While it's true that you can spend a lot of money eating healthy --- those farmer's markets and trips to Whole Foods don't pay for themselves --- the fact remains that a healthy diet is often the most cost-effective one, thanks in part to smaller portions. Eating less food is both the healthier choice and the more cost-effective one, which should be a no-brainer to just about anyone. Combine that with an emphasis on vegetables and whole grains and you have a sound strategy for losing weight and saving money.

At first, it may seem surprising that lifetime health-care costs for the obese are actually lower than those of healthy-living people. But before you run out to the store to stock up on cheese fries and Little Debbie snack cakes, you might want to consider that the obese have low health-care costs because they have a significantly decreased life expectancy and therefore less years in which to incur medical expenses.

According to a 2006 study conducted by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Virginia Commonwealth University, Americans consume 938 million more gallons of fuel annually than they did in 1960, thanks to the extra weight in the driver's seat. According to Sheldon H. Jacobson, one of the professors who conducted the study, the amount of gasoline consumed by obese drivers "will become even more significant as the rate of obesity increases."

It may seem excessive, but the fact is that one trillion calories is actually a weak estimate of how much unnecessary intake is going on. Taken altogether, America's adults consume an appalling 16 trillion extra calories annually, the equivalent of 14 billion Big Mac extra value meals.

The 2007 Milken report states that workplace productivity has taken a hit from obese employees, who take more sick days or under perform by working while sick. The report goes on to claim that obese employees cost their employers $257 billion annually, which adds up to 1.8% of GDP.

While Alabama is a close second, the state with the highest prevalence of obese adults is Mississippi. In fact, the American South is well represented on the list, with West Virginia, Tennessee and South Carolina rounding out the top five. This means that these states will generate a flood of medical bills, much of which will be picked up by taxpayers when obese patients reach the age of 65 and enter the Medicare system, bringing their bad knees and weakening kidneys with them.

In 2008, former Surgeon General Steven K. Galson estimated that 112,000 deaths per year were associated with obesity in the United States. This is why some state officials, such as New York Governor David Paterson, have proposed an "obesity tax" to combat these rising numbers. Specifically, he proposed an 18% statewide tax on sugary beverages such as soda, as well as juice drinks with less than 70% natural juice. The intent of the tax was both to discourage consumption of these beverages and to raise money for obesity awareness and prevention, in the same way that the state's costly cigarette tax has been shown to have a deterrent effect on cigarette sales. According to Paterson, "Just as the cigarette tax has helped reduce the number of smokers and smoking-related deaths, a tax on highly caloric, non-nutritional beverages can help reduce the prevalence of obesity."

When "Healthy People 2010″ was founded in 2000, its mission was to "increase quality and years of healthy life" and "eliminate health disparities" in the U.S. population, in part by reducing the prevalence of obesity to 15% or less per state. Unfortunately, all 50 states fell far short of that goal, with only Colorado coming close, at 18.7%.

"Children who are obese today are more likely to develop type 2 diabetes as young adults," says Dr. Joyce Lee, a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of Michigan's C.S. Mott Children's Hospital. "Our society heavily invests in the treatment and management of chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes for adults… recent trends in childhood obesity will likely lead to increases in type 2 diabetes among young adults, resulting in even greater costs to society and the health care system."

According to a 2008 joint study between Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, obese patients with asthma are much more likely to be hospitalized for associated complications than their counterparts of normal weight. Dr. Michael Schatz of Kaiser Permanente, San Diego said that obese asthmatics have "a nearly five times greater risk for being hospitalized."