Mocking obesity comes at a high cost to the economy

Obesity: the joke starts where the economics end

How much does a joke about weight cost? The virality of a video of a woman with obesity has put a price tag on it: that of a cheap laugh. The conversation it has generated is not about healthcare spending, sick leave or the opportunity cost of the disease, but about ridicule. The uncomfortable fact: obesity is not an aesthetic issue, it is a problem of productivity and public finances.

From thyroid to humiliation

Among the reactions to the video there are attempts at explanation — thyroid problems, fluid retention, wide bones — and a majority that goes straight to mockery. Medical diagnosis and insult coexist while nobody cites a single figure on the economic impact of being overweight. That mix is the exact picture of how it is treated in public: with a lightness allowed to no other condition.

The cost nobody wants to see

Obesity is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease, diabetes or joint problems; it is also a cause of absenteeism and lost productivity. The public money spent on treating it comes from everyone's taxes. The next time a joke about weight travels across the internet, it would be worth remembering that humor does not pay bills, but disease does.

Against the hose with which some would like to clean things up, a serious conversation demands something else: data. But the joke, at least, has left one certainty behind. Cruelty does not fatten the analysis; it only thins out credibility.