Genetic food doesn't help either.  If the food isn't good for
germs or insects, it's not good for you.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Healthday/story?id=8184975&page=1

MONDAY, July 27 (HealthDay News) -- Obesity in the United States
now carries the hefty price tag of $147 billion per year in
direct medical costs, just over 9 percent of all medical
spending, experts report.

In fact, people who are obese spend almost $1,500 more each year
on health care -- about 41 percent more than an average-weight
person. Beyond those costs are the disability and early deaths
caused by obesity, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the U.S.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said during a press
conference Monday.

"Obesity, and with it diabetes, are the only major health
problems that are getting worse in this country, and they are
getting worse rapidly," Frieden said. "The average American is
now 23 pounds overweight."

Frieden's comments were made at the CDC's "Weight of the Nation"
conference, held this week in Washington, D.C.

Between 1998 and and 2006, obesity rates in the United States
increased 37 percent and now one in three adults in the country
are obese. Experts have long known the toll overweight takes on
health, but the new report, published in the July 27 online
edition of Health Affairs, outlines the financial cost of
obesity.

"A normal-weight individual will spend about $3,400 per year in
medical expenditures and that number rises to about $4,870 if
that individual is obese," study author Eric Finkelstein,
director, RTI Public Health Economics Program in Research
Triangle Park, N.C., said during the press conference.

For people on Medicare, average expenses for a normal-weight
person average about $4,700 a year, while costs for an obese
person range about $6,400 annually, Finkelstein said.

The biggest driver of these excess costs are prescription drugs,
Finkelstein said. Among the normal-weight population,
prescription drug costs average about $700 a year, but among
those who are obese the cost rises to about $1,300 a year, an 80
percent increase, he said

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