A woman from the Colorado Department of Public Health sends me an email in response to my Worth magazine essay on obesity:

I just read your article in which you claimed that America’s ability to feed all its citizens has resulted in the increase in obesity. Maybe you are unaware of the numbers of Americans who go to bed hungry every night. In addition, perhaps you’re unaware that the diet that is imposed on the poorer sections of America is one of high-fat and high-carbohydrate, since these are the cheaper choices at the grocery store, as opposed to lean meats and fruits and vegetables, which are ridiculously expensive, here in this country of overwhelming plenty…as you seem to describe it.

Actually, what I wrote was that in the proper historical perspective, the fact that our poor are consuming too many calories isn’t such a bad problem to have. Also, the notion that produce is more expensive than calorie-dense processed foods just isn’t true. A USDA study last year found that you can get your daily dose of fruits of vegetables in hundreds of different combinations for less than the cost of a single candy bar. Granted, it’s not as easy to prepare six servings of vegetables as it is to microwave a Hungry Man, but that isn’t a problem with free markets, food corporations, or capitalism. Critics like the emailer simply don’t like the choices some people are making. She goes on:

I think you should take a few classes in Epidemiology before you claim that America’s diet has been good for the people. Your picture shows me that you’re a fairly young man, so you should have many years ahead of you in which you can educate yourself, and watch the rising rates of diabetes and other ills associated with obestity.

Condescension aside, I have looked at the epidemiology tables, as have lots of people smarter than me. There is, simply, no link between body fat and chronic disease and/or early death. The diseases most associated with obesity are in rapid decline, with the possible exception of diabetes, which can be explained by a host of other factors other than our expanding waistlines (including an aging population, an inactive population, increased awareness and diagnosis, and the CDC’s decision to define down the blood sugar content required for a diagnosis of diabetes). In any case, I never claimed that America has a healthy diet. I claimed that the evidence suggests that contrary to the warnings from public health activists, obesity isn’t nudging us toward a full-scale public health catastrophe. And if we’d stop socializing health care, there’d be nothing “public” about body fat at all. It’d be a private matter to be dealth with by you and your doctor, as it ought to be.

I’ve often noticed that lurking just beneath the surface of the public health crowd is an avid socialist-communist. My emailer is no different. She concludes:

If the government really wants to help its people, it should provide lean meats, fruits and vegetables free of charge to its citizens. Free exercise equipment and memberships at exercise clubs would be beneficial as well. What better anti-obesity drug could there be?

Emphasis mine.

Lovely. Of course, we already do provide food stamps to low-income folks. And they choose to spend them on processed, calorie-dense foods. What would my emailer suggest we do if the government starts to provide free lean meats, fruits, and vegetables to its citizens, and its citizens still chose to eat tastier high-fat, high-carb foodstuffs? What then? Do we take the bad stuff away? Ban it? Should we be thinking about Twinkie Prohibition?

I emailed her back, and offered my usual counter-argument to the charge that poor people don’t have access to low-cost produce: Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is the one place that has figured out how to deliver fresh fruit and vegetables and lean meats to low-income people at affordable prices.

Of course, suggesting more Wal-Marts in low-income areas makes public health activists apoplectic. It doesn’t sound nearly as nice as “community-owned farmer’s markets” or “free government food for everybody.” But it does expose their agenda. Which is that this whole obesity debate is for many activists a debate about the evils of “too much choice,” capitalism, and the alleged dangers of consumerism. And their “solutions” are usually little more than thinly-veiled, back-door attempts at socialism.

But the problem isn’t that capitalism isn’t providing healthy options. It’s that public health activists don’t trust low-income people to make the correct choices for themselves. So they want to step in and start making those choices for them — by limiting choice for everyone else, if necessary.

There’s much more going on in this obesity debate than mere pant size.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 10th, 2005 at 10:28 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.