Obesity is now a disease in the US

Last week, the American Medical Association voted to classify obesity as a disease. But is being fat the same thing as being sick?

The decision came at the annual meeting of the American Medical Association (AMA).

Though a committee of experts recommended against classifying obesity as a disease, the association's delegates voted to approve the change.

And at a stroke, a third of the US population became diseased.

To answer the question being fat is not even close to the same thing as being sick and obesity certainly shouldn’t be classified as a disease, but I can see the why the AMA chose this option.

Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last 10 years, you’ll all be aware that there is an obesity crisis with doctors, nutritionists etc. expressing their concerns, numerous times, at people’s ever increasing waistbands.

However, no matter what they seem to say and no matter what evidence they present of the dangers that being obese poses to your health, the number of people classified as obese has continued to rise.

So maybe this announcement is just a change of tactic, making someone diseased brings with it a certain stigma and maybe the AMA are hoping that this will have an effect and finally convince people to drop a few pounds.

Or like all the other things they’ve tried maybe it won’t work and things will continue as they are until America buckles under the weight of its citizens and sinks.   

That would make for a great apocalyptic disaster movie starring Tom Cruise or Will Smith travelling across America rounding up the diseased fat people, transporting them to some shady government facility where the excess gloop from the fat people is used to power the world and at the same time stopping America sinking obviously.