America: Get Skinny. Make a Half Trillion Dollars.

Hey, everyone! Here is a press release I sent in today. Enjoy! :)

America: Get Skinny. Make a Half Trillion Dollars.

Yesterday on MSN.com, Shirley Skeel revealed that a healthy, lean, and low-fat America would create a surplus of $487 billion dollars. For the record, that’s nearly half of a trillion.

The first item on the list of savings is, not surprisingly, on fuel. $5 billion in savings for both car and air fuel reductions could lead to cheaper gas and cheaper tickets.

Next: clothing. Apparently, plus-sized clothing (since when is being overweight and obese a “plus”?) would reduce spending by $10 billion, since it costs 10-15% more to make and purchase the extra cloth needed for the over-sized garments.

Fast food restaurants would be forced to change their ways or go out of business. $81 billion dollars of nutrient-deficient cheeseburgers, artery-clogging French fries, diabetes-inducing shakes and sodas, and cholesterol-raising deep-fried junk food would no longer be served.

Incidentally, Shirley showed that $81 billion is the amount of PROFIT for McDonald’s over the last 4 years. There are 3 reasons why that is scary:

1) What is the McDonald’s corporation doing with an average of $20 billion each year, as it slowly destroys the health and lives of millions of kids and adults each year?

2) $20 billion in profit apparently allows fast food corporations to sleep peacefully at night, ignoring the astronomical ramifications to our lifestyles, health care industry, and emotional lives.

3) Another $60 billion is being shared by all the other fast food companies each year.

After that, $140 billion in obesity-related medical care would vanish. Drug-pushing doctors (what happened to diet and exercise?) and a huge portion of the disturbingly profitable pharmaceutical industry would be out of jobs. Before we get too critical of the medical industry, though, another $55 billion would be wiped out in the weight-loss industry, especially from worthless infomercial exercise products, expensive (and obviously not working) eating programs, and diet pills.

Here’s the fun figure: over $250 billion in increased productivity. Face it: research has clearly shown that overweight and obese people are not as productive at work and miss work more often. Economists estimate that tens of thousands of jobs could be created, producing more useful, life-improving products on which we could spend our newly-found half of a trillion dollars.

When asked whether he would be out of a job, Palm Beach Garden’s Fitness Togetherprivate training studio owner, Jeremy Nelms, replied, “Absolutely not. We would help healthy people achieve the next level of fitness, so they could travel and experience the great adventures suddenly possible for them, now that they could climb mountains, hike across countries, and simply be much more active and adventurous.”