Mark Martin of CBN News reports on how your weight may be affecting your health and your wealth.

Eric Finkelstien of RTI International discusses his latest study on the real cost of obese population on the government.

The economy is hurting, can we get our money back from France?

The Louisiana purchase negatively effects our economy in a very bad way, and we probably send more there in welfare and social programs than those states earn in Gross Domestic Product.

If we really need to we can turn elsewhere to find states to raise our obesity, crime, and poverty rates.

Both are, for the most part choices. Both cost the community money — the obese person puts stress on the health care system and the financially irresponsible person is at risk for bankruptcy and having to rely on public assistance in their old age.

We mock fat people. Shouldn’t we mock financially irresponsible people too?

Or maybe no one should mock anyone. There’s a thought.
thanks for the link, but I’m 100% debt free.

The excuses are widespread…I don’t have time to eat right, Eating right costs too much, I have a slow metabolism…it never ends. Your body and health are the single most important aspects of your life, why do so many refuse to take care of themselves? Overweightness, obesity, alcoholism, smoking, drug abuse…it just amazes me. I’ve seen people take better care of their cars than they do their own health. I’ve seen people invest more money in their XBox’s, cell phones, spinner rims for their cars and computer stuff than they will invest in their own bodies. It really saddens me. I have a neighbor who must weigh in at 400 or so pounds AND she smokes too. Why would you do that to your body?

I just notice this looking through Yahoo answers that this issue comes up a lot.

Why does other people’s weight make some people so mad? Why do people feel so strongly about this issue? Yes, there’s a cost to society as far as cost of medical care, but many things cost taxpayers MUCH more money. So why does it seem like so many more people are ticked off about how much pizza Joe Schmoe eats as compared to something like, say, the war in Iraq or runaway porkbarrel spending?

Anybody with a strong feeling on this issue care to weigh in? Please for the sake of us all have something intelligent to say.

I have a daughter who is almost two years old. She is supposed to be off formula when she turned one, but my mother in-law insists that she stays on formula. I had her go to my daughter’s check up with me, and the doctor told her that she no longer needs formula, that whole milk is just fine.

My mother in-law said that she fed her son formula in the Philippines until he was twelve years old, but it turns out that it wasn’t baby formula but powdered milk. I explained to her the difference, but it’s not sinking in. My husband is a veteran, and his mom handles his benefits. So she uses his money to buy formula (which is very expensive) instead of just getting powdered milk.

I just don’t know what to do anymore. I kind of lied (not sure if this is true or not) and I told her that the formula has extra calories and my daughter will become obese if she drinks it every day. I got in depth and said she can get extra calories from eating regular food. My mother in-law got mad and said I shouldn’t be counting my daughter’s calories and I better not be starving her just so she can be thin. I just lost it. I guess because she’s foreign, she doesn’t understand English very well, I don’t know.

She also wants us to wash our daughter’s "tang tang" (genitals) in the bath each time I change her diaper instead of using wipes. She thinks she should still use a bottle.

She doesn’t live with us (THANK GOD) but visiting her is difficult. I am having a hard time weaning my daughter off the bottle (did I mention she’s a toddler?) and I almost had to get rid of my cats because she thinks they have diseases and will make my daughter sick. My husband says to just ignore her, but even still she is controlling our lives. She loves her granddaughter so much, but the way she does things is so different. The last time she visited us she searched the cabinets for the formula and got angry when we didn’t have any. There is no possible way to tell her to not visit unexpectedly, or let us do things our way. If the doctor can’t convince her, and her son can’t explain to her how we do things, what am I going to do? I dread talking to her.

Putting powdered milk in the formula can sounds like a very clever idea. I just might resort to that!
I breastfed for four or five months, but my mother in-law said that my daughter was crying (colic) because she wasn’t getting enough milk, so that’s when the formula was introduced. After giving her formula, I produced less milk and I eventually died up. Those days were the worst, I cried every day.

Simply telling her to F off and let me do what I want isn’t enough. I asked my husband to talk to her in their language, but I really don’t know what he’s telling her. For all I know he’s wimping out and is just as scared of his mother as I am.

I got rid of the bottles months ago, but she keeps buying more bottles, and even if I don’t use them at home, she uses them at her house.

The reason why she handles his money is because I can’t. He can easily get the money from me, and he just isn’t competent to handle it himself. I don’t want to argue with him over money. We did have problems before with her not paying the bills on time but that’s a different issue.

If people have to choose between heat and food this coming winter, they will have to heat their homes and wont have money left over for food. Is this a government way to solve obesity by making them spend money on other things they need to live?.

I've recently come into a good deal of money and wanted to donate a portion of it into the following categories, as I find them to be very important:
1) Childhood Obesity
2) Breast Cancer
3) Heart Disease
4) Rain Forest

If anyone can supply information for these categories, I'd be very grateful. I have already checked out a few places, but I want to see if I missed anything. Thank you.