Here’s a little conspiracy theory for you. I don’t believe in conspiracy theories (most times), and I don’t believe this one (at least not yet), but they’re fun.
I came across an article that essentially says that smokers and the obese are cheaper to care for – the study shows that fat folks and smokers do society a big favor by kicking the bucket early – avoiding those long, drawn out diseases of old age like Alzheimer’s – which cost a lot in terms of medical care.
So…that means that it’s good for society from a cost standpoint for us to be fat and die early.
Now you know why they call economics ‘the dismal science’.
It’s only a small leap to see that if the government wants to cut costs, keeping people fat would help.
So that leads to the conspiracy theory: the government wants us fat so we will die in the prime of life, and relatively suddenly, so that we don’t burden the system. To facilitate this, it pushes a diet that makes us fat – while telling us it makes us thin – and helps guide us down a path to our early demise.
Total rubbish – I know. Like I said: conspiracy theories are fun, but they’re just not real – things like that just don’t happen.
Low Carb Confidential 
I haven’t heard it put as a conspiracy theory, but I have heard the “practical” argument about smoking: Lung cancer and heart attacks are fairly quick killers (compared to years of resthome care) and they tend to strike people who are near the end of their productive (tax-paying) years, hence they never get to collect “their” money from the system.
When I’ve heard this it’s been more along the lines of: “Quit hassling the smokers, they’re doing everyone a favour.”
Not sure how it is in the US, but in NZ where I live smoking is very actively discouraged by the govt, so that would scupper any conspiracy theory.
Hi Chainey,
Like any conspiracy theory, it’s full of holes so big you can drive a truck through – like the one you just pointed out about smoking. In the US the taxes on cigs are so high that you can call it a ‘stupid tax’ – you’d have to be stupid to pay that much to the government for the privilege of smoking. Not an encouragement.
Like I said – rubbish.
Regards,
LCC
I noticed an article in the paper about that too, thought the same thing at first.
I don’t know, I think it smacks of a GREAT idea for a novel and then a film. Working titles:
– The Hunt for Fat October
– Clear and Present Smoker
– The Sum of All Beers
Anyway, if it really WAS a conspiracy, Michael Moore would have been all over it already.