{"id":1050,"date":"2008-02-06T09:44:13","date_gmt":"2008-02-06T14:44:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/2008\/02\/06\/he-aint-heavy-hes-cheaper\/"},"modified":"2008-02-06T09:44:13","modified_gmt":"2008-02-06T14:44:13","slug":"he-aint-heavy-hes-cheaper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/2008\/02\/06\/he-aint-heavy-hes-cheaper\/","title":{"rendered":"He Ain&#8217;t Heavy, He&#8217;s Cheaper"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Strap on your tinfoil hats and fire up your conspiracy theories because it looks like the &#8220;obesity epidemic&#8221; is actually a government plot to <strong><em>save<\/em><\/strong> money on health care.  <a href=\"http:\/\/news.wired.com\/dynamic\/stories\/O\/OBESITY_COST?SITE=WIRE&amp;SECTION=HOME&amp;TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&amp;CTIME=2008-02-05-02-58-08\">A new study<\/a> finds that contrary to what I, and lots of other people thought; a thin non-smoker actually costs the health care system <strong>more<\/strong> than an obese person, or a smoker.  The main reason is the smokin&#8217; fatties die sooner, of course.  Clean living folks survive long enough to get really expensive diseases it seems, and it&#8217;s dragging down the health care system, dammit.<\/p>\n<p>So comrade, it seems that the socially responsible thing to do would be to turn off that damn treadmill and grab yourself a hoagie.  You are nothing less than an enemy of the state if you don&#8217;t.  Give me a light while you&#8217;re at it.  You are helping your country, if not yourself.  Tomorrow there will be a rally of puffing plump patriots marching (well actually more like a slow saunter) on Parliament Hill holding signs that say <em><strong>something<\/strong><\/em>, if we could only read them through the drifting haze of aerosolized cheese and smoke.  The signs are a little heavy, they must have used real cardboard since most of them can&#8217;t seem to hold them up for very long.  They are chanting too, but it&#8217;s a little breathy and too low to make out what it is.  It&#8217;s a powerful display of sloth and fury.<\/p>\n<p>Join us!  It&#8217;s for the greater good, after all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Strap on your tinfoil hats and fire up your conspiracy theories because it looks like the &#8220;obesity epidemic&#8221; is actually a government plot to save money on health care. A new study finds that contrary to what I, and lots &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/2008\/02\/06\/he-aint-heavy-hes-cheaper\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/piGNU-gW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1050\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}