6 ms·

The new idea (mostly in the West) that being obese is/can be a healthy lifestyle is absolutely maddening. People being obese (and I don't mean a few pounds over

The new idea (mostly in the West) that being obese is/can be a healthy lifestyle is absolutely maddening. People being obese (and I don't mean a few pounds overweight) raises everyone's healthcare cost, because it is incredibly unhealthy and obese people tend to have more complications which requires more treatment, workers and subsidizing. It's not just an individual problem, it's a societal problem. There's a new "Gatorade Fit" commercial with, easily, a 300lb woman in it...the brand is literally "Fit," being 300lbs is not fit in any way shape or form. Why is this happening? Even when/if I'm 10-20lbs overweight, I don't want someone patting me on the back saying I'm actually "fit" or anything close to it. It's such a weird lie that makes it feel like I'm living in a bizzarro world.

oneoff786 4y ago
Is the woman being shown as fit? Or as someone who would like the product with a goal to become more fit?
- notinfuriated 4y ago
  She is wearing fitness clothing and doing what appears to be yoga. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPgOCWbqjgo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPgOCWbqjgo Advertisements used to be aspirational. They either still are and people's aspirations have changed, or they are not and there's some other more current explanation for why this ad and others act as a mirror showing a person who they already are (fat) rather than who they aspire to be (not fat). Said another way, there's nothing explicitly stating that the woman has a goal of becoming thinner. She is shown as well as two other thinner people. They're all doing their own form of exercising while clothed in activewear. The implication could be that the fat woman's goal is to become less fat or that she is comfortable as she is and fits in as part of Team Gatorade™. I suspect the message they're trying to convey is the latter.
  - deanCommie 4y ago
    > there's nothing explicitly stating Are the fitness goals of the other 2 actors explicitly stated? Should fitness products only advertise with actors who are ALREADY fit and maintaining that fitness? What exactly are you expecting? How exactly do you want fat people to be portrayed in advertisements for fitness that allows them to attempt to get fit?
    - notinfuriated 4y ago
      > Are the fitness goals of the other 2 actors explicitly stated? No. Reread my comment. I said nothing about how I expect fat people to be portrayed or what is right or wrong about this ad. The one thing I suggested is that I believe Gatorade is attempting to create an ad that is welcoming toward fat people regardless of their goals. At least, that is my interpretation given in the current year. Further evidence of my interpretation is that fat people were not shown in Gatorade ads several decades ago, e.g.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6xcLDKCzh4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6xcLDKCzh4 Comparing the ad from the 90s to now shows that the older ad was aspirational. I'm sorry if that makes you upset, I did not create the Gatorade ad. I only interpreted it.
    - throwaway1851 4y ago
      I think what’s strange about this ad is the fact that she’s doing a handstand. That isn’t a normal part of getting fit for most people, and it isn’t even safe to attempt by most people in the model’s weight range. Had they shown her using a stationary bike or taking a brisk walk in a park, it wouldn’t be controversial.
- hbn 4y ago
  Here's Adidas promoting a fat woman as an athlete https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6keCE3ab14s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6keCE3ab14s
hirundo 4y ago
Telling people what they want to hear is not a novel way to collect cash or votes. It would be bizzarro if there were people who wanted to hear it but nobody willing to tell it to them.
LarryMullins 4y ago
> "Gatorade Fit" 1 gram of sugar per half liter https://www.gatorade.com/fuel/hydration/gatorade-fit/16-ounce-bottle/tropical-mango https://www.gatorade.com/fuel/hydration/gatorade-fit/16-ounc... At least it's almost sugar free, relative to normal gatorade anyway. I think advertising regular sugary gatorade to fat people as a fitness product would be tantamount to stochastic murder.
HDThoreaun 4y ago
Japan taxes obesity through a payroll tax, which to my understanding is especially effective because of the peer pressure exerted by your colleagues and even manager. Being fat is seen as letting the team down since you're causing their costs to go up, not just your own.
luckylion 4y ago
> raises everyone's healthcare cost, because it is incredibly unhealthy and obese people tend to have more complications which requires more treatment, workers and subsidizing. Is that actually true? From what I understand, obesity will cost you dearly in life expectancy, and most of the cost comes in the last few years of normal life expectancy. Someone who dies of heart attack at 63 isn't going to run up huge bills from age 77 to 85. I believe there was a similar calculation for smokers. The health cost in higher cancer rates are outweighed in what you save on costly treatment for the elderly + fewer pension payments.
- partiallypro 4y ago
  Yes, smoking isn't the same at all. People that are extremely obese require bigger hospital beds, more equipment, more drugs, more operations, etc. That's not even remotely comparable to smoking in terms of costs on the system. There also aren't a lot of smokers anymore, at least not in the US, obesity is a revolving door that is constantly taxing the system. Even during COVID obese people were the ones taxing the system, not people of normal/healthier weights. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33470881/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33470881/ "Adults with obesity in the United States compared with those with normal weight experienced higher annual medical care costs by $2,505 or 100%, with costs increasing significantly with class of obesity, from 68.4% for class 1 to 233.6% for class 3. The effects of obesity raised costs in every category of care: inpatient, outpatient, and prescription drugs. Increases in medical expenditures due to obesity were higher for adults covered by public health insurance programs ($2,868) than for those having private health insurance ($2,058). In 2016, the aggregate medical cost due to obesity among adults in the United States was $260.6 billion. The increase in individual-level expenditures due to obesity varied considerably by state (e.g., 24.0% in Florida, 66.4% in New York, and 104.9% in Texas)."
  - luckylion 4y ago
    My point was that these people tend to live a full decade less, and they're missing out the decade when health care cost rise to $11k/yr (65+, also when Medicaid kicks in as far as I understand). Only looking at the obesity-related health-care cost without looking at the earlier-death-related savings doesn't get you a clear picture. All obese people becoming healthier might actually cost the health-care system more. I understand that's not a comfortable way to think about it for some people, but I do believe it's useful to consider. Here's a study on lifetime costs for smokers vs nonsmokers: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejm199710093371506 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejm199710093371506 In Germany, healthcare spending for women is about 20% larger per person which is primarily explained by the 5 years additional life expectancy. You'll see that it's not obvious that an obese person dying 10 years earlier will necessarily have the same life time cost because their life is much shorter, and cost rises rapidly when you're past retirement age.
lazide 4y ago
Overton window, and people giving up is why it’s happening. And yeah, we’re all living in bizarro world.
Frost1x 4y ago
>The new idea (mostly in the West) that being obese is/can be a healthy lifestyle is absolutely maddening. We took the extreme of anorexia being healthy to obesity being healthy. The fact is neither extreme is healthy. Being not anorexic is not the same as being obese, there's a huge range of fairly healthy weights in between the two in terms of body fat percentages and muscle ratios.
- verdenti 4y ago
  [dead]
Rebelgecko 4y ago
Has the health care cost been studied? I wouldn't be surprised if morbidly obese people are cheaper in the long run due to a reduced lifespan (kinda like how smokers can be cheaper than nonsmokers-they may cost more to ensure before retirement age, but it more than evens out when you looked at reduced years after that point)
- partiallypro 4y ago
  Yes, it has been studied countless times. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33470881/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33470881/ "Adults with obesity in the United States compared with those with normal weight experienced higher annual medical care costs by $2,505 or 100%, with costs increasing significantly with class of obesity, from 68.4% for class 1 to 233.6% for class 3. The effects of obesity raised costs in every category of care: inpatient, outpatient, and prescription drugs. Increases in medical expenditures due to obesity were higher for adults covered by public health insurance programs ($2,868) than for those having private health insurance ($2,058)."
  - Rebelgecko 4y ago
    I don't think that study (coincidentally from the maker's of semaglutide!) is answering quite the same question I'm asking, since it only looked at people aged 20-65 that were still alive without considering the difference in average lifespan. If an obese person's healthcare costs an extra $2,000 annually for each of the age years covered in the study, that's $90,000 over their lifetime (ignoring inflation/time value of money to keep the numbers simple). But older people tend to have disproportionately higher healthcare costs. To be kinda crass: If hypothetically obese people die at the age of 70 instead of 75, those 5 years of health care they don't need might have cost more than $90,000. Just a few ER or ICU visits can exceed that $90,000 amount, and the gap gets even starker if you take into account things like long term care and assisted living. Another way to look at it, even staying within the 20-65 age group, is as a form of survivorship bias (or maybe there's a better term? Seems kinda bayesian but my stats days are well behind me) For an extreme example, pretend that some adults take up the hobby of BASE jumping, and I have a study showing that their healthcare costs $10,000 per year, vs only $5,000/yr for non-base jumpers. A non-basejumping adult only needs $225k of healthcare before they become a senior citizen, but a basejumper needs $450k! So basejumping increases overall costs in the healthcare system, right? But wait! BASE jumping is a dangerous activity (hence the medical bills), and many BASE jumpers die young. Let's say that every year 5% of BASE jumpers have fatal accidents, which means that the average base jumper dies around the age of 33. A BASE jumper who only needs medical care for 13 years doesn't cost the full $450k, they would only use $130k of healthcare. Which actually makes their lifetime medical bills much cheaper than that of a non-jumper!
yowlingcat 4y ago
In a way, maybe Gatorade is trying to be honest about lying. After all, a 20 oz bottle of Gatorade has 36 grams of sugar in it and would substantially contribute to type 2 diabetes. It would behoove them to fund a narrative that the product and the outcome associated with the product are indeed "fit" to maximize sales. Of course, the wrinkle with approach is that that as you mention, the reality is that nothing could be furthest from the truth. Obesity is fastest growing and most deadly American chronic condition. The outsized impact of type 2 diabetes on payer spend, both medical and pharmacy, cannot be overstated. And when you put that all together, it makes a commercial like the one you mentioned seem banal and sinister at the same time.
paulpauper 4y ago
The new idea (mostly in the West) that being obese is/can be a healthy lifestyle is absolutely maddening. People being obese (and I don't mean a few pounds overweight) raises everyone's healthcare cost, because it is incredibly unhealthy and obese people tend to have more complications which requires more treatment, workers and subsidizing. It does make sense and strikes me as irrational to celebrate something which is clearly harmful to society

oneoff786 4y ago

Is the woman being shown as fit? Or as someone who would like the product with a goal to become more fit?

notinfuriated 4y ago
She is wearing fitness clothing and doing what appears to be yoga. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPgOCWbqjgo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPgOCWbqjgo Advertisements used to be aspirational. They either still are and people's aspirations have changed, or they are not and there's some other more current explanation for why this ad and others act as a mirror showing a person who they already are (fat) rather than who they aspire to be (not fat). Said another way, there's nothing explicitly stating that the woman has a goal of becoming thinner. She is shown as well as two other thinner people. They're all doing their own form of exercising while clothed in activewear. The implication could be that the fat woman's goal is to become less fat or that she is comfortable as she is and fits in as part of Team Gatorade™. I suspect the message they're trying to convey is the latter.
- deanCommie 4y ago
  > there's nothing explicitly stating Are the fitness goals of the other 2 actors explicitly stated? Should fitness products only advertise with actors who are ALREADY fit and maintaining that fitness? What exactly are you expecting? How exactly do you want fat people to be portrayed in advertisements for fitness that allows them to attempt to get fit?
  - notinfuriated 4y ago
    > Are the fitness goals of the other 2 actors explicitly stated? No. Reread my comment. I said nothing about how I expect fat people to be portrayed or what is right or wrong about this ad. The one thing I suggested is that I believe Gatorade is attempting to create an ad that is welcoming toward fat people regardless of their goals. At least, that is my interpretation given in the current year. Further evidence of my interpretation is that fat people were not shown in Gatorade ads several decades ago, e.g.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6xcLDKCzh4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6xcLDKCzh4 Comparing the ad from the 90s to now shows that the older ad was aspirational. I'm sorry if that makes you upset, I did not create the Gatorade ad. I only interpreted it.
  - throwaway1851 4y ago
    I think what’s strange about this ad is the fact that she’s doing a handstand. That isn’t a normal part of getting fit for most people, and it isn’t even safe to attempt by most people in the model’s weight range. Had they shown her using a stationary bike or taking a brisk walk in a park, it wouldn’t be controversial.
hbn 4y ago
Here's Adidas promoting a fat woman as an athlete https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6keCE3ab14s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6keCE3ab14s

hirundo 4y ago

Telling people what they want to hear is not a novel way to collect cash or votes. It would be bizzarro if there were people who wanted to hear it but nobody willing to tell it to them.

LarryMullins 4y ago

> "Gatorade Fit" 1 gram of sugar per half liter https://www.gatorade.com/fuel/hydration/gatorade-fit/16-ounce-bottle/tropical-mango https://www.gatorade.com/fuel/hydration/gatorade-fit/16-ounc... At least it's almost sugar free, relative to normal gatorade anyway. I think advertising regular sugary gatorade to fat people as a fitness product would be tantamount to stochastic murder.

HDThoreaun 4y ago

Japan taxes obesity through a payroll tax, which to my understanding is especially effective because of the peer pressure exerted by your colleagues and even manager. Being fat is seen as letting the team down since you're causing their costs to go up, not just your own.

luckylion 4y ago

> raises everyone's healthcare cost, because it is incredibly unhealthy and obese people tend to have more complications which requires more treatment, workers and subsidizing. Is that actually true? From what I understand, obesity will cost you dearly in life expectancy, and most of the cost comes in the last few years of normal life expectancy. Someone who dies of heart attack at 63 isn't going to run up huge bills from age 77 to 85. I believe there was a similar calculation for smokers. The health cost in higher cancer rates are outweighed in what you save on costly treatment for the elderly + fewer pension payments.

partiallypro 4y ago
Yes, smoking isn't the same at all. People that are extremely obese require bigger hospital beds, more equipment, more drugs, more operations, etc. That's not even remotely comparable to smoking in terms of costs on the system. There also aren't a lot of smokers anymore, at least not in the US, obesity is a revolving door that is constantly taxing the system. Even during COVID obese people were the ones taxing the system, not people of normal/healthier weights. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33470881/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33470881/ "Adults with obesity in the United States compared with those with normal weight experienced higher annual medical care costs by $2,505 or 100%, with costs increasing significantly with class of obesity, from 68.4% for class 1 to 233.6% for class 3. The effects of obesity raised costs in every category of care: inpatient, outpatient, and prescription drugs. Increases in medical expenditures due to obesity were higher for adults covered by public health insurance programs ($2,868) than for those having private health insurance ($2,058). In 2016, the aggregate medical cost due to obesity among adults in the United States was $260.6 billion. The increase in individual-level expenditures due to obesity varied considerably by state (e.g., 24.0% in Florida, 66.4% in New York, and 104.9% in Texas)."
- luckylion 4y ago
  My point was that these people tend to live a full decade less, and they're missing out the decade when health care cost rise to $11k/yr (65+, also when Medicaid kicks in as far as I understand). Only looking at the obesity-related health-care cost without looking at the earlier-death-related savings doesn't get you a clear picture. All obese people becoming healthier might actually cost the health-care system more. I understand that's not a comfortable way to think about it for some people, but I do believe it's useful to consider. Here's a study on lifetime costs for smokers vs nonsmokers: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejm199710093371506 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejm199710093371506 In Germany, healthcare spending for women is about 20% larger per person which is primarily explained by the 5 years additional life expectancy. You'll see that it's not obvious that an obese person dying 10 years earlier will necessarily have the same life time cost because their life is much shorter, and cost rises rapidly when you're past retirement age.

lazide 4y ago

Overton window, and people giving up is why it’s happening. And yeah, we’re all living in bizarro world.

Frost1x 4y ago

>The new idea (mostly in the West) that being obese is/can be a healthy lifestyle is absolutely maddening. We took the extreme of anorexia being healthy to obesity being healthy. The fact is neither extreme is healthy. Being not anorexic is not the same as being obese, there's a huge range of fairly healthy weights in between the two in terms of body fat percentages and muscle ratios.

verdenti 4y ago
[dead]

Rebelgecko 4y ago

Has the health care cost been studied? I wouldn't be surprised if morbidly obese people are cheaper in the long run due to a reduced lifespan (kinda like how smokers can be cheaper than nonsmokers-they may cost more to ensure before retirement age, but it more than evens out when you looked at reduced years after that point)

partiallypro 4y ago
Yes, it has been studied countless times. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33470881/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33470881/ "Adults with obesity in the United States compared with those with normal weight experienced higher annual medical care costs by $2,505 or 100%, with costs increasing significantly with class of obesity, from 68.4% for class 1 to 233.6% for class 3. The effects of obesity raised costs in every category of care: inpatient, outpatient, and prescription drugs. Increases in medical expenditures due to obesity were higher for adults covered by public health insurance programs ($2,868) than for those having private health insurance ($2,058)."
- Rebelgecko 4y ago
  I don't think that study (coincidentally from the maker's of semaglutide!) is answering quite the same question I'm asking, since it only looked at people aged 20-65 that were still alive without considering the difference in average lifespan. If an obese person's healthcare costs an extra $2,000 annually for each of the age years covered in the study, that's $90,000 over their lifetime (ignoring inflation/time value of money to keep the numbers simple). But older people tend to have disproportionately higher healthcare costs. To be kinda crass: If hypothetically obese people die at the age of 70 instead of 75, those 5 years of health care they don't need might have cost more than $90,000. Just a few ER or ICU visits can exceed that $90,000 amount, and the gap gets even starker if you take into account things like long term care and assisted living. Another way to look at it, even staying within the 20-65 age group, is as a form of survivorship bias (or maybe there's a better term? Seems kinda bayesian but my stats days are well behind me) For an extreme example, pretend that some adults take up the hobby of BASE jumping, and I have a study showing that their healthcare costs $10,000 per year, vs only $5,000/yr for non-base jumpers. A non-basejumping adult only needs $225k of healthcare before they become a senior citizen, but a basejumper needs $450k! So basejumping increases overall costs in the healthcare system, right? But wait! BASE jumping is a dangerous activity (hence the medical bills), and many BASE jumpers die young. Let's say that every year 5% of BASE jumpers have fatal accidents, which means that the average base jumper dies around the age of 33. A BASE jumper who only needs medical care for 13 years doesn't cost the full $450k, they would only use $130k of healthcare. Which actually makes their lifetime medical bills much cheaper than that of a non-jumper!

yowlingcat 4y ago

In a way, maybe Gatorade is trying to be honest about lying. After all, a 20 oz bottle of Gatorade has 36 grams of sugar in it and would substantially contribute to type 2 diabetes. It would behoove them to fund a narrative that the product and the outcome associated with the product are indeed "fit" to maximize sales. Of course, the wrinkle with approach is that that as you mention, the reality is that nothing could be furthest from the truth. Obesity is fastest growing and most deadly American chronic condition. The outsized impact of type 2 diabetes on payer spend, both medical and pharmacy, cannot be overstated. And when you put that all together, it makes a commercial like the one you mentioned seem banal and sinister at the same time.

paulpauper 4y ago