War on Obesity

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Does the Government have the right ot tell us what to eat?

Obesity is caused by man things not just over eating or eating an unhealthy diet. I happen to have the opposite problem. I tend to be underweight. I ate well as a child and never put on weight. Tonics were tried on me which didn't work. I am type 2 diabetic which happens to underweight people. I bring this out because the Media does not always give you all the facts. They can mislead people making some feel they are safe and others feel guilty.

I am going to provide a few links the first one purports to give you a lot of information about obesity and diet.
http://theweek.com/supertopic/topic/78/war-on-obesity

Here is an article from the from the American Academy of child & Adolescent Psychotherapy. It points out that the causes of obesity are complex.
http://www.aacap.org/cs/root/facts_for_families/obesity_in_children_and_teens

Fad diets can ruin your health. Trying diet after diet can also ruin your health. I have known overweight people who eat a healthy diet of small portions and don't lose a pound. They can be active and still will not lose weight.

Diets and weight loss programs and ills are big business. Low sugar products are popular now but what else do they contain that may be dangerous to your health?

So I ask you does the Government have a right to tell us what we can eat?

 

To ask in another way ... am I, as a taxpayer, required to pay for the poor eating/drinking/smoking habits of other citizens?

 

I think if it is the government providing the means for food there should be some limitations and exclusions.

I for one, however, would laud the return of common law where each household was provided land in which to sustain themselves, the minimum requirement being simply maintenance of the plot but gives the option to reduce costs on vegetation (or livestock potentially in certain plots) whilst I believe farmed and pre-packaged food in supermarkets and local shops should also be available.

The amount of chemicals in our foods should perhaps be regulated, storage is the main issue with preservatives being what most of the barely pronounceable names on the backs of packs are, different countries have different cultures on that though - Example being France where many places still expect to go to the bakery in the morning for fresh bread (and sometimes more than once a day it's normal)

If more places had options for regular deliveries or people were able to get into the habit of shopping with regularity the need for a lot of those chemicals would reduce - it's an instance of what comes first? Restricting chemicals or altering consumer habits so restriction isn't necessary.

 

The food is the least of the costs -- health care is the big cost associated with these kinds of ... less than optimal habits.

 

Difficulty is, at least in the UK, that benefits in certain areas of the country barely cover the basics - and the worst products for you are the cheapest. Living costs vary greatly depending on location but only housing benefit changes by location.

Coming from a non-smoker who only gets alcohol in the form of gifts

 

I don't think the gov. should have the right to tell us what to eat. I do think they should have the right and ability to regulate many of the more addictive/dangerous chemicals out of foods. Quite a few foods now have injected hormones and other chemicals into food. These can cause a wide variety of issues, from pre-mature maturation(that old man saying "Boy, they didn't make em like that when I was 14" probably isn't wrong), to weight, physical health and mental health - all can be caused by hormonal imbalance. And that's not even getting in to food addiction from chemicals such as MSG.

 

I think the government does, to an extent.

I believe that the government has a responsibility to use tax dollars as carefully and credibly as possible, first. (Taxes are the people's hard-earned income, after all). [I'm also of the opinion that individuals in the government, even including military officers, should be held financially accountable and/or accountable to courts, for proven fraud, waste, and abuse--which we, honestly rarely do to them.] Therefore, the gov't should carefully examine the costs to the government posed by obesity. By perusing a number of studies, scholarly articles, and published work out there, one does appear to come to a conclusion that there is a large cost posed to the American public by obesity--but it needs to be defined and, as much as possible, quantified. This requires the gov't to first understand obesity, of course. I'm sure there is much more to it than simply food, for instance. After these things are studied, definitions arrived at, and costs established, then it should be publisized and generally debated through the public. Then I would be in support of legitimate, intelligent, justified control of certain items, done through one of the most effective ways the government has to control distribution of items--through heavily taxing the crap out of it. That is, why make Twinkies illegal? Just make them 10x more expensive.

But I lack trust in the U.S. government to actually do this. What our political elites are more likely to do (I say this based on recent history--on known posturing regarding items that are currently considered potentially dangerous to the population at large, as well as their general ineffectiveness at basic things like passing laws, creating and approving budgets, etc, and on the general state of divisiveness and ignorance that elites from each party are apt to show on any given day) is to study nothing, use preconcieved notions and gut feelings to desperately grasp at straws regarding what the real problems are, almost certainly heavily rely on interest groups who are only interested in advancing their slice of the truth (for sizeable donations to the elite's election funds, of course) and try (and probably fail, like Mayor Bloomberg in NYC recently did) to legislate poorly concieved and badly written ideas that they can barely articulate into an awful reality that the vast majority of people will hate (but for a wide variety of conflicting reasons that actually prevents some sort of organized resistance that itself could pose a coherent and effective alternative).

 

^ This. These measures are generally just thinly veiled money grabs. Shameful really.

 

I stopped trusting the Government's ability to regulate drugs and medications after an experience I had. Years ago I was prescribed by a hospital doctor a medication. I am by no stretch of the imagination a suicidal person but I developed suicidal tendencies and went to a therapist. A psychiatrist rather hesitantly suggested that the medication might be the cuase of my feelings. I asked my General Practitioner about it and he said that the medicine was known to have that side effect and to also cause hallucinations. I stopped taking the medications and was fine.

Later the FDA released the same medication in a lower dosage for use over the counter meaning that people could take it without medical supervision. This is in my opinion a questionable thing. The Government does not always know what is best for the individual. Regulations are needed and are important but should be done carefully and with observance of the rights of the individual.

 

Exactly.

The problem is, if you tax non-healthy foods, then everything else is, as a starting point at least, healthy. So then you'd need to come up a way to decide why one not-unhealthy food deserves a tax break while another doesn't. Not to mention that some products have elements of both; for example, there has been lots of research on the health benefits of an occasional glass of red wine, so do you give a health tax break to the wine industry, notwithstanding that overconsumption is a huge problem? Or do you just ask people who drink more than, say, one glass per day to send the government a cheque to return the amount of the tax break that they've unjustly benefited from?

 

As the article I cited states the problem of obesity is more complicated than just eating a healthy diet and exercising. Medications can cause over-weight, disabilities can limit the amount and types of exercising a person can do. Health problems can arise if people try to diet without proper medical supervision.

Childhood obesity is a serious problem. Good diet and exercise should be encouraged with children as obesity will lead to health problems. An adult who was obese as a child will have a difficult time losing weight and keeping it within acceptable limits.

There are no easy answers and just glibly saying that someone should loose weight is both unfair and unhelpful.

 

I think dmc makes good points. We live in a much more sedentary environment over all than we did even forty or fifty years ago. Computers and I don't mean just personal computers have made life much easier. Our garbage collectors here no longer pick up garbage. We have special containers and the truck has a mechanism that picks up and empties the container, all the humans do is push a lever and guide the machinery.

Our bodies are built for an active life style but that has changed. There is a natural reason why our bodies produce fat but that is no longer necessary at least in countries like the USA.

Tal too has a point especially when it comes to bread. White bread has had all or most of the natural nutrients removed and then artificially added back so that it is 'health'/ So why should a naturally nutrient whole grain bread be more expensive?

 

I think it is very difficult to comment on child obesity - I used to get heavily criticised for my weight before hitting adolescence (as did my mother) but on hitting teenage years it all melted off - Can be difficult to differentiate between brown fat and white fat.

 

Yes. People who think that governments are really in it to save lives and not to make money are fooling themselves. Cigarettes for example are taxed heavily because, one, they are an easy target in that smoking them does kill you, and two, the potential monetary payoff in taxation is thus huge. Any life-saving outcomes are secondary. If saving lives were the impetus, they could just be banned. (Wait - no tax revenue?!? zOMG no!!!) [<- that's why it's generally okay to smoke in casinos - don't want to stop people going to those because casinos tend to pay gargantuan taxes. Or do cigarettes in casinos magically not cause cancer? ]

 

I don't think the government getting involved is going to do any good at all. I don't think you can legislate people into eating a healthier diet. Take for example the recent law in NYC by Mayor Bloomberg - it banned the sale of soft drinks above a certain size. I don't recall the exact size, but I believe it was in excess of 16 ounces, which for our European friends is just under half a liter. So it's still OK to buy a can of soda, but you can't stop in a convenience market and pick up a 32 ounce big gulp.

The reason why I say that this will do little good is that people who are willing to purchase a 32 ounce soda are also people who tend to make other poor choices when it comes to food as well. If you eat at McDonald's for lunch every day, drinking a smaller soda while still consuming a Big Mac and fries isn't going to change your caloric intake a hell of a lot.

And, as has been pointed out by others, the least healthy food also tends to be the cheapest. To use the lunch example again, while I think the health benefits of eating at a sub shop such as Subway are overblown, there's no denying that there is a whole lot less fat and calories in a sub from Subway than from any sandwich you can get from McDonalds, but there's no Dollar Menu at Subway. If you're looking for your cheapest option, are you going to pay $5 for a sub, or a double cheeseburger for $1? (Or multiple double cheeseburgers for that matter.)

As for child obesity rates, while there's no doubt that they are increasing, I'm not sure if it can all be attributed to kids being less active. (Adults on the other hand, I think that is definitely a cause. If you work in an office, there's a pretty good chance your lifestyle would be considered sedentary, even if you work out every day. Working out for an hour doesn't change the eight hours at your desk and the two hours in your car every day.) There's always kids playing around my neighborhood. OK, not so much in the winter, so there hasn't been a ton of playing recently, but weather permitting. We live right down the road from a park, and there are still kids playing lttle league, soccer, pee wee football, etc. From all I have seen, these leagues are thriving.

I think the bigger source of the problem is the later item dmc states - it's not necessarily to lack of activity but what is served for dinner at home. If your only choices are unhealthy ones, even if you're otherwise active, it's certainly possible to put on weight. And it's not just the kids who are over-scheduled - it's the parents too. It's all too easy after a long day of work to bring home dinner from some fast food place than cook it yourself. I guess the bottom line would be this - it's a hell of a lot easier to eat unhealthy foods.

 

I was rushed when I posted yesterday and didn’t really explain my point very well (or at all, for that matter).

To me, taxing unhealthy foods or subsidizing healthy foods is the same thing – one group costs more than the other. IMO taxing unhealthy foods is simpler because all you need to do is show that there is some non-trivial negative health consequence, and you slap a tax on it; sure, some people will complain about the added cost, but they would have a tough time arguing about the health impact (unless they work for the cigarette industry). On the other hand, subsidizing healthy foods IMO would be more difficult because you’re either going to have to subsidize everything that isn’t unhealthy, which obviously doesn’t make sense, or you’re going to have every single food manufacturer presenting “evidence” as to why their product is healthy and therefore worthy of a subsidy. It seems to me that the latter approach would become much more political, and since it’s political enough already, I don’t think it needs to be made worse.

Case in point. Defining "good bread" sounds simple in theory, but much more difficult in reality. And if you simply define "bad" as white bread, why not just tax white bread instead of subsidizing the others? Plus either way, I'm sure the bread makers could easily "game" the system by making small adjustments to the recipe.