I look at it from an economic point of view. When people are healthy, they take fewer sick days off from work. That means on average, people do more work in a reasonable amount of time. Money that is spent on hospital visits could be spent on other causes.
According to a paper I was reading in an economics journal, the costs of obesity in 1995 was around 100 billion dollars, of which 50 billion was due to healthcare costs. There were about 40 million days of lost work.
Here is an online summary of the article I was reading (I can’t find the original full-length thing):
The total cost attributable to obesity amounted to $99.2 billion dollars in 1995. Approximately $51.64 billion of those dollars were direct medical costs. Using the 1994 NHIS data, cost of lost productivity attributed to obesity (BMI> or =30) was $3.9 billion and reflected 39.2 million days of lost work. In addition, 239 million restricted-activity days, 89.5 million bed-days, and 62.6 million physician visits were attributable to obesity in 1994. Compared with 1988 NHIS data, in 1994 the number of restricted-activity days (36%), bed-days (28%), and work-lost days (50%) increased substantially. The number of physician visits attributed to obesity increased 88% from 1988 to 1994. The economic and personal health costs of overweight and obesity are enormous and compromise the health of the United States. The direct costs associated with obesity represent 5.7% of our National Health Expenditure in the United States.
[size=1]([/size][size=1]http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=9545015&dopt=Abstract[/size][size=1])[/size]
$55 Billion would probably be enough to reduce the unemployment rate in a large part of the country to 0 while paying people above the national average income and keep them employed for at least a few years. A small percentage of that could do a lot for our education system, security at shipyards, upgraded fire/police stations, etc.
Besides, the US not being obese could be one less thing the rest of the world can not poke fun at us about 
:beam: