I was perusing the blogiverse this morning to find new and interesting reads and I stumbled upon a blog entitled "The Diet Blog".  My first reaction to this blog is that the author was peddling diet pills or new "get slim quick" solutions.  Then, I started reading.  In an entry named "Over-tolerant Attitude to Fatness", the author J. Foster refers to an article she came across in Scotland's Sunday Herald.  One of the quotes that was taken from the article:

A few people become fat for complex medical or psychological reasons outwith [outside of?] their control. But most people are fat just because they can't be bothered to take themselves in hand, and their lives are the poorer for it. They need to get a grip.

Wow.  Thank you J. Foster for pointing out what has to be the most close-minded, non-empathetic quote of all time.  The problem is, people who have never had to deal with weight issues cannot even begin to comprehend the complexity of the issue.  It seems that the majority of those who haven't experienced the issues first-hand are always the first to cry "FAT = LAZY".  Could it possibly be that the overweight who are do not have complex medical or psychological have issues that are deeper than anyone can understand? 

It is always amazing to me how people have sympathy for other self-inflicted psychological diseases (alcoholism, drug-abuse, etc.) but when it comes to the obese and overweight, the empathy seems to float out the window and is replaced with repulsion and finger-pointing.

Another point in the article was near the end.  She mentioned that in a recent study done by Duke University, most of the people who claim workman's compensation are overweight people.  It was in the author's opinion that we cannot ignore the obesity epidemic because it alone is going to attribute to the increase in future health costs.

So I guess it couldn't be that the increase in future health care costs has more to do with the fact that the healthcare system in its entirety is monumentally screwed up.  Of course not.  Let's blame the fat people of the world because it is easier to do that (being that fat people are always seen as the effigy figure of bad health) than look in the mirror and realize that the healthcare industry and the way our government tries to run the program needs some serious overhaulin'. 

This just goes to show that people don't get it.  It is far easier to point the almighty finger than to actually be enlightened enough to see the whole picture.