Obesity is a disease that disables its victims in various ways. Storing and carrying excess fat cause a progression of painful, abnormal, debilitating (and avoidable) conditions.

Many problems are physical, many others are emotional and psychological. Obesity impedes learning, if only for the reason that social isolation creates depression, which contributes to a high rate of absenteeism.

And the bottom line for all of the disabilities obesity causes is financial costs -- both to the individual and society as a whole. Higher healthcare costs, higher health insurance rates and lower productivity cost millions. And as the epidemic grows, so grow the astronomical costs of an obese population. No one can project what the true costs of the raging child obesity epidemic will be. Simply, no society in history has faced this medical, cultural aberration.