This goes way beyond a “duh” factor — it’s a message that needs to be broadcast far and wide. I’ve been thinking about this for the past two days (and I hadn’t even seen this post!)

I think that we need to talk with Obama’s people and let them know he needs to be mindful of the “fat vote.”

I, for one, would love to see more preventative care covered in health insurance. It’s always irked me that that wasn’t the case.

Apparently bill 282 was introduced in the Mississippi legislature preventing restaurants to serve food to any person who is obese.

The thing is, both of them are hanging a lot of their health care savings on preventive care, and probably neither of them has a complete idea of what that will entail. So they’re relying on people telling them “oh, we save x money when we make someone lose weight!” That’s going to be a problem if we end up with a health plan that defines preventive care as including weight loss, which is a possibility though I doubt anything too prescriptive would go through. It won’t be a problem if “losing weight so you don’t have an amputation” is just being used as a metonymy for “funding preventive care so people’s care isn’t always catastrophic.” But they’re both on board that boat either way.

Meh. I don’t read it that way . To me it sounds like he wants to “fix” fat people (which is so easy) to prevent us all from clogging up the health care system with Teh Diabetes.

What Obama said was not “we will send all fat people to dietitians,” but “We are actually paying for a dietician for people to lose weight, as opposed to paying for the $30,000 foot amputation.” That’s an incredible simplification of the link between weight loss and diabetes, but the idea — that nutritional counseling can help people avoid complications of diabetes down the road, and that preventive care is a worthwhile use of health funding — seems pretty sound.

http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2008/01/no-fat-people-allowed-only-slim-will-be.html

Also, I agree with you Hannah. I was SO disappointed in Queen Latifah being in a Jenny Craig ad. :( It often seems like all of the beautiful “big” celebrities are shrinking away… or at least, trying to. And the weight loss companies LOVE it. What better than a STAR advertising for them. I mean, it works for L’Oreal, right?