of productivity
- 50% increase in absenteeism
- $147 billion dollars a year in medical costs due to metabolic syndrome
He seems to be getting at the fact that you can’t claim one person’s obesity doesn’t affect the life of the other people in society. Lustig posits that to address the problem, you need policy changes at the state level equivalent to fluoridation of water, tobacco regulation, etc…
