Nutrition activist Bary Popkin announced at a conference last week that obesity at officially “overtaken” malnutrition at the world’s top nutrition-related “burden.” Popkin rather crudely suggests that because there are by his measure some 1.4 billion obese versus just 800 million facing starvation, obesity now poses more of a threat than malnutrition. Popkin suggests that in response, “food prices could be used to control people’s diets” — nanny-speak for a fat tax.

The food industry-backed Center fo Consumer Freedom, I think, puts it best:

Even if Popkin’s calculations stand, there’s still something seriously wrong with his picture. Are overeating and starving really comparable problems? Can they really be (sorry) weighted equally? Does a Des Moines factory worker who is ten pounds overweight have a like interest in correcting his health as a chronically undernourished Sudanese child?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you have officially lost all perspective. Welcome to the ranks of the food cops.

The obesity crusade really is a moral panic, immune to any semblance of perspective or propriety.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 17th, 2006 at 4:33 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Nanny State, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.