The Social Cost of Empty Calories

Here are the true prices of your favorite sweet, fatty, and salty treats

The wholesale price (Walmart/Target) of popular empty calories when social costs are factored in. All images from pixy.org.

Would it surprise you when I say that empty calories are the single most destructive element in our society today?

It sure surprised me when this thought first crossed my mind. I love chocolate, chips, and ice cream just as much as the next guy (possibly even more), so I certainly didn’t want to make this discovery. But the more I looked into it, the more it made sense.

Indeed, empty calories cost society more than any other terrible thing you can think of — war, violence, and terrorism, smoking, alcohol, and other drugs, climate change and other environmental damages — empty calories beat them all.

In this article, I’ll break down the numbers and estimate the true social cost of some of our most popular health-destroying treats.

Obesity

Let’s start with the most visible and broadly discussed impact of empty calories. By itself, obesity was almost the greatest single man-made social burden in 2014 (see the image below). And given the rate at which it’s expanding, it probably takes top spot today (around $2.5 trillion). The damages could even be substantially greater. For example, this report puts the cost of obesity at $1.7 trillion for…