Americans are fat. We’ve all heard it a million times, but have you ever stopped to think about the cost of obesity? The state of California has done some cost analysis, but not in terms of life span, healthiness, or happiness. Their analysis is in terms of something far more governmentally important: dollars. The state’s health department reported that obesity cost the state around $21.7 billion in 2000 alone. That’s right, billion.

Let’s break this down real quick for the non-math nerds out there. There are 52 weeks in a year and 7 days in a week: 21.7B/52/7 = 59M. That’s $59 million per day to deal with the consequences of obesity using state-funded health care, just in the state of California. For the same amount of money, we could buy 12 M1 Abrams tanks (per day) and put them on fat patrol in the streets of L.A., San Diego, and San Francisco. Contemplate that figure on the Tree of Woe.