https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/15/investing/24-hour-fitness-bankruptcy/index.html

This affected me for sure since this was the gym I was a member of and saw like 10 locations close in Las Vegas. Now, this is obviously because the virus, but it got me thinking about something I remember discussing here years ago and that would be possible public benefits for maintaining good health. I didn't read much about the virus but I feel like I heard that obesity was one of the key factors in making the virus dangerous to an individual. Removing the virus from the discussion entirely I feel like I've heard that obesity and complications resulting from it put an enormous burden on our public health system. This obviously makes a ton of sense and makes me ask; "what's the solution?"

Working in the food industry I've noticed an awareness of this fact and a precedent seems to have been set on putting a value on public health regarding obesity. For example, recently in Nevada restaurants were made required to display the calorie count on items on their menu. This implies that we (meaning society) "cares" about nutrition and are making an attempt to curb obesity by creating a public awareness of what they are consuming. This seems interesting to me because calories don't tell the entire story about what's in a thing and points out a shortfall in terms of nutritional education in the nation.

As a fatty myself ultimately I have nobody to blame for being obese during my youth and 20's than myself. But I feel like if it had been a major point of emphasis during K-12 to not just restrict damaging items that I would be able to consume and indeed really only had the option to consume most times but also be educated on why those things are bad and what to try and consume instead.

There is an obvious contention between this line of thinking and corporate interest, but fuck them to be honest.

Anyways, the idea I mentioned at the top was the idea of creating a financial incentive or individuals to maintain quality health that puts them at less risk for things like COVID-19 and a number of other afflictions that create a burden on public health. For example, perhaps people could receive some sort of tax relief of financial assistance towards buying food if they somehow prove they are attempting to fight obesity. I don't know how this would work, maybe a system where you log workouts/gym visits or some shit kind of like providing a list to unemployment showing you've been looking to work or a weigh in or something.

I'm sure this isn't something viable or anything but the question of where the consciousness and action regarding public health ends is to me interesting. Should it take the leap from awareness like we're seeing with calorie information/cigarette warnings to more pro-active policy?

If you want an active adult population, the best way to do this would be to make kids active and have better education and practices of feeding kids at schools and at home.

Maybe have physical fitness/PE be a required course that every single kid takes throughout the entire year and every year. At my high school, it was only required to take gym/PE once I think or maybe twice. Have school lunches be less in calories potentially and just make physical fitness on the same importance of Language/Math/Science/History.

How does a gym go bankrupt?
Here they are subscription based.

Being a whale is the largest risk for COVID morbidity.

We should honestly abandon all corn/corn syrup subsidies and put a tax on high carb foods. You see people on welfare buying big cases of pepsi its braindead.

Poor people still smoke cigarettes even though it taxed out the max.

Policies like these will just make poor people poorer and still fat fucks.

I think you just have to accept the adults are too far gone and instead focus on mending behavior in children and early intervention, similar to how also true for education, the earlier you instill good habits/discipline, the better the outcome later on.

To some degree, heirarchy is natural among civilization, some people will smoke and be dumb. However if you want to minimize the disparity in weath you have to get rid of welfare - but the stupid liberals dont want to do that because herba derba racism.

They dont need education, they need fathers, just get rid of welfare and alimony.

I hate to say it, but 90% of the problem is computers and huge TVs with a bazillion channels.

It's just little things. We don't have to run to the mailbox as much, we have vacuum cleaners that do the work for us. We have cars now that no one can work on in the driveway, and we don't even have to turn around to back up these days.
Snow blowers instead of shovels, riding mowers, nail guns instead of hammers, chain saws instead of axes.

How many people have things like climbing bars in the back yard? No one really rides bicycles anymore. These days, the amount of kids outside playing non-organized sports is like 10% of what it used to be 50 years ago.
Remote controls for everything, kids not climbing trees, people not walking their pets, or running with them.

Now a days, there's no kids out in the back yard with a round-ish rock seeing how far they can shot put it. These days the childish competition is a video game or eating tide pods. Hell, I can't even remember the last time I saw kids playing tag.
We don't go out back and chop wood, we order cords of wood.

Fast food is doing it too. Not just because the food is junk, but because it's so easy to acquire. People used to BBQ every weekend (lot of running back and forth to pull off a BBQ). People used to walk a lot more than they do now. Hell you don't even have to "drive" to get fast food... you can call on the phone and they'll bring it to you.

A lot of things are improving, but at the same time, we're losing a lot.



/e When was the last time anyone painted their own house? It took a bit of strength and balance and coordination to carry 6 paper bags full of groceries. Now we have plastic bags with handles, so carrying 8 full bags is easy.
How bout things like Christmas shopping, the old way. Heavy coats, boots, tons of packages, etc. Now two seconds on Amazon, and it's all done, and gift wrapped too.

When was the last time anyone was in a decent 20 person snow ball fight, or water balloon fight, or even tomatoes.
How many peeps could open a coconut with their hands and a rock, after climbing up to get the coconut in the 1st place?
How many folks have made ice cream the OLD way, manually? No one even has to run down to the library to look things up anymore.

This post was edited by Ghot on Jun 15 2020 08:02pm

This might be the first post Ghot has ever made where people are going to agree with him.

These policies work. I live in NYS where smokes are 11/pack and our smoking rates have plummeted.

I’m generally against higher taxation but things like high carb drinks and garbage food should be taxed more just like cigarettes. I remember as a kid eating cheese puffs...pure garbage, stuff like that needs to be priced out of existence.

Financial incentives already exist in consumption taxes, which really are just punitive financial measures aimed at curtailing the consumption of low/non-nutritional items. It doesn't really change or address the underlying compulsion to buy/eat those products, and oftentimes people just end up pivoting to something else that's also low/non-nutritional but at a lower price-point.