TheAgitator.com
Just in TIME
Monday, May 31st, 2004First the good news.
Your humble Agitator has a short essay on obesity in the latest issue of TIME magazine. I go head to head with food nannies Marion Nestle of N.Y.U. and Kelly Brownell of Yale. The piece was very heavily edited, fact-checked and cross-checked. So yeah, it’s probably quite a bit drier than most of what you’ve read of me. Also, I don’t normally sneeze in less than 350 words, so the length restriction was certainly a challenge.
Nevertheless, it’s a great hit for me, and I’m flattered that TIME asked me to represent the free market side of the debate.
I’ll also add here that I’ll be at the TIME/ABC News obesity summit next week in Williamsburg. I’ll be sending dispatches back from the event — two or three per day — that you’ll be able to read at Tech Central Station.
(I’ve lined up a fun roster of guest bloggers to keep you entertained while I’m out, but more on that later.)
Now the bad news. The rest of the TIME issue devotes what I’m guessing is some 10,000-12,000 words (at least, I didn’t count) to obesity. My meager 350 of those words are really the lonely few not advocating some sort of massive government intrusion into our lives, diets, lifestyles, and eating habits to combat this “obesity” thing.
It’s really pretty astounding. Take Nestle and Brownell, for example. The two of them got 350 words to counter my 350 words. Fair enough. Except that the same issue then devotes an entire separate four-page article to Brownell, Nestle and two other fat nannies’ various plans for government intervention, without even a token rebuttal from a scholar or scientist who disagrees with them (and yes, there are plenty).
Banning advertising to children, rebuilding our cities and suburbs, taxes on “unhealthy” food, lawsuits, and a myriad of other programs are openly advocated and cheerlead by alleged journalists as if they were universal truths, simply not up for debate. The rare times when reporters did seek out dissenting opinions, they’re clearly labeled “critics,” and usually, their motivations are questioned (”paid operatives of the food industry”).
TIME embraces the Body Mass Index (BMI) throughout the issue as supreme arbiter of “obese” and “overweight,” without a hint of skepticism (here’s your skepticism: I work out 3-4 times a week, including at least 45 minutes of cardio with each workout. I have a 36 inch waist. I’m 6′1″. I weigh 205. According to the BMI, I’m on the heavy end of “overweight,” nearly “obese”).
I’d say in nearly all of these articles, TIME’s reporters didn’t bother to even check to see if there was another side to the story, much less give it voice. I’m guessing that’s because they merely assumed there wasn’t another side. Clearly, obesity is every bit the “public health threat” tobacco is/was. And clearly, we need heavy-handed government intervention in obesity, just as we’ve had with tobacco (because, of course, none of us smokes — particularly none of us under 40, who have known pretty much all of our lives about the risks that come with smoking, and are the “beneficiaries” of these various anti-smoing intiatives). TIME takes the Nestles and Brownells and Wootans of the world at their word, at face value, and they nearly always assume that anyone striking a blow for consumer choice, personal responsibility, or the freedom from government trespass on what we eat must be motivated by greed, profit, or ill motives.
This is one of those issues, apparently, where there’s simply little room for pro and con, like rape, child abuse, or Nazism.
Since TIME’s made access to its current issue available only to subscribers, my essay follows, and I’ve followed that by Brownell and Nestle’s piece.
The terms of this debate couldn’t be starker. One side makes no bones about wanting heavy government regulation and restrictions on when, where, how, and how much you eat. The other side says you ought to be free to make all of those decisions on your own, but that you also should be forced to live with the consequences of those decisions.
Government has no business interfering with what you eat.By RADLEY BALKO
Nutrition activists are agitating for a panoply of initiatives that would bring the government between you and your waistline. President Bush earmarked $125 million in his budget for the encouragement of healthy lifestyles. State legislatures and school boards have begun banning snacks and soda from school campuses and vending machines. Several state legislators and Oakland, Calif., Mayor Jerry Brown, among others, have called for a “fat tax” on high-calorie foods. Congress is considering menu-labeling legislation that would force chain restaurants to list fat, sodium and calories for each item.
That is precisely the wrong way to fight obesity. Instead of intervening in the array of food options available to Americans, our government ought to be working to foster a personal sense of responsibility for our health and well-being.
We’re doing just the opposite. For decades, America’s health-care system has been migrating toward nationalized medicine. We have a law that requires some Americans to pay for other Americans’ medicine, and several states bar health insurers from charging lower premiums to people who stay fit. That removes the financial incentive for making healthy decisions. Worse, socialized health care makes us troublingly tolerant of government trespasses on our personal freedom. If my neighbor’s heart attack shows up on my tax bill, I’m more likely to support state regulation of what he eats–restrictions on what grocery stores can put on their shelves, for example, or what McDonald’s can put between its sesame-seed buns.
The best way to combat the public-health threat of obesity is to remove obesity from the realm of “public health.” It’s difficult to think of a matter more private and less public than what we choose to put in our bodies. Give Americans moral, financial and personal responsibility for their own health, and obesity is no longer a public matter but a private one–with all the costs, concerns and worries of being overweight borne only by those people who are actually overweight.
Let each of us take full responsibility for our diet and lifestyle. We’re likely to make better decisions when someone else isn’t paying for the consequences.
And here’s Brownell and Nestle:
Not if blaming the victim is just an excuse to let industry off the hook.By KELLY BROWNELL and MARION NESTLE
The food industry, like any other, must grow to stay in business. One way it does so is by promoting unhealthy foods, particularly to children. Each year kids see more than 10,000 food ads on TV alone, almost all for items like soft drinks, fast foods and sugared cereals. In the same year that the government spent $2 million on its main nutrition-education program, McDonald’s spent $500 million on its We Love to See You Smile campaign. It can be no surprise that teenagers consume nearly twice as much soda as milk (the reverse was true 20 years ago) and that 25% of all vegetables eaten in the U.S. are French fries.
To counter criticism, the food industry and pro-business groups use a public relations script focused on personal responsibility. The script has three elements: 1) if people are overweight, it is their own fault; 2) industry responds to consumer demand but does not create it; and 3) insisting that industry change–say, by not marketing to children or requiring restaurants to reveal calories–is an attack on freedom.
Why quarrel with the personal-responsibility argument?
First, it’s wrong. The prevalence of obesity increases year after year. Were people less responsible in 2002 than in 2001? Obesity is a global problem. Is irresponsibility an epidemic around the world?
Second, it ignores biology. Humans are hardwired, as a survival strategy, to like foods high in sugar, fat and calories.
Third, the argument is not helpful. Imploring people to eat better and exercise more has been the default approach to obesity for years. That is a failed experiment.
Fourth, personal responsibility is a trap. The argument is startlingly similar to the tobacco industry’s efforts to stave off legislative and regulatory interventions. The nation tolerated personal-responsibility arguments from Big Tobacco for decades, with disastrous results.
Governments collude with industry when they shift attention from conditions promoting poor diets to the individuals who consume them. Government should be doing everything it can to create conditions that lead to healthy eating, support parents in raising healthy children and make decisions in the interests of public health rather than private profit.
Whodda’ thunk that twenty or ten or even five years ago that a major news magazine could pose a question like “are you responsible for your own weight” and not only would there be actual debate on the question, but the “no” side would start the debate with the upper hand?
It’s crazy. If you aren’t responsible for what you put into your mouth, chew and swallow, what’s left that you are you responsible for?
…personal responsibility is a trap.
You can’t make this stuff up. These people are impossible to caricature.
I think the proper response to their points are: yes. so what? did the 70’s prove capitalism to be a failed experiment? And: you know what’s a huge trap? Getting the government involved to fix a problem for us.
Ooh! Ooh! Easy to beat arguments! Goody!
First, it’s wrong.
Oh. Well alrighty then.
Is irresponsibility an epidemic around the world?
This is easy: YES
Second, it ignores biology. Humans are hardwired, as a survival strategy, to like foods high in sugar, fat and calories.
Uh huh, we’re also hardwired to think and to make decisions and to feel guilt and remorse and all sorts of other things. That means we can conquer many of our urges with simple common sense and will-power.
Third, the argument is not helpful.
I’m sorry, we’ll try to be more helpful next time. Wait a minute. Being helpful is the nanny game, not mine. Screw you!
Fourth, personal responsibility is a trap.
Really? Always? Oh my god are we in trouble.
I am so very frightened of these people and the terrible prospect that they might get their way. I mean that in all earnestness. These people terrify me.
Government taxing high fat foods wouldn’t be as bad if the low fat mantra wasn’t being called heavily into question by the Atkins movement. But the fact is, we don’t even KNOW what makes people fat. It probably isn’t the same for everyone. The science doesn’t support the public policy.
BMI is ridiculous beyond belief. Here are my stats: 6 feet tall, 180 lbs, 32 inch waist, cholesterol of 140, resting pulse 68. I work out for at least an hour 6 days a week. BMI: 24.5, just on the cusp of “overweight.” And here I thought I was in pretty good shape. God forbid I would eat unwisely for a week and put on 5 lbs - that would put me at the mercy of the fat Nazis at 25.1.
Radley, their position is absolutely rediculous. It’s frightening to know that there are people who have the public ear who are that stupid. I smoke, I drink anything I choose, I eat anything I like, and I’ll continue to do these things until I either choose to change them or until I die. I have some family members who are obese and I really wish they’d lose some weight for their health’s sake, but they are grown and they make their own decisions. I’m grown and I make my own decisions as well, and I defy anybody to take that right away from me.
By the way, you wrote a good article. I wish they’d have given you more space. Thanks!
AHA! I always KNEW I had super powers beyond those of mortal men. I have resisted the evil powers of tempting fatty foods and high sugar beverages!
Witness my breath taking mutant ability to drink water! Gasp in awe as I eat a boneless, skinless chicken breast prepared on my George Forman Grill of Justice. Struggle to make sense of my uncanny power to consume helpings of broccoli, corn, peas or spinach!
Twenty years ago there would not have been this debate because twenty years ago we did not have such wide spread use of corn syrup, genetically modified foods, steroids for meats, etc. To let capitalism work it out is doing so at the cost of the many lives that it takes to find out that some types of food are killing us, and that is when government needs to step in. And to assume that it will work itself out through market incentives is ignoring the real problem of how people are able to get information to make informed decisions. Companies spend billions to make their products seem appealing using words that seem to suggest things that are not at all true. Marketing responds to people’s demands not with better products but with better pitches. Look at how words like juice and organic and fresh are thrown around without regard for true meaning. Capitalism cannot work in this type of environment. Capitalism requires information and when this is not possible then the free markets must be encroached.
Whoa!!! What happened to all the anorexia/bulimia that was also “epidemic” just a few short years ago? Aren’t these the same people who fought so hard against those eating disorders? Evidently they succeeded too well. Therefore, the present obesity is their fault!! (Excuse me while I call my lawyer)
Seriously - I think you may have missed the underlying objective. Its not so much regulating our lives they want as it is klmassive governmental intrusion into big business. Large corporations are once again the bad guys and need to be controled and punished. And they will do this for us poor misguided, uneducated simpletons “for the children”.
Why in the Sam hell do people listen to these moonbats?
I don’t know if I want to live in a society where you just let people die of preventable disease by the tens of thousands just so a few libertarians can pat themselves on the back about how smart they are to stay slim.
Either you start denying people medical care in the emergency room because they can’t pay, or it just plain makes sense to do something about this problem. Otherwise, the food producers who market this stuff are externalizing those costs to the public health system, and the rest of us have to deal with the consequences.
Matt –
Key words here: public health system.
Libertarians don’t believe in this.
Neither do Objectivists.
Abortion = Precious individual right that the government has no right to infringe on, let alone question.
Eating = Activity deemed so risk laden that it must be regulated by the State.
If you need me, I’ll be in a strait jacket trying to reconcile this…
Charlie, Your right,
Years ago we had Fatback, Molasses, and carcinogen enriched smoked meats. Ham was 30% higher in Fat, Salt was the #1 preservative followed by Sugar, and fresh fruit was only available seasonally. No insecticide just locus induced famine, and no genetically modified food just shortages. Boy your right, now that we have all these problems government better step in and help save us from ourselves. And oh my heart cries out for those poor uninformed masses who donât know where to find information on nutrition. If only someone would tell them that their local bookstore has shelves and shelves of information on diet, nutrition and exercise (and many will even let you sit there in the store and read them at your leisure). If only they knew that rather than buying that weekly TV guide, soap, people magazine and national enquirer they could pick up a copy of any of the available and informative health magazines. Your right Charlie If only we could go back to when people were informed and food was healthy we wouldnât need the governments help.
When Mao was around the Chinese government used to make people in the cities come out of their houses at dawn to do calisthenics. Do they do that any more? Should we be doing that?
Ha Ha, Charlie is stupid.
Welcome to the end result of the war on drugs. Two of the justifications for drug prohibition are the societal costs of drug use and the inability of individuals to be personally responsible for what substances they put in their bodies.
Once these ideas were used to justify drug prohibition it was inevitable societal costs, lack of personal responsibility and bad statistics would be used to ban / restrict other previously acceptable behaviors. Alcohol was the first substance to be regulated on that basis and tobacco soon followed. Now the nannies are taking a run at food. Maybe this will wake people up to the dangers of replacing individual responsibility and costs with societal responsibility and costs.
Matt and Charlie’s posts made while I was typing mine make my point better then I could.
Matt, you obviously didn’t watch C-SPAN’s coverage of last weekend’s Libertarian National Convention. During the lulls (and there were many) the camera panned over an audience filled with people who, at about the same proportion as the general population, were noticeably and I dare say borderline grotesquely obese.
Everyone was gnoshing on snackies and chocalate-y vending machine goodies.
So take your inaccurate and ad hominem comments and put ‘em . . . well, just cut it out.
For clarification, I am not one of those trying to say things were so much better way back when. I am saying that there are problems our current society faces that I believe should be addressed. If other people have time to filter through all the information on food safety and content, weed out the industry crap, weigh the differing opinions, figure out whose arguments are genuine and whose are biased, then by all means do it. I don’t have time for that, and I would question if it is even possible. I want a government to step in and make sure that when people are selling corn syrup with 10% juice, that it says so right on the bottle. I want a government to make sure that certain pesticides are not used on my food. It may be possible to have a system whereby companies are given market incentives to behave, but the costs in terms of efficiency due to the amount of time that every citizen would have to put into obtaining information would be devistating.
Charlie,
As a fourth generation cattle rancher let me tell you the only change to beef in the past twenty years has been a huge effort to make it more lean, tasty, and easy to prepare. Most of the other basic food stuffs are the same.
Matt,
If you can’t be responsible for what you eat and whether or not you get off the couch and get a little exercise what can you be responsible for?
The food producers have not been putting information out in a vacuum. There is a ton of information on healthy diet and exercise available. CSPI, PETA, Public citizen, the various PIRGS, and probably hundreds of activists groups have had a very high exposure of their ideas in the media for years.
Weight control is a simple math problem. If you take in more calories then your body uses through baseline metabolism and exercise you are going to gain weight. The fix is not more regulation, the fix is for people use the simple math in a smart, discplined manner to take care of themselves.
charlie,
It does say so right on the bottle.
The government already makes sure certain pesticides are not used on food.
I does not take a fargin genius to read the back of a food product and decide if it’s healthy or not.
Geez, I’m sorry you don’t have time to be smarter. I think I should be taxed and propagandized so that you can eat in blissful ignorance.
My new Mantra:
Personal responsibility is a trap.
Second, it ignores biology. Humans are hardwired, as a survival strategy, to like foods high in sugar, fat and calories.
If that’s true, the War on Obesity⢠is doomed to failure. Why fight it?
For Charlie, Matt and others who agree with them, a simple question: do you believe you yourself control what you eat? If not, why not?
When friends bring this kind of thing up ie the need for FDA, I ask them, why the government? Do you read Consumer Reports? Do you trust them? How about the “better house keeping” seal of approval, JC powers etc. The Market can and does provide for these things. Nutritional information was made available on food, seat belts and air bags were in cars, and Drugs were researched for their safety long before the government mandated it. The information and truth is the product Consumer Reports sells, If they were to become dishonest in their reporting the market would respond, people would have no reason to purchase their magazine or purchase their honest review and they would go out of business. It is in their own best interest to stay honest, whose best interest is the government working for when you the consumer/tax payer are forced to âbuyâ their product.
First sentence of Brownell & Nestle: “The food industry, like any other, must grow to stay in business”. Is this true? I am sure this is what they teach the MBAs and what people expect, but why is this true? The population grows. Inflation continues. At *moderate* rates, ie 2% for inflation, not sure about pop growth, I guess 1-2% per annum. Aren’t these the primary motivators for a saturated market (ie food). If you are selling food to everyone in america, why do you assume you have to sell everyone *more* food next year? I don’t buy this arguement at all, and this is potentially another reason for obesity: new products must be introduced to increase the revenue stream, and usually these products are high fat/high sugar. If it wasn’t necessary to create new products every year for ‘business survival’, wouldn’t this have a slight effect on obesity? Also if they choose to introduce more healthy products, it would be better for us, nutritionally.
I hate the health and safety cops
So naturally I loved this post by Radley Balko on his Time magazine essay on obesity regulation:My meager 350 of those words are really the lonely few not advocating some sort of massive government intrusion into our lives, diets, lifestyles,
You can always tell a fruitcake by how often a conspiracy is alluded to. Here we have the sly implication that people are incapable of personal decision-making because they are being brainwashed by the EVIL FOOD INDUSTRY CABAL.
Not only that, but people are “hardwired” to be fat. It’s our ancestors’ fault! They had the temerity not to evolve like Darwin said they supposed to! They kept harboring extra calories for those nasty neanderthal winters. Now we’re hopelessly, genetically fat!
Can someone tell me why, in the classroom, this “blame the victim” rhetoric magically disappears when its time for grades to be handed out? That’s right, it’s a double standard they can’t hold. If you are nothing more than a victim of circumstances, then how can they grade you fairly just because you aren’t as smart as the next guy or your parents didn’t make as much money? In fact, why do THEY get to be the college professors? Why did my dad have to work outside all his life? I’m sure he would rather have had a cushy academic position. Wait, maybe he didn’t earn it? Hmmm.
You can bet these same researchers, or liberals like them, preach personal responsibility and earning grades when the Fs have to be given.
Believe me, no amount of arguing socio-economic status, illness, or family issues can change an F to an A. Victims get Fs from people like Nestle and Brownell.
The food industry, like any other, must grow to stay in business.
No, it must make a profit to stay in business. When your first premise is laughably incorrect, why bother with the rest of the article?
For the entertainment value:
Fourth, personal responsibility is a trap.
Channeling Admiral Ackbar?
It doesn’t surprise me that statists such as Brownell & Nestle would be ignorant as to the ways of capitalism. A business must stay profitable to remain in business. Growth is one of many factors necessary to achieve profitability, but it is not necessary to sustain it.
When they came for tobbaco, you did not fight because you didn’t smoke.
When they came for “Fatty Foods” ™, you did not fight because you were not fat.
When will you join us (smokers and overweight persons)? What will your excuse be when you have to face us in the jails or gettoes of the future?
“Concentrate all firepower on the large corporation ….”
Another great article Radley. Unfortunately, the words “personally responsibility” don’t seem to mean anything anymore.
All tihs talk about food is making me hungry. i think i’ll go jog down to the local pizza parlor and pick up some donuts, too. anyone want some? i’ll pick some up for matt, charlie, and the others that are hardwired.
David, David, David, don’t you know that working outside did not make your dad a victim? He got to exercise and be free of the hazards of the indoor air that is polluted with asbestos, mold, mildew, and other toxins that lawyers find in “sick” buildings. It is the poor downtrodden academicians who are the downtrodden of the earth. The have to work a full 9 months (not counting 3 weeks off for Christmas, 1 week off for Spring Break, and various other breaks) just so they can have a decent summer break to recover from the grueling toxin infested classroom. And then these brave individuals are selfless enough to get government grants so they can use their superior intellect to tell us what we are required to voluntarily do to live a better life.
David, I am ashamed of your attitude. Blaming Nestle and Brownell for their valiant efforts to persevere in spite of their victimhood so that they can help the worker class. If everyone had an attitude such as yours just think how much personal liberty we would all have and then who knows what would become this country.
Last time I checked, the purpose of government was not to protect citizens from personal weakness and stupidity, but to permit each to exercise personal foibles - or not - freely. How times change.
No amount of labelling or regulation can force people to read or heed labels.
Forgive me if this point was made in a previous comment.
“Second, it ignores biology. Humans are hardwired, as a survival strategy, to like foods high in sugar, fat and calories.”
Well, gee, I think it’s fairly uncontroversial that men are hard-wired for multiple sexual partners as part of this same survival strategy. Can I have a government program to help me overcome that?
Let’s get more info on everyone’s BMI #. I am:
5′7″
160
10% body fat
BMI = 25.1. I’m overweight. Quick, someone empty my fridge!!
I bet most professional and olympic athletes are either overwieght or obese.
Wil,
There are laws that address this biological wiring for sex: laws regarding multiple spouses, child support, rape, age of consent, etc.
My favourite part is this:
‘The nation tolerated personal-responsibility arguments from Big Tobacco for decades, with disastrous results.’
Oh gosh yes, America has been in terminal decline these past decades, what with prosperity, health and lifespan all plummeting toward new highs. That’s what personal responsibility’ll do to ya.
I’ve never been able to get these people to reconcile what I’ve termed
‘The Fundamental Contradiction of the Democratic Nanny State’:
If we are incompetent to decide what food we will eat, drugs we will use, etc., individually, (given the knowledge that we each have of our own condition, which cannot possibly be possessed by others who do not know us) then what mystic transubstantiation occurs in the voting booth to make us collectively competent to elect legislators to (or in the case of initiative/referendum directly) enact laws to make those decisions for us?
There are two kinds of people who buy into it:
I invite those here defending Nanny legislation to either declare their affiliation, or attempt to explain the flaw in my reasoning.
http://www.itsatrap.com
Oops, wrong link.
http://www.itsatrap.net
Monster (if in fact that is your real name),
The problem I have with your statement is in terms of information. People cannot be expected to make good decisions for themselves if information is not available to inform those decisions. Politicians left to themselves and motivated to win will mislead and distort and lie, which is why we need laws requiring disclosure of information. Companies left to themselves and motivated to make a profit will not properly label and falsly advertise and lie, which is why we need laws to require this. People are only competent to make any decision, whether it is what we eat or how we vote, if information is readily available. The only reason we have the little information that we do now is because of regulations. Companies did not choose to put food content on their packages. Politicians did not chose to disclose financial records. The government made this happen.
The Body Mass Index is half-baked
While discussing the increasingly controversial topic of obesity, Radley Balko mentioned the Body Mass Index. According to the calculator I am overweight which is quite mind-boggling. I weigh about 175, am 5′8″ and have about 10% body fat (as measured…
Charlie -
Just what info are you unable to get? I have no problem knowing what is in a package just from reading the ingredients (although in this country, the damn French side is always facing out ….grrr… ) The inormation about food / health / diet choices is widely available. I certainly don’t require anyone from the big city to tell me what’s good for me and what isn’t.
Charlie–
If all this information is supposed to be translated into salutary eating behavior, why has obesity been rising since nutritional labeling was required by our Ever-Loving Federal Government? Why was obesity so much lower at the turn of the 20th century when we were smoking cigarettes for their health benefit and swallowing liver pills like Certs?
Gee, Charlie, did you ever stop to THINK before assuming that people need the government to tell them that Twinkies are not the most nutritious snack? Or, more to the point, did you ever START TO THINK in the first place?
They’ll take my pork chop from my cold, dead hand!
Crash - back at ya.
Keep your laws out of my kitchen!
Lumberjack- you hit the nail right on the head, mate.
Ross, I am justly chastised.
Too much personal liberty would clearly be dangerous in the hands of the uneducated masses. Painters and their brood are far too stupid to choose what they should eat.
Only them there sign-tists is smart enough tuh figger out the food peermid. Then theys even done gone and figgered out that same peermids bad fer ye. Now they thanks its Mac Donald’s fault on account of they gives us dum pore peepal what we’s wants tuh eat, not whats on that peermid what they rebuild ever thirty minutes. Theys got that logic what I ain’t never learnt.
You ever read Von Humboldt?
-David
P.S. So there’s no misunderstanding, I believe you and I favor personal liberty over big government, and I read you that way.
Actually, I really don’t know why people in North America are trying to fight obesity at all. After all, haven’t all scientists, everywhere, proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that we’re about to enter a catastrophic Ice Age? As I see it, I’ll need all the fat I can get! So don’t come anywhere near my Mastodon burger!
To David Prince:
“You can bet these same researchers, or liberals like them, preach personal responsibility and earning grades when the F’s have to be given.”
Actually, David, they don’t. It came out a few years ago that something like two-thirds of Stanford humanities students were getting A or A- averages. Grade inflation is a huge problem, even in the Ivies. So, no–Ivy League professors do NOT suddenly discover personal responsibility when it comes to their classroom practices.
Fresh Air: To play devil’s advocate, I’d say that obvious cases like Twinkies aren’t the problem - it’s the borderline stuff like “lite” food and fruit drinks vs. fruit juice (and the fact that both contain soda-like amounts of sugar) for which labels are helpful.
You Are What You Eat
Radley Balko has a short piece in the current TIME arguing against government intervention in the “obesity crisis.” The upshot: Whodda’ thunk that twenty or…
Radley: I’m baffled by your post, for a couple of reasons.
1. Do you have any qualifications to comment on the public health care system? Last I checked at Brad deLong’s site, aligning incentives efficiently at a national level is mind-boggling complex. your credential are . . .?
2. Do you have any support for your argument that obesity is NOT a public health problem? For example, do you have info on the status of juvenile diabetes? or whether there is a causal relationship between juvenile diabetes and high school diets and/or food&beverage advertising targeted to the youth market? this would seem to be purely a factual matter — looking at the underlying causes of mortality and high-cost treatment. some facts would be nice, especially in such a complex and fact-driven area as health care.
3. you say “We’re likely to make better decisions when someone else isn’t paying for the consequences.” So you are promoting a national living wage under which everyone can afford health care insurance, and national regulation of the health care insurance industry whereby pricing reflects lifestyle choices? or are you arguing that people who cannot afford diabetes medication shouldn’t get it? Or are you denying that growing rates of obesity have any impact on our nation’s health care system?
I think you have very few choices here: either the poor should drop out of our national health net, or their wages should be subsidized to the point that their health care costs are not subsidized, or there is no relationship between obesity and health care costs. which one do you want to pick?
4. you say: “our government ought to be working to foster a personal sense of responsibility for our health and well-being” Isn’t that EXACTLY what Bush wants to do with his healthy lifestyles proposal?
5. you challenge decisions to ban the presence of snacks and soda in high schools. Now, as a good libertarian you presumably reject the very notion of mandatory school. but once the state is acting in parens patriae, shouldn’t it feed the kids in a healthy and responsible manner? Once you concede the premise of a confined environment, what is the appropriate libertarian response — especially with actors not necessarily mature enough to make the correct risk/benefit analysis? And shouldn’t you note that the political movement to get soda out of school comes from parents frustrated with the devil’s bargains made by school boards in which soda companies’ access to kids was exchanged for substantial cash contributions?
6. you appear disappointed with this nation’s quasi-nationalized health care system. you’re not alone. since some 43 million people either cannot afford health insurance, or believe that having health insurance is a sucker’s game, you have some work cut out for you on convincing people that the appropriate course is to make health care insurance MORE expensive (which is what will happen if this country follows your prescription.) i assume, therefore, that follow-up posts will contain brilliant insights into solving the free-rider problem, without the unpleasant problem of 50-hour waits in emergency rooms and death in the streets.
7. Fact-checked? Your article seems to be virtually fact-free.
cheers
Francis
All this PR talk just to prep for some big shakedown lawsuits… Why it’s almost as though liberalism were all about stealing or something.
Nah, couldn’t be.
Okay, Anonymous Food Scold.
But now that we have the labels…what exactly is the problem?
Why are people still getting fat? Can they not read? Are they caught in the tractor beams of BIG FOOD?
Or could it be they just don’t give a damn?
Food industries can grow while reducing the total amount of product sold. They do this by making prepared or convenience foods for the busy consumer who doesn’t have much time to cook. In other words they increase the value of the product not the amount.
Francis–
Fact-checked? Ha, ha, ha…
You have fact-checked nothing. Why don’t you prove why what Mr. Balko wrote is wrong, with examples that support your argument, instead of going off on spurious tangents about juvenile diabetes and national health care.
If you can possibly unclutter your mind of all that surplus self-righteousness, you will observe Mr. Balko made some very effective and valid points.
Charlie -
What on earth are YOU responsible for? “Lack of information” - in this day and age - is such a cop-out. With the emphasis on health ALL OVER THE NEWS (even local stations have a health segment) and stores - nay, CORPORATIONS - like GNC raking in enormous profits (by sharing information!), you’re just begging to be coddled and nannied.
Organic foods bursting out everywhere, farmer’s markets experiencing huge profits, local grocers competing - “profit” is a pretty good motivator.
What about companies that use the “organic” label? Know what they’re most interested in? Profit. Can’t do much good for public health and the environment if you aren’t in business.
Ingredients aren’t hidden on food products. Restaurants frequently describe menu items with..well…what they consist of.
You people are beyond help. “Super-Size Me” is being heralded as some sort of clarion call - what in the hell is wrong with people? If I smoked a pack of Camel Reds a day for 30 days and then determined that stairs were a little more difficult, what in the hell have I accomplished? A masterful grasp of the obvious?
What a cop-out.
Charlie:
Of course my ‘real name’ is not ‘The Monster’. It’s a nickname not unlike ‘Crash’ or even ‘Charlie’ (which I presume is a nick for ‘Charles’). One of the reasons the nickname stuck is because I’m a very large person. I’m not only quite tall, but could also stand to lose a few pounds. This is not the fault of McDonalds, Keebler, Edy’s, Sara Lee, or various all-you-can-eat restaruants. It is entirely my responsibility. If I would just go back to working out on a regular basis, I wouldn’t even have to change my diet at all. But it’s exactly this kind of decision that a legal regime can’t address.
Well, I have no problem whatsoever with giving people information, but I think we have that. We all know what food is high in simple carbohydrates or fat, just as we’ve known for decades that cigarettes aren’t healthy. But that didn’t keep these same arguments from being made to enact bans on tobacco use nearly everywhere, and huge sums to be paid by the tobacco companies to born by those remaining users. It also didn’t keep us from banning alcohol consumption entirely, with disastrous results.
They might even lie about the ills of certain foods, alcohol, tobacco, or other drugs. Bear in mind that these politicians are the very people who will enact the laws, promulgate and enforce the regulations you seem to be supporting here. Quid custodiet ipsos custodes?
You want me to object to laws against fraud? Nope. Fraud is bad, mkay?
My objection is to the idea that even with the information, we’re still too damn stupid to decide for ourselves…. but we’re somehow smart enough to vote to make the laws to force us to do smart things.
An epidemic of contagious disease is a public health issue. A poor quality water supply is a public health issue. Waste water treatment is a public health issue. Obesity and other forms of self-neglect are not public health issues. A reasonable parent is in a position to arrest obesity in a pre-teen child; a teenager exposed to any sort of reasonable parenting and school education has most likely been informed of some basic nutritional truths. Everything thereafter is choice.
There are a great many things people can do that are self-harmful, and I doubt very much that any government or people is sufficiently ambitious or prosperous to attempt to regulate all of them.
I skipped some of the middle posts, so if someone brought it up already my bad, but didn’t the government try getting involved in the nutrition game before? We all saw how well the food pyramid turned out.
While it is an interesting debate on personal responsibility vs. societal costs, until scientists can actually figure out what makes people obese and causes these health problems it’s irrelevant. Most people arguing for increased government regulation seem to think it will solve the problem and their opponents seem to be focusing on the personal responsibility angle. For the libertarians, since this argument failed with regards to drugs, alcohol and tobacco, why not try attacking this from the bad/non-existent science angle?
Mike–
Always happy to help advance science.
Cholesterol: 130
BP: 118/76
Resting HR: 62
Fastest half-marathon: 1:56:18
Chest: 42
Waist: 35
Height: 5′11″
Weight: 205
BMI: 28.6 (1.4 away from “obese”)
I don’t need to say what I think of BMI, do I?
I’m continually fascinated at how people talk about the food industry needing to make more healthy options available. Guys, go into any modern supermarket. Usually along one of the exterior walls, you will find an entire aisle or two of brightly colored things that look like plants. These are commonly known as “produce” or “fresh fruits and vegetables”. Many of which can be consumed without further preparation. If your diet consists primarily of these miraculous products, I can pretty much promise you that you won’t get fat.
No need to thank me.
I posted something that was meant to be a little snarky and came out a bit harsher early in the debate, so apologies to all. Especially Bronwyn, who told me to cut it out.
As for continuing the debate - I know Libertarians believe that their shouldn’t be any public health system. I just wonder if they really want to pay the cost of the disease reservoirs and general loss of productivity that would come of requiring that all people pay for all of their health care before providing it, instead of the turn-no-one away system in the ER we have now.
Or do they do triage by deciding which diseases were people’s fault and which weren’t before they treat?
Without abolishing this system, someone eats those costs, meaning the general public through government entities or pricing by hospitals that soaks the rich/insurance companies.
It seems to me that taxing some of the worst offenders in fatty foods would take some of the burden off.
And to those who keep saying we don’t know what causes obesity, just what planet are you living on? Too many calories and not enough exercise causes obesity. The genetics determine the rate of expansion. The rest is pretty unimportant details.
FDL,
You said
“1. Do you have any qualifications to comment on the public health care system? ”
Apparently the fact Radley helps pay for the public health care system is not enough for him to comment on it. You believe Radley needs to have some academic credentials to comment on the stupidity of trying to make everyone but the person that is shoveling the food down their throat responsible for their actions. You should realize that life is filled with plenty of well credentialed people who would need custodial care if they had to function outside the academic world. You should also realize many of their ideas have the same trait. It is painfully obvious to anyone with real world experience that credentials do not equal competence.
FDL,
The elephant in the living room that your arguments ignore is this. Almost everything a person does has some influences on their health status. If the government has to regulate what we EAT to protect us from ourselves there is nothing they won’t need to regulate to protect us from ourselves. In the end your argument means those that are either too stupid or too poorly disciplined to be responsible for their physical well being will drive the food (and a wide variety of other lifestyle choices) available to the rest of us.
FDL,
Juvenile diabetes is a complex disease and diet is just one of the factors that impact it. Exercise and genetics are two other factors, should we regulate those also? After all they impact the public health system.
Also, is imposing an extra tax on things a huge burden of regulation? Take the analogy of smoking: its one thing to ban smoking everywhere, and another to put a tax on it, at least part of which will go to subsidize the health care of people who get lung cancer who can’t afford treatment.
I’m ok with the tax, just not with the banning. Anyway, I know ardent libertarians won’t go for this, but there is a difference.