Govt. Deploys Stringent Mandates, Fitness Passports to Fight Obesity Pandemic

By the author of The Faithful Prepper and Zombie Choices

Editor’s Note: Yes, this is satire.

Obesity is no longer an epidemic. Clearly, it is now a pandemic. A wide range of adverse health consequences directly correlated with obesity includes heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and cancer. Obesity is a problem that impacts not only the individual but everyone around them. Therefore the government has decided on a series of stringent mandates enforced by a Fitness Passport to make everyone healthier.

In 2008, the estimated annual medical cost of obesity in the United States totaled $147 billion. On average, medical expenses for obese individuals were $1429 higher than those at a healthy weight. Those additional expenses can cause a massive degree of financial strain to families who otherwise could use that money for education, healthy food, family outings, vacations, and other health-beneficial items. [source]

According to the WHO, as of 2016, 39% of the world’s adult population was overweight, with 13% of adults being obese. 

Therefore, if we care about the health and livelihood of our friends and family, we need to do everything in our power to fight back against this deadly disease. That is why we must enforce the following series of restrictions as a nation and on a global scale.

Mandate #1: All people must stay home

Obesity is contagious via social ties. Therefore, we need to do everything to keep obese and overweight people away from everybody else.

If you truly love your parents, grandchildren, and kids, you wouldn’t want to spread the risk of obesity to them – along with all the negative health consequences which follow. Obese people must cancel family gatherings, quit work, and avoid going out in public. 

I recommend we start with this mandate for a two-week interval to see how it works. If it doesn’t, we’ll move on to other options listed below.

Mandate #2: Obese people must carry tracking devices

Should obese people violate the mandate to stay at home, they’ll have proven that they are inherently untrustworthy. Therefore, we must make stricter controls to ensure that they remain far enough away from everybody else.

We believe that tracking devices carried 24/7 on their person is the means to do such. A smartphone seems as if it would be perfect for this job. Should they learn to neutralize the smartphone tracker, we will resort to ankle monitors. 

To determine who is obese and who is not, we will use BMI testing. It doesn’t matter that BMI is notoriously inaccurate in predicting who’s genuinely overweight. That’s the method we’ll be using.

Mandate #3: The unhealthy snitch line

Citizens can do a much better job of seeing where cameras can’t. Should they catch somebody out in public sneaking a cheeseburger or engaging in some other form of unacceptable health behavior, they are encouraged to reach out to our Unhealthy Snitch Line.

Those wishing to complain can do so completely anonymously, and once received, we’ll send armed soldiers to investigate. 

Mandate #4: Grocery stores can only sell healthy foods

The government needs to have a level of power to ensure people are making the best choices possible. People have repeatedly shown that they’ll turn to health-destroying alternatives such as smoking, drugs, drunkenness, and overeating given freedom of choice.

Therefore, we will have a group of non-elected government workers get together at a restaurant to determine what is healthy and what is not.  After this meeting, grocers can not sell anything that is deemed unhealthy until further notice. 

All food shall be genetically modified and stripped of its natural nutrients and fortified with artificial ones to make sure that health standards are met. We are following the science. Allergies and intolerances are no excuse for trying to eat foods that are unapproved. As well, you may not eat any special diet except the one we approve, regardless of your health conditions and the advice of your physician. (We’re talking to you, keto and gluten-free people.)

Backyard gardens, livestock, homesteads, and small farms shall be banned until further notice, as we cannot guarantee the quality of this chemical-free food.

Mandate #5: No jog, no job

All obese people must now begin jogging 3x/week if they want to keep their current jobs. Jogging burns roughly 100 calories/mile, and we’ve decided this is an excellent form of losing weight. Not only that, but employees who exercise take fewer sick days compared with those who don’t as well.

To ensure a more robust economy, we’re adopting a no-jog, no-job policy. Regardless of joint conditions, medical problems, paralysis, disability, personal beliefs, alternative weight-loss behaviors, other exercise options, or anything else, you must jog 3x/week if you want to keep your job.

If you don’t want to jog, that’s your choice. However, our choice will be to terminate you from your means of earning a livelihood.

Mandate #6: We need a Fitness Passport

The No-Jog, No-Job policy correlates naturally with this. To better ensure people are following the mandates, we need a passport system directly tied to where people can travel, what stores they can visit, whether they can enter a grocery store, and so on.

If they do not have a Fitness Passport, business owners and others must bar these people from entry under penalty of law. Forgery of a Fitness Passport is punishable by law. 

Mandate #7: Tie the Fitness Passport to people’s utilities, internet, and phone services

Should one refuse the Fitness Passport, we recommend cutting off their electricity, internet, and phone services until they comply. Given that many people live in extremes of temperatures and rely on their internet and phone to earn a living and stay in contact with loved ones, this will undoubtedly get people to do what we want. 

Cutting off utilities and such is also a great weapon against those who won’t listen to Mandate #1.

Mandate 8: Remove children from unfit households

Kids eat what parents cook. Furthermore, we’ve already shown that obesity is contagious via social networks. Obese parents lead to obese kids and subject the children to a greater chance of adverse health outcomes down the road.

We need to save these children. As a result, all obese parents will have their children removed by the state. Authorities will place those children in camps or foster homes where they’ll be surrounded by those who take their health seriously. 

We’ll apply this policy to those who refuse our Fitness Passports as well. We know how those granola-crunching organic people are.

Mandate #9: Arrest those who promote alternative weight loss methods

Jogging is the best method of weight loss. We have said so. We have provided only healthy food options decided upon by a group of government officials.

All those who advocate for any other form of weight loss are to be monitored and arrested. They will be held indefinitely under the NDAA.

Mandate #10: Those who oppose these mandates are terrorists

People who begin to organize against the apparent benefits of these obesity mandates threaten public health. If anyone posts a comment online to organize protests, they will be arrested at their homes, in front of their screaming children. They are a threat to public health and safety. 

Mandate #11: Tie the Fitness Passport to all financial transactions

Seeing that people find ways to get around mandates, let us decree everyone must utilize the Fitness Passport to purchase anything. Food, gas, bills – it doesn’t matter. If you want to buy it, you need a Fitness Passport.

To lessen the chances of unnecessary headaches caused by people losing their passport or their phone, we’d like to consider some form of chip embedded within the hand. The forehead may work as well, however.

Conclusion

These mandates are clearly in the public’s best interest and fall under the broad umbrella of topics undoubtedly covered by public health. There’s simply no reason for people not to follow these mandates. We need to stir up internal strife against those who do not. It’s not enough that they fear us. We need to make it so that the societal cost of not listening to our mandates exceeds their willingness to pay. If we can get things to the point where families will be destroyed over disagreements between each other with these mandates, we’ll have done our job.

We genuinely do care. That’s why we issue the mandates.

About Aden

Aden Tate has a master’s in public health and is a regular contributor to TheOrganicPrepper.com, TheFrugalite.com, PewPewTactical.com, SurvivalBlog.com, SHTFBlog.com, ApartmentPrepper.com, HomesteadAndPrepper.com, and PrepperPress.com. Along with being a freelance writer, he also works part-time as a locksmith. Aden has an LLC for his micro-farm where he raises dairy goats, a pig, honeybees, meat chickens, laying chickens, tomatoes, mushrooms, and greens. Aden has two published books, The Faithful Prepper and Zombie Choices. You can find his podcast The Last American on Preppers’ Broadcasting Network.