Reply #19: Depends upon how you get your weight. No exercise, too much unhealthy food is the bad way.

[McCamy Taylor]

Farmers who eat a balanced diet and who work hard all their lives can afford to carry extra pounds, and indeed women farmers need to carry extra pounds as they enter middle age in order to build up their bone mass so that they do not get osteoporosis and bone fractures as they go about their work.

However, I think that the women they are talking about, the ones whose life expectancies are decreasing are sedentary women who smoke and who eat a diet that is high in processed, saturated fat and low in vegetables and probably not especially high in protein. Plus, their stress level is high, because they live in poverty in a land of affluence, so they suffer the medical complications of income disparity which causes depression, anxiety, increased family violence as well as an increased risk of alcohol and drug addiction in themselves and family members. They may even have eating disorders secondary to their income disparity induced problems. Or, they may just be eating the cheapest foods they can find which are often greasy.

Being told "You are not even deserving of good health" is a pretty nasty blow to a human being who lives in one of the richest countries in the world. When we enact universal health, it will be a bit like electing Obama---a whole bunch of people who have been on the outside looking in will suddenly say to themselves "Now I belong, too!"