One More Reason to Be Fit: It’s Cheaper

There are, according to the New York Times, two reasons fat people are likely to have less money than thin people. One it that fat people spend more for health care–tens of thousands of dollars over the course of a lifetime. And the other is that fat people are often paid less than thin people. Drilling down to the true costs of an unhealthy meal, the piece reports on two nutritional scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
that attempted to determine what “supersizing” a fast-food meal costs
society. The research determined that paying 67 cents to supersize an order — 73 percent more
calories for 17 percent more money — adds an average of 36 grams of
adipose tissue. The future medical costs for that bargain, the researchers, claim, would be
$6.64 for an obese man and $3.46 for an obese woman.