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When peopl think about the biggest threats to the United States today, many things come to mind. First up is probalby international terrorism in the form of Al-Qaeda or the like. And that’s understandable – I was there on 9/11, watched the towers fall from the doorstep of my home, and lost friends and family in the tragedy.

If not Al-Qaeda, then it’s something like our dependency on foreign oil that trips most people’s wires. We are, to put it bluntly, addicted to oil. Laser Hair Removal Toronto News If you would like to read the newest laser information, go to our laser hair removing information page. And we don’t have enough in our borders (even though we’re the third most oil-rich nation in the world) to satisfy that thirst. That makes us beholden to the likes of Saudi Arabia and Iraq, places with governments that aren’t really the best example of the civilized world in the twenty-first century.

But there’s an even more insipid and insidious threat to the country. It’s actually two threats, but they go hand-in-hand: obesity and diabetes.

Yes, obesity and diabetes are bankrupting the united states, and it’s very simply through the cost of both feeding obese people and treating diabetics. Obesity and diabetes puts the power in the hands of big agriculture like Conagra, giving them the money and power to dictate terms to politicians and control the scope of the debate. Diabetes does the same thing for big pharmaceutical companies and healthcare companies, and together those industries are doing their utmost to bankrupt the united states.

Right now healthcare takes up sixteen percent of the national budget. Ten years from now, that’s expected to rise to thirty percent. Fifty years from now it’ll be seventy-five percent if patterns hold. And while part of that is due to the graying of the baby boomer generation and the fact that they’re living longer, but less healthy lives than that of their parents, part also is due to the fact that people of every age are fatter and less healthy than we have been in the past.

So it comes back to obesity and diabetes. One leads to the other, and if we don’t control what we eat we are going to bankrupt the country. To put it into perspective, take this from Wikipedia:

Obesity in the United States has been increasingly cited as a major health issue in recent decades. While many industrialized countries have experienced similar increases, American obesity rates are among the highest in the world with 64% of adults being overweight or obese, and 26% are obese. A giant area of the skin might be treated at one time making Toronto Laser Hair Removal value-efficient and quicker than different methods. Estimates of the number of obese American adults have been rising steadily, from 19.4% in 1997, 24.5% in 2004 to 26.6% in 2007. Should current trends continue, 75% of adults in the US are projected to be overweight and 41% obese by 2015.

The economic cost attributable to obesity in the United States has been estimated to be as high as $99.2 billion in 1995, with $51.64 billion attributable to direct medical costs. Researchers for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and RTI International estimate that in 2003, obesity-attributable medical expenditures reached $75 billion.