Obesity in America

Sizable solution?

A scary problem – and an even scarier “solution”

I know I’ve been talking a lot about obesity lately, but what can I say: It’s big news. The trend toward our increasing bulk as a nation has been disastrous for years, but the latest data is really sobering. According to the latest numbers released by the Centers for Disease Control.

Around 120 million Americans (64.5% of the adult population), are either overweight or obese
Over 9 million U.S. children (around 15% of them) are either overweight or obese
The number of clinically obese American adults increased more than 3% from 2003-2004
Over one fourth of adults in 10 U.S. states (mostly in the historically hefty southeast) are now obese
Some government estimates predict that fully 3/4 of adults could be overweight by the year 2008

Of course, all this should surprise no one with 2 eyes and half a brain. What should surprise anyone is what many people think should be done about it. According to a recent report commissioned by an organization called the Trust for America’s Health (TFAH), it’s the GOVERNMENT who isn’t doing enough to prevent obesity. To them, I say this:

The government are the folks who give us nothing but bloated things: The tax code, the Department of Motor Vehicles, the Federal budget, the U.S. trade deficit, the welfare and INS systems, and Congress itself. All these things are ballooning out of control, and have been for years

Do we really think they can manage to make us thinner?

While I applaud some government-based initiatives aimed at curbing obesity (like some, but not all, revamping of school lunch programs), I’d be hopelessly nave to think that the Feds are the answer to the obesity crisis. Yet non-profit think tanks like the TFAH are buying into the idea hook, line, and doughnut. Their “big ideas” for things the Feds should be forcing down our throats (along with the grains and sugary vegetables the bloat-breeding Food Pyramid recommends) include subsidized GYM MEMBERSHIPS and neighborhoods designed around foot travel. Yeah, that’ll work. Keep reading

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Raising dietary responsibility

Beyond free iron-pumping for Medicaid recipients and a toe-path on every corner, the brilliant minds over at the TFAH also propose hyper-regulation of the food industry. As I’ve written before, this isn’t where the problem lies: If people didn’t seek out food that they know is terrible for them (like fast food and soda pop) there’d be no need to regulate the junk food biz – because it wouldn’t exist. It would be bankrupt!

No, what the TFAH and other organizations don’t seem to ever propose are any efforts at addressing the real root of the obesity problem: Poor parenting.

Think about it. If we as a nation weren’t so misguidedly obsessed with our children’s self-esteem (the psychobabble “it” term of the new millennium, by the way) to the point where we’re afraid to tell them they can’t have their Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs cereal every morning for breakfast – washed down with a quart of Coke, of course – we MIGHT be making some progress in the war against obesity in coming generations.

Of course, just saying “no” to junk food for our kids would only go so far. We’d also have to stop eating the stuff ourselves 3 meals a day. That means not stocking our shelves with Wonder bread, cookies, and Twinkies – and not hitting the drive-thru or calling out for delivery pizza every other night for dinner.

In other words, we’d have to make some changes ourselves to better set a healthy example for kids to follow, so they don’t end up diabetic, hooked on prescription poisons, or dead of heart attacks at 36

And it’s that whole “setting an example” part we can’t trust our government to do.

Always “raising” awareness – and red-flags,

William Campbell Douglass II, MD