McArdle approaches obesity as if it were a Foucauldian construct: a category invented by the government to justify an exercise of power. The government has no business intervening on the level of individual choice and it shouldn't get into the business of behavioral suasion because it always fails. She's right to note that information about health risks associated with overconsuming fat and sugar and salt are saturated throughout society, even supersaturated. Everyone knows how bad this stuff can be. For her, that's the end of the argument. Government can help to provide information about how to make better choices, but it cannot and should not try to persuade people to make better choices. Indeed, the push for people to make better choices produces the stigma that makes the bad thing bad in the first place.
That's not quite right. Obesity exists. For very heavy people, it's a serious health threat. It is to some extent arbitray, and indeed is invented by the government, which is true of many classifications. GDP is also arbitrary and invented by the government, but it is no less useful a concept because of that.
I don't really care if the government tries to persuade people to make better choices. But in general, government efforts to persuade people have failed. Government efforts at transparency are useful--it was the surgeon general's report on smoking and cancer that started the downward trend in cigarette consumption (and, natch, some of the upward trend in our waistlines). Government coercion has also proven somewhat effective--cigarette taxation and anti-smoking laws have, as far as I can tell, helped cut into smoking quite a bit. But the middle ground, where they just try to persuade us to change our ways, has given us genius moments like this:
. . . which have not made any noticeable dent in the behavior they were trying to change. Now, if there were great misapprehension out there about the downsides of being overweight, the government might make a difference . . . though dieting is tougher than quitting smoking for most people. But I don't think there are a lot of people in America who are under the illusion that being overweight is in any way desireable.
Of stigmatizing fat, Mark says:
This assumes that the stigma itself is misplaced. It isn't. Fat stigma is bad and harmful, and it ought to be reduced. But reducing fat stigma doesn't reduce the incidence of obesity; it actually seems to increase it in certain populations. What produces fat stigma is not a government or culture that hectors people to lose weight and exercise and then excoriates them when they can't; it's a government that expects individuals to lose weight on their own (which is next to impossible) while making policy that keeps people fat. The discrepancy between expectations and reality is cruel, especially for children.
I'm not sure what this means. The stigma against fat people dates back into at least the early nineteenth century among the upper classes, and the late nineteenth among poorer people--writing diet books was a popular and lucrative pasttime in the 19th century (it is to that nascent movement that we owe many of the cereal companies of today). Fat children have been brutally teased for decades. I don't see this as primarily a result of government policy.
It's undoubtedly true that US government policy contributes: lack of P/E in school, ag subsidies, etc., as Marc points out:
Labeling obesity a "problem" isn't a behavioral intervention: it's a social structure intervention. And here's where the individual model really breaks down, even for those who don't blame obese people, per se, for their obesity. Obesity is highly correlated with socioeconomic status. And it is a most acute problem among young minorities: African American women, Mexican-American boys, and Native American children have much higher rates of obesity than white children do. Poor kids tend to be more obese than wealthier or middle class children. The reason for these disparities are both obvious and counterintuitive: in general, people tend to eat what they can, which means that they buy the food they have access to. Wealthier people and people living in suburbs have access. Geographic location often correlates with lifestyle; history and social norms tend to be different, too, among ethnic groups.McArdle is right that it it's not fair for government to lecture people about weight loss and exercise, but she's right for the wrong reason: policy choices -- ag subsidies, zoning laws, education and budget priorities -- create a flow that, absent any intervention, are sweeping many young kids, particularly poorer kids of color, into obesity. Government's role isn't to scold; it's to make better policy choices. She's wrong about the interventions, too: some, like a physical education project in Somerville, Mass., seem to be working. Taking fast food vending machines out of schools and weighing children at least once a year has arrested the obesity growth rate in Arkansas. Nationally, the obesity growth rate also seems to be be slowing.
I don't see how I'm "right for the wrong reason". If lecturing people doesn't work, would it be nice or fair to do it even if the government hadn't contributed to the problem? But I confess, I am more skeptical than Marc that this can all be laid at the government's door. If US government policy is making people overweight, why is obesity rising all over the world? It is worse here than most places, but if obesity is correlated with income, we would expect the problem to be worst in the richest country in the world.
I'm not disputing that the environment has changed in ways that seem to make people get fatter--indeed, you'd have to be a total moron to dispute this. Nor am I disputing that some of this can be laid at the door of government, like our ridiculous agriculture subsidies, and even our zoning laws. On the other hand, it's also true that people really liked riding around in cars even before zoning--unless the landscape makes car ownership prohibitively expensive, people tend to embrace it, which is why car ownership is increasing so fast even in places like Europe. Either way, this cannot be the only reason. US government policy and bad zoning is not making people fat in Britain or Australia.
Marc adds:
Lo and behold, government policy has helped ensure that the raw foodstuffs that go into all the starchy, sugary foods that we eat are much cheaper. And when compared to the consumer price index, fruits, vegetables and healthy foods are more expensive than they were 30 years ago. If government policy influences diet on a macro scale, and if there is evidence that the diet is harmful, then, in theory, there would be no additional intervention if, say, Congress began to subsidize tomatoes in the same way it subsidizes corn, just a change in policy.None of this argues for a soda tax, or a tax on sugar, or a ban on, say, food marketing to children. It's just to say that if the obesity epidemic was nurtured by policy -- and it clearly was -- perhaps it can be undone by policy, too.
I think this is really, really optimistic. First of all, while it is true that produce has outpaced snack foods in the CPI-U, there's reason to think that this is a statistical artifact of the way that CPI is calculated. We have more fresh food available than ever before--year round raspberries, seventeen kinds of lettuce--and a lot more value-added products such as baby carrots and pre-washed lettuce. When people pay more for unseasonable produce or prepped vegetables, this shows up as an increase in the rate of cost inflation. If you look at the aggregate figures, we see that since the early 1980s (the time period from which the per-capita increases are usually quoted), per-capita consumption of fresh produce, particularly fresh vegetables, has increased dramatically.
The problem with all these sorts of theories is that they do an okay job explaining the latitudinal data--we're fat, we're subsidizing roads, we're subsidizing corn, so that must be making us fat!--but they don't explain the trend. I have not done an exhaustive survey, but I've been unable to find any study that even attempts to establish in any sort of rigorous way that Americans have become more sedentary in, say, the last twenty or thirty years.
The data is even less persuasive for other candidates. Corn, and simple starches more broadly, have been the cheapest part of the American diet for centuries. As a child, my mother didn't get any fresh vegetables at all eight months out of the year, because they simply weren't available. She got frozen or canned, but their two winter staples were sugared homemade applesauce and butternut sqaush, both of which are basically pure simple carbohydrate. Lean chicken was pricier than beef, but fatty pork was cheaper than either. Look in a cookbook from the thirties or fifties and you'll find that recipes for some sort of mostly starch dish are at least 65% of the book. And those weren't healthy whole grains, either. They were white flour, or rice, richly laced with fat and sugar.
With the possible exception of corn subsidies (I don't have good data on the relative penetration of corn into the food supply chain), almost every alleged deficit that is "causing" our obesity epidemic, from highways to bad urban grocery stores, is either basically the same as it was fifteen years ago, or somewhat better. So I find them deeply unsatisfying as a causal explanation for the sudden uptick in overweight people now.
To me, government behavior is at best an incredibly incomplete explanation of what's happening. A better fit is simply that food--all food--has gotten much cheaper. People spend less of their income on food than they did thirty years ago, despite consuming a lot more of it. Stopping them from doing so will require a great deal more than subsidizing tomatoes.
Don't get me wrong: I'm all for ending our moronic farm subsidies and unjust zoning laws. But I'd be willing to bet that if we did, we wouldn't even see a blip in the broader trend.
"Marc Ambinder, who has done a great deal of research on the subject"
I'll be he has...
Marc's point is simple. It's all good to claim that there should be no government policy to prevent more obesity or to lower it as it would not do any good anyway. But it would be foolish to ignore that there is government policy in place that tries to promote obesity and on face value it seems to have had some success. What now?
I don't get you wrong Megan when you say you are all for ending our farm subsides. I too don't think it would be a magic pill solution. But if subsides don't have an impact anyway anywhere - why not end them to have more money for obesity treatments? Etc. Marc has opened the door to a tangible discussion that does not center around what everybody knows anyway and he does also not argue that this topic is about elitists wanting to control how you look or how unrealistic it is for all women to look like Jennifer Aniston.
Marc does not have all the answers and does not claim so - but he also does not write nihilistic books about how everything new would be futile and how everything that is already in place does not matter anyway.
I would love to hear libertarian policy suggestions rather than the old spiel of "that's bad, that's useless, that's a myth, won't work, no go, even if it worked I would not support it etc...." I have not even understood your version of "let's do nothing". Does that mean reversing what we have been doing or merely not adding more?
PS: For example - is there really nothing that we can learn from smoking? Yes - some claim that it cannot be compared to food because we do not have to smoke to survive. But we also do not have to eat animal products to survive and they make up almost 50% of our diet - opposing any health advice from the scientific community - and are subsidized much much more than fruits and vegetables. Most other apes on the planet have been eating less than 2% from animal sources for millions of years and we still share the same anatomy with them. Was government policy regarding smoking really impotent? Has consumption not dropped by almost 2/3s in a few decades without prohibition? How did we do that. An analysis would be interesting.
I agree with you that what the government has been doing - putting out symmetrical information out there on healthy eating - was not enough and did not help. I agree that calorie labeling does not help - just as it does not help to have the tar and nicotine quantities on cigarettes. But what about the tobacco tax (equivalent of the end of tobacco subsidies) and the "lung cancer" labels? Somehow we did improve smoking habits. How did we do it?
Are you suggesting we should eat ape food? You should read Wrangham's latest book.
Are you suggesting that you have read and understood the points I am making? You should read Whatshisname's book. Seriously - if you were serious - Wrangham's book would explain to me how we lowered tobacco consumption?
So if some people's bodies "want" to be fat naturally, and will eat the amount of calories that get their bodies to that point, and forcing them to eat a normal amount of calories is like starving them, were a significant number of people perpetually starving 30 years ago?
Also, if body size is pre-set by our bodies and our appetites will keep us at that size, it should be impossible to permanently make someone who is naturally thin fat. And yet, it is possible to do this. I just don't buy that you can't convince your body that it should be smaller, but that you can convince it to be fatter.
Actually, in the book Rethinking Thin, it summarizes a couple studies in which people tried to gain weight. One was a study of prisoners that ate as much as they could and over four to six months gained 20 to 25 pounds. They were eating A LOT. Another study had people eat 1000 more calories a day than before. They gained about 18 pounds on average. It was predicted they would gain 23. So yes, people can get fatter but not by A LOT. The metabolism of the people in these studies sped up so that they had to eat more than 2000 calories a day to maintain their new weight. I'm sure there are some people who could eat 1000 calories fewer a day but I'm sure there are a lot of others who would be in a state of semi-starvation if they were to reduce their intake by 1000 calories a day.
Most people gain weight slowly. Of course you would not expect someone who ate 10,000 calories in one day to be 10 pounds heavier the next day. A lot of that food would be excreted without digesting it. If you gain 5 pounds a year (easily possible), in 10 years you will be 50 pounds overweight, and losing 50 pounds is a significant challenge that will probably take years to accomplish. General rule of thumb: it should take you about as long to lose weight as it took you to put it on.
PS: For example - is there really nothing that we can learn from smoking? Yes - some claim that it cannot be compared to food because we do not have to smoke to survive. But we also do not have to eat animal products to survive and they make up almost 50% of our diet and are subsidized much much more than fruits and vegetables. Most other apes on the planet have been eating less than 2% from animal sources for millions of years and we still share the same anatomy with them. Was government policy regarding smoking really impotent? Has consumption not dropped by almost 2/3s in a few decades without prohibition? How did we do that. An analysis would be interesting.
Sorry for the double post. Please ignore this one and refer to the one above.
I didn't mean to be a dick. My hackles get raised when people analogize human behavior to other species just because we share a significant amount of DNA. I like to stick with empirical studies and I totally agree with you w/r/t smoking.
I am sceptical of the claim that ag subsidies pay a major role in rising obesity. New Zealand, where I live, is the poster-child for removal of farm subsidies, having abolished them outright during an 80s budget crisis.
Of the six OECD countries that actually measure their populatons to quantify obesity, NZ came in second behind the US in the Lard Olympics. Whatever got us there, it wasn't payouts to Big Ag.
Incidentally, a footnote to the government report sheds some interesting light on international comparisons.
However, most countries use the self-reporting method to measure obesity whereas New Zealand and five other countries use actual measurements recorded by an interviewer. Out of the six countries that use actual measurements, New Zealand was ranked second highest with a lower obesity rate than the United States (34 percent in 2006), and a similar rate to the United Kingdom (24 percent in 2006) and Australia (22 percent in 1999). Of all OECD countries, Japan and Korea had the lowest prevalence of obesity (both 4 percent in 2005).
http://www.socialreport.msd.govt.nz/health/obesity.html
I lived in Samoa for a couple years, and I'm curious if the large population of Polynesians (Maori and Samoans) in New Zealand skews this statistic for NZ any. They seem to be a robust group of folks who tend to prefer high fat/starch diets.
Yes, the Polynesian population does skew the NZ statistics upwards.
Broadly speaking, those of Pacific Island descent are the most obese, followed by Maori (i.e. Polynesians indigenous to NZ).
As you will know from Samoa, Polynesian culture place great emphasis on feeding guests generously, and throwing feasts on every possible occasion. And yes, they do love starchy food. This is fine if you are working every day in a taro garden, paddling an outrigger into the lagoon to fish on a regular basis, and travelling most places on foot. It doesn't work so well if you are toiling at a desk in Auckland and living across the road from a fast food outlet.
Pacific Island migrants are also the poorest ethnic group in NZ, and the correlation between relative poverty and obesity is much the same here as in the US.
China, Korea and Japan also place great emphasis on feeding guests generously, and throwing feasts on every possible occasion. And yes, they do love starchy food.
Just being annoying, I don't have any answers.
Pulp Fiction Flashback:
Jules: You remember Antoine Roccamora, half black, half Samoan, used to call him Tony Rocky Horror?
Vincent: Yeah, maybe. Fat, right?
Jules: I wouldn't go so far as to call the brother fat, I mean he got a weight problem. What's the nigger gonna do? He's Samoan.
The FDA's standards should have required it to regulate trans fats as additives rather than as food. Tras-fats are linked to insulin resistance. Why has this not been brought up yet? Did I miss it?
Also, what about the shift from acute to chronic diseases as causes of morbidity? There's at least a suggestion that some of the obesity related problems (like thyroid disorders) could be caused by chronic inflammation.
Megan is absolutely right. Government coercion is not going to bring any long-term results (other than perhaps resentment). As I've struggled with my weight my whole life (5' 11"; varying from 170 to 290 and ususally (and presently) in the upper end of that range), Megan's comment earlier about "open despair" is dead spot-on. There is nothing that the government, or for that matter Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, or Nutri-System hasn't already "taught" me. I know all the proper nutrition and exercise principles. I know all the tricks that supposedly make them easier to follow. It's just not happening. It's true that transparency hurts no one, and I don't mind seeing calorie counts on menus, but that's ultimately not going to change my behavior dramatically. Living in a higher-density locale so that walking becomes a better option might be helpful except that I don't like the other properties of high-density living (noise, crime, lack of privacy, etc.)
This, much like climate change, is really only going to be fixed technologically, if it's going to be fixed at all. If your solution is wide-ranging radical behavioral changes, you'll get a few die-hards and zealots, and others for whom the behavioral changes aren't too different from their default behavior to go along. But, getting massive adoption by everyone is a fool's errand.
I sincerely hope that pharma develops something that can help reset by base weight to which my appetite naturally calibrates to a lower point than it is now. That innovation might very well save my life. If the government feels that it Must Do Something(!), plow money and effort into that innovation and/or (better still) provide an economic environment for a private enterprise to deliver that innovation. All the rest of this cajoling is just condescending garbage.
There is nothing that the government, or for that matter Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, or Nutri-System hasn't already "taught" me.
Just curious, what does that include?
Well it starts with the obvious:
- Eat less
- Eat healthier foods
- Exercise more
But it goes on to things that many, but not all people know:
- Drink LOTS of water
- Don't eat after a certain time (e.g. 6pm or 8pm)
- Make sure that whatever you do eat, you really enjoy (i.e. don't waste calories on things you only sort of like)
- Ask for a to-go box or doggie bag at the beginning of the meal, and immediately split off one-half of the meal to reduce your portion size
- Chew sugar-free gum to give your mouth something to focus on besides food
- With exercise, don't just do aerobics, but do weight training as well, since muscle burns calories faster than fat
- Don't have temptations around the house and easy to get
- Eat many small meals instead of fewer large meals
- Don't go to the supermarket when you're hungry
There are others that escape me for the moment. All of these ideas are sensible and, in the short term, can be marginally effective. But none of them fully tames the appetite, or the desire to use food to socialize, celebrate or commiserate, or the constant thinking about food.
"Not Eating" is an activity that requires a great deal of effort. If you ask a smoker who is trying to quit what they're doing, they'll say that they're "Not Smoking". I know it sounds like the absence of activity, but sometimes it seems as if "Not Eating" could be a full-time job even with all of the above tips and tricks.
- Eat healthier foods
Thanks. In part I was curious what the view on 'healthier foods' was. I have my own ideas, of course. I get a lot of stuff that's nutrient rich but non-calorie dense ( I'm not trying to lose weight, but if I get too many calories my ADD goes up a wall) But was curious on the conventional wisdom.
- Chew sugar-free gum to give your mouth something to focus on besides food
There's some reason to suspect that using various sugar substitutes don't actually help in terms of weight loss and often make things worse. I'm not clear on the mechanism for this.
Make sure that whatever you do eat, you really enjoy
I wonder about this. I mean, I tend to eat to satiate hunger primarily. There was a recent study showing that use of MSG correlated with weight gain. I'd think restricting yourself to foods you DIDN'T like but that satiated hunger would help a person to eat less, no?
Just curious, is there any history of PCOS in the women in your family?
Don't go to the supermarket when you're hungry
I make a point to always go to the supermarket only when hungry. Otherwise I get lazy and don't buy enough food.
But I'm trying to gain weight.
@Ryan W.:
I get a lot of stuff that's nutrient rich but non-calorie dense
I think, broadly speaking, that's what they mean by healthier foods.
There's some reason to suspect that using various sugar substitutes don't actually help in terms of weight loss and often make things worse.
Actually, I don't think the "sugar-free" part of the "chewing gum" suggestion was the most important part. The main idea is that if part of a food addiction is some sort of oral fixation, then keeping your mouth busy can help. Aside from any chemical impacts of nicotine, I suppose this is one reason that smokers tend to be thinner. (Not sure, I've never smoked.)
I'd think restricting yourself to foods you DIDN'T like but that satiated hunger would help a person to eat less, no?
The idea here is that if you're going to eat a certain number of calories (or, say Weight Watcher points) that you make sure that you "spend" them wisely on things you really enjoy. If you're going to "budget" for a dessert (or if you know you're going to cheat a certain amount), make sure it's worth it. Don't waste the calories on something that you like only marginally but happens to be convenient or whatever. If you're eating things you don't like, you'll fixate more on the things you do and be more likely to cheat and to cheat more severely.
Is there any history of PCOS?
Not that I'm aware of.
Couldn't agree with you more. It's amazing--the lengths to which people will go to shrug off responsibility for their own problems.
The government isn't going to hold your hand and weigh in with you every day. And honestly, losing weight isn't rocket science. The government can't dispense any information on obesity or weight loss that can't already be obtained by a simple Google search. And honestly, if people aren't listening to these other sources of information, it's doubtful that they'll listen to the government.
It's difficult to dispute the connection between obesity and economics, but it really just amounts to complacency and willful ignorance. Apart from the (small percentage of) individuals whose obesity is due to pre-existing medical conditions, people will make the decision to lose weight when it becomes important enough to them. Take it from someone who grew up in a middle-class Southern family with an obese mother and sister (my mother recently took charge of her health and lost 85 lbs over the past 8 months).
And, to be blunt, while economics perpetuate obesity in low-income communities, the culture of "fat acceptance" in such communities is even more alarming.
I tend to agree with your overall take but I would argue for even more caution here
I'm not disputing that the environment has changed in ways that seem to make people get fatter--indeed, you'd have to be a total moron to dispute this
It is possible, possible, that we are seeing sexual selection. That obesity alleles are becoming concentrated and this is causing an increase in acute obesity. If I was forced to take a guess on the reason obesity rates are increasing this would not be among my top factors but I would not rule it out.
I don't think we can say enough times that we do not know why people become fat and we know even less about how to make them thin.
Also, your posts support this but I think it should be said more explicitly that obesity is symptom. It may have multiple only vaguely related causes. What if someone asked "what causes fevers?" Well, lots of different of things.
A fever is a failure of the body to regulate temperature and I see obesity as a failure of the body to regulate weight.
Interestingly there may be some evidence that one can in fact help break a fever through semi-starvation.
http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0306987704005559
You were doing great but you lost me arguing against Ambinder's point that veggies have gotten more expensive compared to starches. The CPI has nothing to do with this since it gets crossed out in the ratio. It is relatively more expensive for a person to eat good food today than it was 30 years ago. A better argument is the one you made in the previous post that argued (I'm not convinced since there wasn't any good evidence but it seemed reasonable) people didn't actually eat healthier 30 years ago so we could discount food selection as a factor in the subsequent rise in obesity.
You've missed the point about the price of vegetables. 30 years ago, the price of fresh vegetables in Michigan in December was infinite. Now it's finite, but higher than in August. As a result, people in Michigan eat fresh vegetables during December, even if not as many as in August. The CPI from 1979 did not include fresh vegetables in Michigan in December as part of its calculation, but the CPI for 2009 does, which distorts the numbers. If you limit yourself to vegetables in forms which were available in 1979 (and don't live in California or other states with year-round growing seasons), the prices of those vegetables hasn't risen nearly so much.
For a simpler comparison, look at the price of a Honda Civic in 1979 versus the price of one today. Is that a fair judge of relative costs? No, because a 2008 Civic gives you much more than a 1978 Civic did. But the CPI factors in "Honda Civic", not "equivalent of a 1978 Honda Civic".
This is a little late to add in the conversation, but folks interested in seeing evidence of the insanity that Paul Campos is crusading against, check out this website:
http://www.actionagainstobesity.com/NationalActionAgainstObesity/NAAO.html
The founder, MeMe Roth, is a certifiable nutcase, who recently stirred up trouble at PS 9 on the upper west side, for crusading against cupcakes for birthdays. The incident was written up in the NY Times and got a fair bit of attention.
You can find it here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/16/nyregion/16bigcity.html
FYI, my son goes to that school. No junk food in candy or soda machines; pretty healthy school lunches; and I don't see any signs of an obesity epidemic on the playground.
And a revealing story about her own lifestyle is here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/may/24/meme-roth-obesity-nutrition
"But I don't think there are a lot of people in America who are under the illusion that being overweight is in any way desireable." There are lots of studies suggesting that being "overweight" is indeed desirable if your measure of merit is lifespan. Being very obese isn't desirable and being underweight isn't either. To make my point more general - most of the discussion I see on this topic utterly fails to grasp how tenuous the science seems to be on much of this business. "Eat healthily" commenters intone, as if there were compelling experimental evidence as to what that might mean. But, on the whole, there isn't; there's endless indoctrination, of course, but that's not the same thing at all.
Anyway, here's a request for help. Can anyone point me to the experimental evidence that was originally used to determine the ranges of BMI categorised as underweight, normal, overweight and obese? Thanks in advance.
I think Ambinder's trying to blame this on government because it justifies correction by government. The impact of governmental policy on increasing obesity is trivial.
Regarding corn ang ag subsidies: Megan, have you read "The Omnivore's Dilema?"
Megan, I think that you are over-arguing here. Marc's point is that the food environment has changed over the last 30 years (a point you largely agree with) and that government had a role in that change via its policies, and therefore government should undo those changes that it is responsible for. That's the crux as far as I can tell. well, and that it is important to at least start, b/c we are raising a generation of fat kids like never before. I don't understand why you have a problem with this.
Megan,
I think you have demonstrated a number of things with your arguments,but I think you have demonstrated less than you think you have. Eating behaviors, like everything else in our lives, are strongly conditioned by a combination of genes and experiences. It's entirely possible that we are conditioning children to eat progressively larger quantities of low quality food. Just because something is beyond your conscious control doesn't mean it must be a strictly genetic condition with no environmental inputs that can be controlled (in theory). Allergies might be a good analogy - it takes a combination of genetics plus certain exposure patterns to induce allergies in a population.
Once conditioned, it may be impossible to alter one's long term appetite or diet the weight off in any permanent sense. Taste preferences (fats, carbs, veg, protein), consumed portion sizes, and eating frequency are all conditioned by childhood experiences. I can't believe that this set of variables (or at least the set including all similar variables) have no impact on population obesity.
Megan, you asked, "why is obesity rising all over the world? It is worse here than most places, but if obesity is correlated with income, we would expect the problem to be worst in the richest country in the world.."
When was the last time you stepped into the Deep South? Here, where we're at the top of the obesity charts and among the poorest of the poor. The CDC has the data: http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/trends.html#State.
It's a lot cheaper for someone to buy from the dollar menu than cook a nutritious meal at home, which by the way, involves time and labor. Yes, that's lazy, but it's also a reality for some people living paycheck to paycheck and can't afford to buy a head of lettuce that costs more than the double-cheeseburger. What do you economic types call it? Cost-benefit analysis?
Healthy food is more expensive. I know because I buy it. I don't eat out in restaurants, well not anymore-- I have a family of 5 and we eat at home every day & night.
People don't move around as much as they used to-- from kids to adults-- from PE classes to xBoxes or whatever they're called, to us, doing work (or wasting time) on a computer. As a graduate student, I know that my own activity level has declined sharply in the last few years, and though I force myself to get to the gym, it's not as much as it should be. I'm about 15 lbs overweight-- that occurred within the last few years. I just had a salad for dinner, but the simple equation of more calories burned than consumed equals weight loss is true, for most healthy people (barring those with other conditions).
As far as the rest of the world: World meet Mcdonald's. It's the same thing. It's easier (and cheaper) to stop there and get a hamburger than cook a healthy meal.
Yes, I know, it's not true for everyone. But in the South, where it's the poorest, fattest, and least educated, it's reality.
BTW -- on children -- they gain more of their weight during the summer than during the school year, so it's not the schools that are the primary culprits.
This is another fad where smart and trim people want to dictate policy to those they consider stupid.
40 years ago the world was cooling and it was going to kill us. Now its warming and it's going to kill us.
20 years ago my daughter, who is child of small parents, was in kindergarten. The teacher was over the top concerned that we were starving the poor girl because she was so small. Eating disorders were the constant topic of concern at the time.
They got the health authorities involved, and we had to haul her to the doctor to be checked. He looked at me, looked at my wife and rolled his eyes. He poked and prodded the child, and said everything looks fine.
Now the other extreme, kids are too fat, too big. etc.
Yes we need a government program. Collect all small minded busy bodies and put them on a space ship. Tell them they are the first to get a place on a lifeboat, the rest of us will follow.
Derek
And the rest of the population dies from a disease caught from a dirty telephone.
But other than that, good plan.
Not a word about HFC high-fructose corn syrup. It's controversial, but it apparently impedes the body's ability to metabolize sugars properly. U.S policy has Americans paying four times the world price. HFC is cheap and it is in most soft drinks, breads, juices and everything processed. Since it has been introduced in sodas, obesity in children has been on the rise. Most everything else mentioned in the commentary has also added to obesity.
Is HFC used in all the other countries where obesity is a problem? Not to my knowledge.
Some confusion on my part here. Is MM saying that being over-weight isn't a public health problem in the USA, or that there's no role for government policy in the issue?
I'm all for government involvement if they will make more great ads like "your brain on drugs." I recall it as an absolute stoner classic back in the day.
Megan,
You are wasting your time. Read Ezra and comments there too.
Let us keep it simple - Government intervention in private affairs succeeds many times and on many occasions it fails too. In which area it succeeds and where it fails - there are not much hard and fast rules. By and large we know those areas. But as and when situation becomes exceptional if Government intervenes; you should not start shouting.
Really, your loyalty is all towards some stupid ideology. (You are a Boston Brahamin of other type....)
Have your loyalty towards results. As long as means are moral / legal; government intervention may be needed from time to time. If it means compromising some silly freedom for a while or freedom of few for a while; that is okay.
Your nirvana of A. Rand society does not exist. It is a failed approach.
So take it easy. Your blind ideology and tons of justification of the type 'how many angels can dance on a head of a pin' are hardly going to solve people's problems or save people's lives. So be at least little bit humble.
Oh well, may be you are a young white lady from elite Northwest class so how would you know humbleness? My fault, never mind.
It is worse here than most places, but if obesity is correlated with income, we would expect the problem to be worst in the richest country in the world. -- Megan
Right, but obesity is negatively correlated with income within developed countries. Which suggests that the reason why more people are obese is not simply that they have enough money to buy more food. Further, once you get past that first correlation, that the world's richest country is also the fattest, the correlation breaks down. The UK is not the second-richest country in the world, and Thailand, which is much poorer than Japan, now has more obesity among children -- just one of many poor but industrializing countries that now have obesity rates comparable with much richer ones, and for similar reasons.
>
Does anyone sensible actually believe that fat stigma only exists or has ever existed, here or anywhere else, because of *government*? Or anything top-down for that matter? How about we consider human nature and all the ways people find to feel superior to others, to create standards of behavior or being (some more arbitrary than others), etc --independent of state policy. I love how he compares two explanations for how fat stigma is "produced", and both point to government: what is it doing, what is it not doing, what is it screwing up. Let's not get so caught up in institutions that we forget about *people*, who might have something to do with how people view each other, and who were around before institutions and can exist without them.
My previous post was in response to this Marc Ambinder excerpt:
What produces fat stigma is not a government or culture that hectors people to lose weight and exercise and then excoriates them when they can't; it's a government that expects individuals to lose weight on their own (which is next to impossible) while making policy that keeps people fat.
Megan -
I have not done an exhaustive survey, but I've been unable to find any study that even attempts to establish in any sort of rigorous way that Americans have become more sedentary in, say, the last twenty or thirty years.
You don't need to do an exhaustive survey. ANY survey at all would have helped...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exercise_trends
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exercise_trends#United_States
I'm sure that you normally do fine work, Megan, but your posts on obesity have just been awful...
...I've been unable to find any study that even attempts to establish in any sort of rigorous way that Americans have become more sedentary in, say, the last twenty or thirty years.
"You don't need to do an exhaustive survey. ANY survey at all would have helped..."
Philipson and Posner did a noted study of rising obesity and put reduced calorie consumption as the dominatng cause.
As I noted with more information in a comment under the other post, it's pretty obvious -- what happened to the entire laboring working class that 40 years ago could get a good-paying job with a high-school education or less? They were here in large numbers then, but now they are gone. Workplace calorie-consuming labor has been declining for decades.
Philipson & Posner found that calories are cheaper now but that calorie consumption has not increased enough to account for all the increased body mass out there.
They found the increased cost of calorie burning -- that is, how to make up the calories they used to burn in their normal lives, people must now set aside extra time (losing leisure) and exert extra labor, and likely spend extra money too, to engage in compensating exercise -- to be the most influential factor.
Their logic is that with consuming calories cheaper and burning calories more expensive, people have adopted new "optimum" weights relative to the increased cost of weighing less.
~~~~~~~
"... Philipson and Posner also discuss a second effect of technological change on caloric expenditure. Technological change has lowered the quantity of calories expended at the work place ...
"In post-industrial society, the majority of work-related activities do not entail physical exercise. People must therefore pay to undertake physical activity by forgoing leisure. As technological change also increases wages, the opportunity cost of time spent exercising is higher, so at higher wages, people tend to exercise less and be heavier.
"Researchers note that the decline in calories expended on the job has led to a rise in off-the-job calorie expenditures. Growth in jogging and health club memberships attests to the substitution of off-the-job for on-the-job exercise.
"Individuals now choose how to allocate their time among work, exercise and leisure in order to maximize their utility..." etc.
I'm not asking what's happened since 1955; I'm asking what's happened in the last ten years, and twenty years, during which time obesity has spiked.
What's happened is cheap, fast internet access. What's also happened is increased segregation of high crime in urban areas.
What's also happened is an increase in people doing more weight training, which can give you an 'overweight' BMI without you being either a ripped hulk or actually out of shape.
There is a long list of things happening to various subpopulations that can account in aggregate for obesity spiking, and in fact looking at many subpopulations where extreme obesity is occuring, one finds this to be very obviously true.
I'm not asking what's happened since 1955; I'm asking what's happened in the last ten years, and twenty years...
You said you've not found a study that's been able to show that physical activity has decreased in the last 20 or 30 years. Well, there's about 10 studies in there that show physical activity has decreased in the last 20 or 30 years in developed countries. That data is in there, Megan. Physical activity has decreased, especially among children.
From: http://www.commonsensemedia.org/sites/default/files/CSM_media+health_v2c%20110708.pdf
As for the causes for the increase in population average weight (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity#Causes):
As I said before, ANY review of the available literature on your part would immediately counter your faulty beliefs about health, weight, and the causes of obesity. Perhaps you should peruse the wiki page and it's 70+ collection of sources on the causes of increasing obesity.
Your comments on obesity and the interview with Paul Campos simply don't stand up against a well established scientific consensus. You're simply treading down the same path as global warming denialists, crusading against conventional wisdom because the conclusions conflict with your world view and the truth is too inconvenient. Global warming is real, and so are the negative health effects from extra weight.
You keep expanding the boundaries and using weak proxies like media exposure. According to everyone, the trend has accelerated in the past ten years. But the trend in sedentary lifestyles, etc, has not.
Media exposure is a weak proxy? When is the last time you went jogging while you were watching TV? Come on, the issue is about physical activity and we all know that media exposure, especially among children, reduces the level of physical activity. It's just one of many reasons for why physical activity levels are trending downward.
According to you, since one trend (like a continuous reduction in physical activity) can't fully explain or match the trend in average population weight gain, then it must have little or no influence. Complete logical fallacy. To rule it out because it doesn't fully match the trend is ridiculous.
I was objecting to your statement that said you had not found a single study that showed physical activity has decreased. I provided several. Then you insisted it had to show a decrease in last 20 or 30 years when that data was already included. If anyone is changing boundaries of inclusion, it's not me.
I acknowledge, as should you, that a decreasing trend in physical activity levels is not the only factor involved. There are many causes of weight gain, and for the vast majority of the population (who have gained 5lb, 10lb, 20lb over the years) it is controllable and not some conspiracy by the diet industry. If you had done your research instead of talking with the charlatan Paul Campos, you would have figured that out.
I thought you answered that in you interview, that its statistical byproduct of arbitrarily drawn lines...
Yes, obesity doesn't exist. It's all a conspiracy. It's a "statistical anomaly". Just like Global Warming and holes in the Ozone layer.
BMI is not a good indicator of overall health. Waist to height ratio, physical fitness, and body fat percentage are much more important. However, average BMI is increasing, meaning the population is gaining weight as a whole. You can't fake that by drawing arbitrary lines. You can change how many people are considered obese or overweight by changing the BMI ranges, but people are still gaining weight. The overall trend is up.
Megan,
Obesity has spiked in the last 20 years because:
(1) Food, specifically simple carbs (sugar, but also corn, peas, beans, wheat) has generally become cheap, and thus people buy more. No real controversy here, BUT -
(2) The more insidious culprit (though given (1) maybe not the #1 cause) is that people are becoming obese because they are trying to lose weight! Let me explain.
In 1977, the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, led by Senator George McGovern, recommended Dietary Goals for the American people. Since that time, those recommendations have been taken as irrefutable by the vast majority of nutritionists, doctors, and other health professionals. And so of course, it is irrefutable conventional wisdom that to lose weight/be healthier, one must:
* Increase carbohydrate intake to 55 to 60 percent of calories
* Decrease dietary fat intake to no more than 30 percent of calories, with a reduction in intake of saturated fat, and recommended approximately equivalent distributions among saturated, polyunsaturated, and monounsaturated fats to meet the 30 percent target
* Decrease cholesterol intake to 300 mg per day
(Note: I've omitted items due to space restrictions).
Here's the thing...that advice is WRONG. And the science never really supported the advice. We can all thank Ancel Keys for misleading us.
If 55 to 60 percent of your diet is carbohydrates, then depending on your genetics you will get fat. Those who do not get fat will become the "skinny fat." All of these folks will end up at a really high risk for syndrome X (i.e., the diseases of modernity).
The reason earlier generations of Americans did not get fat are several:
1) more expensive food meant fewer overall calories (but note that they probably meant an epidemic of malnutrition, so skinny but relatively unhealthy)
2) they ate a LOT more saturated fats; this was the era before saturated fats were demonized; I personally consume approx. 30 hard-boiled eggs a week and I would be willing to compare my lipid panel against anybody
3) they died - if you are "skinny fat" in your 30's and 40's and have a heart attack at 50 you were a lot more likely to die in 1950 than you were today. So you did not live long enough to graduate from skinny fat to fat...and for the record, there were fat people back then, often those wealthy enough to afford lots of grains, flour, etc.
Oh, and there is NO SUCH THING as a "healthy" whole wheat grain. At the risk of being way over the top, calling whole-wheat grains healthy as compared to white flour, etc. is like calling cocaine healthy as compared to a speed-ball. Yeah, but...no.
I'm omitting a lot of details and nuance, just to make the general point. See Gary Taubes "Good Calories, Bad Calories" if you want a better handle on the science.
. . . what he said!
If we are going to talk about governments we might consider US state governments -- there's quite a big variation in obesity rates among states.
1) Mississippi, 26%
2) West Virginia, 25%
...
47t) Connecticut, 17%
47t) Rhode Island, 17%
47t) Vermont, 17%
50) Massachussetts, 16%
51) Colorado, 14%
The top rates are about 80% higher than the bottom rates. A lot!
State government policy? I doubt it.
Some might look at the numbers and say, "Poorer, fatter; richer, thinner". Plausible, but I doubt that too.
As I just commented under the other post with a little more explanation, my pet theory is "demographic transition".
Poor societies esteem the hefty, rich societies esteem the thin (in both cases for good reasons).
So as a poor society becomes rich its members who were born in a poor world where zaftig is good will put on weight to live the dream. Its later-borns who were born in a rich world will go the reverse way, obesity will decline. So states that have been prosperous the longest will be thinnest.
Mississippi and West Virginia, obesity >25%
The richest olde New England states and Colorado, obesity
I don't know for sure what the truth is, but the hypothesis is not refuted.
There are so many inaccuracies and distortions here it's hard to know where to begin, but here's one that struck me. You seem to think butternut squash and HFCS -- high fructose corn syrup, the prevalence of which is the issue, are the same thing nutritionally.
They're not. Butternut squash contains fiber, for one, and lots of phytonutrients. HFCS does not. Your mother would have remained pretty healthy if all she ate during the winter were butternut squash. Now, sadly she'd have grown up eating breakfast cereal sweetened with HFCS, which is often the first or second ingredient listed on the cereal ingredient list. She'd most likely have weighed a lot more, and sadly, been more constipated.
More simply, all starches are not created equally.
A better fit is simply that food--all food--has gotten much cheaper.
I think it's been a long time since the cost of food has been any kind of meaningful constraint on calories consumed in the U.S. And, of course, the rich are thinnest while the poor are the heaviest -- which is exactly the opposite of the pattern you'd expect if the price of food relative to income was the issue.
Unfortunately I suspect a subsidy for tomato production would lead to a drop in the price of Kat-sup and not much else. The corn subsidy lead to HFCS, not everybody gnawing on healthy cobs of corn
Megan, you wrote:
A better fit is simply that food--all food--has gotten much cheaper. People spend less of their income on food than they did thirty years ago, despite consuming a lot more of it.
Let's take a look at the 2 states with the highest obesity rates: Mississippi and West Virginia. They do not share a similar demographic makeup (MS: ~37% black, WV: ~3%). They do not share geographical proximity (MS: Gulf/Deep South, WV: Appalachia). The climates of the two states are mostly different (MS: subtropical, WV: continental).
However, there is one thing both MS and WV share that fits right into the obesity equation: they are ranked #1 (MS) and #2 (WV) as the poorest states in the country. As Marc mentioned, obesity is heavily (pun intended) correlated to poverty in the US. I know this frustrates you because obesity is increasing all over the world, and if poverty was the main factor in rising obesity rates, then why is the US the heaviest country, while 3rd world African nations can;t find any food?
You sort of answered this question in your post though: food in the US has gotten much cheaper when measured as a % of household income. I think you are of the inclination to say that this is a sign of our increasing prosperity (which it partly is), but there is another element to it - the high-supply nature of American agri-business, which drives down food costs. Thus our markets are flooded with food goods, for all income levels. It follows that for the poorest among us, their market is flooded with the cheapest caloric content, that which might be really bad for you as well. Of course these items are pervasive throughout all income levels, explaining the rise in obesity across the board. But the acceleration in of the obestiy rate in poor states has to be because of greater access to foods that are more likely to pack on the pounds. Food culture can only explain so much.
You missed the other part: MM said that obesity vs. thinness is a class thing. Food in the US got lots cheaper, so the poor can afford to be fat. The rich, always wanting to distance themselves from the poor, adopted thin as the new "in."
Also, IIRC, MM pointed out in an earlier post that being plump was a status symbol when food was scarce (i.e., too expensive for the poor to be fat).
Actually I have bizarre personal experience with this one. My family runs to fat - not obsese, but not thin. I'm 5'8" and a size 12 (168 lbs). So all my life I have fantasized and worked for and occasionally achieved a size 6-8.
Then on my second pregnancy I could not gain weight for love or money. It was a concern to my OB and he really thought I was not eating enough so I had to keep a food journal. They kept upping my calories until I was eating about 4,000 calories a day. I gained 9 lbs the whole pregnancy, and I was so. tired. of food. It was awful. I could not gain the weight. Having lost my first child if someone had told me to eat cardboard all day I would have. Also, this was my lifetime fantasy dream - all the ice cream you want. But no. Could not gain for love or money.
My son was healthy.
The year after delivering I was breastfeeding and I lost quite a bit of weight - down to a size 8 (145 lbs). I tried keeping up with the journal and I think I was averaging around 3,200 calories a day, partly due to my 6-month "pack 'em in" habit.
Finally my appetite went back to normal. My activity levels are not quite where they were pre-child due to less time for the gym.
3 years later, I weigh exactly what I weighed when I got pregnant (168 - my body's seemingly fairly absolute set point). Exactly.
I'm a believer that your body will adjust to keep you around where it thinks you should be.
It should tell you something that your body didn't seem to want you to be at 350, despite your familial tendency towards large frame/huskiness.
Part of the problem with invoking set points is that many of the people doing it are very, very fat, far beyond where their 'natural' set point might be. It is one thing to have a set point of 150 and try to fight your way to 110 on a large frame. It is another entirely to have a set point of 150 and claim that your set point is the 250 or 350 you presently are (which is how it works when most people are talking about set points).
I'm not sure about that - how would you know where their set point is, for one thing? I certainly didn't pick 168.
But also - I couldn't gain weight during my pregnancy even though I pretty much ate exactly the way people seem to think fat/obese people eat. No one could ever explain that.
Your pregnancy weight non-gain could be explained by reading natural childbirth sites and bloggers, who tend to have a lot more information about how much variation pregnancy can have on women's bodies (ranging from easy weight gain to none at all). Pregnancy hormones can do some remarkable things.
Considering how long it takes to get to some of those weights, it is quite unlikely 250 or 350 is a five foot four woman's set point. 180 might be, depending on her frame and how strong she is. The reality is that very very very few people have a 'natural' weight level that is morbidly obese. At worst, some are big-framed people or have physiques that collect fat more optimally (like people who gain most in the hips/butt), and they still don't have set points in the 400s.
For most people, set point means you can handle a weight range of 25-50 lbs and still be healthy, and up to 75 or 100 lbs in somewhat more extreme cases (usually men of specific kinds of builds).
There is even some evidence that humans have a kind of upper limit as to how much just fat they can even carry, based on how many super-fat (500+) people are carrying 100s of pounds of liquid rather than fat. So the whole set point thing is kind of a red herring, because human bodies do some really weird things, and weights should be dealt with in terms of bodyfat and healthy ranges, not so much raw weight loss for its own sake.
Apparently I'm not the only one that thinks you and Paul Campos have done a poor job on this issue:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/30/the-thins-versus-the-fats/
http://www.livescience.com/technology/050623_obesity.html
I don't really care if the government tries to persuade people to make better choices. But in general, government efforts to persuade people have failed.
I guess you are too young to remember the era when almost nobody used seatbelts and everyone just knew government efforts to get people to start using them were doomed to fail.
Andy, maybe you missed the minor details that seatbelts are required to be installed in cars by government regulation, and traffic laws with substantial fines for not wearing seat belts.
"With the possible exception of corn subsidies (I don't have good data on the relative penetration of corn into the food supply chain)..."
I love how you just dropped that in there as though it isn't the fatal flaw in your entire argument. You don't have any data on the relative penetration of corn into the food supply chain? I thought you read Michael Pollan.
Soda and other foods of little to no nutritional value are cheaper than they should be (and used to be) because we have subsidized the corn industry for so long. The main ingredient in most sodas, after carbonated water, is high-fructose corn syrup. This is the stuff that is making so many people so much fatter than they would've been decades ago, especially children. It's a simple carbohydrate (you are confusing complex and simple carbs throughout this post) that fattens people up very quickly. When you and I were in school, soda machines were rare. Nowadays, school districts are PAID by soda companies to allow their vending machines. Portions have grown, too. Soda is pure junkfood, and in some parts of the world it is easier and cheaper to acquire than potable water. Many Americans are getting all the calories they need simply by drinking several liters of soda a day. This allows all the other food they consume to be converted into stored energy, such as fat.
"A better fit is simply that food--all food--has gotten much cheaper."
Um, no, not "all food" has gotten cheaper. One of the reasons people eat so much beef and chicken is its low cost compared to seafoods. You can get chicken for a few bucks a pound at any supermarket. Two 6-ounce tins of sardines costs about the same. (And sardines and herring are so cheap because they are often bought up to turn into feed for livestock!) If you go to buy a larger fish such as haddock, you'll be paying at least $7 per pound, sometimes way more. Even farmed salmon is gonna run you more than just about any basic livestock product. Meanwhile, a standard carton of Tropicana OJ is $2.50, whereas the same volume of Coke or Pepsi is $1.
Decent fresh fish wasn't available at all in most places most of the year until pretty recently. Again, you're trying to explain a longitudinal change with latitudinal data.
No, I'm not. I'm pointing out that some industries are subsidized while others aren't, and some of those subsidized industries end up making us fatter and more diabetic than we would be if the playing field were leveled.
Another reason why I rarely pop in these days - haven't we done this one already? As tinisoli observes:
But more than that, the cheap fatty foods are easier to prepare. As I noted last year:
The choice then is not just between pizza and salmon, but a pizza made from scratch at home vs a store-bought frozen pizza permeated with high-fructose corn-syrup, simple starches, and greasy meat with emulsifiers. These days, most people who eat pizza for dinner probably didn't invest a lot of time in preparing it.
The question then is, "Can government successfully intervene, given that the above scenario is the correct one?" I would say yes.
Media exposure is a weak proxy? When is the last time you went jogging while you were watching TV? Come on, the issue is about physical activity and we all know that media exposure, especially among children, reduces the level of physical activity. It's just one of many reasons for why physical activity levels are trending downward.
According to you, since one trend (like a continuous reduction in physical activity) can't fully explain or match the trend in average population weight gain, then it must have little or no influence. Complete logical fallacy. To rule it out because it doesn't fully match the trend is ridiculous.
I was objecting to your statement that said you had not found a single study that showed physical activity has decreased. I provided several. Then you insisted it had to show a decrease in last 20 or 30 years when that data was already included. If anyone is changing boundaries of inclusion, it's not me.
I acknowledge, as should you, that a decreasing trend in physical activity levels is not the only factor involved. There are many causes of weight gain, and for the vast majority of the population (who have gained 5lb, 10lb, 20lb over the years) it is controllable and not some conspiracy by the diet industry. If you had done your research instead of talking with the charlatan Paul Campos, you would have figured that out.
In fact, only seven far-from-airtight studies back in the 1960s suggested global cooling might be a trend. This has generated media attention far out of proportion to its likelihood ever since. There was never any consensus in the scientific community then that we might enter another ice age. I wish I could provide the link, but I read this as an historical clarification within the last week. But people who remember "everyone was saying" something back then do so as though it neutralizes what "everyone is saying" today, and thus scientists are either (a) morons who never know what they're talking about or (b) corrupt and somehow hoping to profit from our gullibility. There are people who profit from the status quo, and some may hope to profit from changing it, but the studies need to be addressed as written, not as remembered decades later.
Megan--yeah, Ambinder responded. So did Ezra Klein, in what has to be the politest smackdown of epic proportions I've ever read. Would love to read your response to him.
See, this is what happens when you write about issues you know nothing about (health care) and fling about false, unsubstantiated accusations (obesity experts think poor people are stupid. No, you're just projecting now. *You* might think poor people are stupid. They certainly don't.)
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/07/on_megan_mcardles_case_againt.html#more
I think there is no hope for a reasonable policy on diet from a govt which is directed in part by a Senate that gives two Senators apiece to a large number of relatively low population states that grow wheat and corn. Whatever policy such a government comes up with will protect and favor the interests of these states. For example, the food pyramid, which preached that we should all eat more starch than an Italian peasant, was created by a Senate committee overseen by George McGovern of South Dakota, famous wheat state. Henhouse security is in the hands of the foxes, I am afraid.
People, please pay attention to commenter Russel because he is the only one that understands this subject. Do you remember the "food pyramid" with "good" grains and breads on top and the "bad" meat and fat on the bottom? Did it influence you? If it did, you were influenced by government because it was a political creation of the government. Most people commenting here sound like their views of diet and nutrition were based on it. Did you know they did away with it. Not sure why they did, but I am sure it has partly to do with the fact that the govt. finally realized it was based on widely accepted mythology and not on science. Again, as Russel suggest, read renowned science writer Gary Taubes latest, "Good Calories, Bad Calories".
I was in the middle of reading it when I happened on this discussion at Instapundit, and his lead in "did the govt. cause obesity", sparked my curiosity. I had to search the post to find the one guy that got it - Russel. Read his post and then read Gary Taubes.
... and one last thought. I would recommend that when the govt. is busy staying out of our bedrooms, also stay out of our kitchens,and resturants, etc. We were much better off, i.e., no obesity epidemic, before the govt. entered our kitchens. Read Taubes.
La Marque HFC ?
It has quietly disappeared from the list
of ingredients on some products; Some
others, including one Restaurant chain
salad bar, advertise HFC-free.
I think they anticipate a Class-Action
lawsuit.
I am a total, mob-following conformist,
so here is _my_ uninformed opinion:
Our poor people are even more stressed than the rest of us,
which produces a psychological/physiological double whammy:
They eat more, and their bodies store every last erg.
There is hope: The body divides ergs between heat and power,
and the biochemical regulator can be set to "All Heat",
causing weight loss; Unfortunately, breathing stops.
Once that little glitch is ironed out...
A point no on seems to have brought up is that much of the growth in "obesity" is a statistical artifact of the government (NIH, CDC, WHO) lowering the bar so that PEOPLE WHO WERE NOT DEFINED AS OBESE 30 YEARS AGO NOW ARE.
The NIH has only been using BMI to define obesity since 1985. Good history of BMI here with links:
http://www.slate.com/id/2223095/pagenum/all/#p2
And in 1998 the categories were changed, adding "overweight" and lowering the bar for "obesity". Commentary here:
http://www.bigfatblog.com/bmi-change-1998
http://www.halls.md/body-mass-index/bmirefs.htm
Following the CNN links is instructive. The average woman (5'4" 155 pounds) is now overweight BY DEFINITION.
So yes, the government did create the problem and could fix it by fiat--change the BMI classifications back and the epidemic largely disappears.