Skyline Chili may be under attack for being too fatty.

Obesity

is a risk factor for heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, and certain types of cancer. Obesity leads to about $95 billion a year in medical expenditures, half of which are paid through Medicare and Medicaid. Those costs are fueled by obesity rates that have increased in both children 6 to 19 and adults by 50 percent in the last 20 years.

As a result, some health care experts are asking President Barack Obama to create a Presidential Commission on Healthy Weights, Healthy Lives focused on combating obesity. In a letter to the President, the experts say that the broad and well-funded approach of the United Kingdom’s anti-obesity strategy could serve as a model for a similar effort here.

The authors of the letter say that reducing obesity would be a powerful way of reducing health-care costs, and that a presidential commission would help stimulate and coordinate the activities of the Departments of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and other agencies involved in food and health policy.

Fast food and soft drink lobbyists are licking their proverbial chops at the cost to do battle in this huge food fight.