Negotiations with obesity
“Mr. President, we have a problem.”
“Again? What is it this time? Is it those crybabies with the penguins again?”
“No sir.”
“Tell them that when the penguins start stealing American jobs and paying taxes, I’ll be happy to hear them out.”
“Yes sir, next time they call, I’ll be sure to tell them.”
“Is it the UK?”
“No sir.”
“The EU?”
“No sir.”
“The YMCA?”
“No sir.”
“Haha! Got you!”
“Yes, well done, sir.”
“Well spit it out already! Because judging by your sour face, you’ve either come to tell me an asteroid’s hurtling toward Earth, or that we’re out of money. And it better not be the second.”
“We’re out of money, sir.”
“Damn it! I don’t understand. Where the hell did the money go?”
“We spent it, sir.”
“So? Weren’t you the one who told me that we have to spend money to make money?”
“Yes sir.”
“Well?”
“I guess we didn’t spend enough?”
“Goddammit, that makes sense. So what do we do?”
“We have some options sir. We can get another loan from China. But I think it would be best if we handled things domestically. We can either appropriate some of the defense budget, or increase consumer spending. I prefer the second. Stimulate the economy. Then we can raise taxes. And bribes.”
“Aren’t we in a recession? If we can’t even convince the consumers to spend as much today as yesterday, how exactly are you proposing-”
“I’m glad you asked, sir. I have a couple of ideas I think you’ll like.”
“I don’t like them already. But spit ’em out.”
“Sir, I was going through the internet yesterday, making sure all of the facts are on our side, you know how Wikipedia can get, and I noticed an interesting opportunity in the article on BMI. Do you know what BMI is, sir?”
“Of course. But just so I know you know the right definition, what do you think it is?”
“Body Mass Index, sir. It’s a formula used to determine whether an individual is underweight, overweight, or obese. And I’m given to understand there may be a few bonus categories in the US: morbidly obese, super obese, and hyper obese. Poor naming conventions, I’m afraid, I don’t know how anyone remembers whether super or hyper is the more morbid one. But I digress. Is that the definition you’re familiar with, sir?”
“More or less. What does this all have to do with money? Has some Einstein figured out how to convert fat into dollars?”
“The Einsteins are hard at work on that problem, but so far the results have not been promising.”
“That’s a damn shame. So what about the fatties?”
“Well sir, in different countries, BMI is calculated differently. In 1998, the US National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention brought US definitions in line with the World Health Organization guidelines, lowering the normal/overweight cut-off from 27.8 to 25. This had the effect of redefining approximately 29 million Americans, previously healthy, to overweight.” [1]
“No way! I didn’t know we could do that!”
“Direct quote from Wikipedia sir. It’s a fact everyone conveniently forgets when they talk about the recent obesity epidemic.”
“Amazing. This opens up all kinds of doors. But which doors were you thinking exactly?”
“I checked the data sir, and the redefinition of BMI in 1998 was followed by a sharp decrease in spending. Americans that previously thought themselves healthy but were suddenly rebranded obese, panicked and started taking their health more seriously. And eating less, as I’m sure you’re aware sir, costs less than eating more. One of those exceptions to the ‘less is more’ rule. So I was thinking, if we were to take the opposite approach, one that would result in more Americans thinking they’re healthy, they might find cause to celebrate, and set themselves to the task of re-achieving their previous obese status. What do you think, sir?”
“Hmm. Not bad. So what do we have to do, just change the Wikipedia entry?”
“It’s a bit more complicated than that sir. We’ll probably need to talk to the NIH and the CDC, but I’m sure we can come to an agreement with them. They’re always in need of something or other. But I do want to get a sense of your preferences strategy-wise. The BMI is calculated based on a person’s height and weight. So we really have three options, sir. We can redefine BMI itself, or we can redefine one if its components.
“You mean like tell tall people to sit down, to lower their BMI?”
“Something like that, sir. We can make the meter smaller, so that people have more meters to their height, or we can make the kilogram bigger, so people weigh fewer kilograms.”
“Whoa. Those both sound great! Who wouldn’t want to weigh fewer kilograms?”
“Exactly sir.”
“And who doesn’t want to be taller?”
“Nobody sir.”
“Which one do you think will be the least suspicious to the general public?”
“Whichever one is not backed by the NIH and the CDC. And we might need to send a fruit basket to the FDA.”
“I see. I like it. Hey, maybe we can sell this under a switch to the metric system, will that work? Turn pounds into kilograms, feet into meters, and bingo. No obesity epidemic to speak of. And we can finally stop worrying about the Y2K bug.”
“Brilliant idea, sir! I’ll need to check the math, and we may need to lower the value of IQ points so that the general public has a high enough IQ to make the transition... I’ll get on it right away.”
“Dismissed.”
