Are there any Republicans or conservatives who feel that there should be some limit on the right to push the pro-obesity agenda just to enhance profts? I am wondering if you see any limit to what these folks should be allowed to put a pr spin, to. ******** Girth of a Nation By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: July 4, 2005 The Center for Consumer Freedom, an advocacy group financed by Coca-Cola, Wendy's and Tyson Foods, among others, has a Fourth of July message for you: worrying about the rapid rise in American obesity is unpatriotic. "Far too few Americans," declares the center's Web site, "remember that the Founding Fathers, authors of modern liberty, greatly enjoyed their food and drink. ... Now it seems that food liberty - just one of the many important areas of personal choice fought for by the original American patriots - is constantly under attack." It sounds like a parody, but don't laugh. These people are blocking efforts to help America's children. I've been looking into the issues surrounding obesity because it plays an important role in health care costs. According to a study recently published in the journal Health Affairs, the extra costs associated with caring for the obese rose from 2 percent of total private insurance spending in 1987 to 11.6 percent in 2002. The study didn't cover Medicare and Medicaid, but it's a good bet that obesity-related expenses are an important factor in the rising costs of taxpayer-financed programs, too. Fat is a fiscal issue. But it's also, alas, a partisan issue. First, let's talk about what isn't in dispute: around 1980, Americans started getting rapidly fatter. Some pundits still dismiss American pudge as a benign "affliction of affluence," a sign that people can afford to eat tasty foods, drive cars and avoid hard physical labor. But all of that was already true by 1980, which is roughly when Americans really started losing the battle of the bulge. The great majority of us (yes, me too) are now overweight, and the percentage of adults considered obese has doubled, to more than 30 percent. Most alarmingly, obesity, once rare among the young, has become common among adolescents, and even among children. Is that a bad thing? Well, obesity clearly increases the risks of heart disease, diabetes, back problems and more. And the cost of treating these weight-related diseases is an important factor in rising health care spending. So there is, understandably, a movement to do something about rising obesity, especially among the young. Bills that would require schools to serve healthier lunches, remove vending machines selling sweets and soda, and so on have been introduced in a number of state legislatures. By the way, Britain - with the second-highest obesity among advanced countries - has introduced stringent new guidelines on school meals. But even these mild steps have run into fierce opposition from conservatives. Why? In part, this is yet another red-blue cultural conflict. On average, people living outside metropolitan areas are heavier than urban or suburban residents, and people in the South and Midwest are heavier than those on the coasts. So it's all too easy for worries about America's weight to come off as cultural elitism. More important, however, is the role of the food industry. The debate over obesity, it turns out, is a lot like the debate over global warming. In both cases, major companies protect their profits not only by lobbying against policies they don't like, but also by financing advocacy groups devoted to debunking research whose conclusions they don't like. The pro-obesity forces - or, if you prefer, the anti-anti-obesity forces - make their case in part by claiming that America's weight gain does no harm. There was much glee on the right when a new study, using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, appeared to reject the conventional view that obesity has a large negative effect on life expectancy. But as officials from the C.D.C. have pointed out, mortality isn't the only measure of health. There's no question that obesity plays an important role in many diseases that diminish the quality of life and, crucially, require expensive treatment. The growing availability of such treatment probably explains why the strong relationship between obesity and mortality visible in data from the 1970's has weakened. But the cost of treating the obese is helping to break the back of our health care system. So what can we do? The first step is to recognize the industry-financed campaign against doing anything for the cynical exercise it is. Remember, nobody is proposing that adult Americans be prevented from eating whatever they want. The question is whether big companies will have a free hand in their efforts to get children into the habit of eating food that's bad for them. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/04/opinion/04krugman.html?hp
I think there should be strong and effective restrictions. Ironically, we are off the Wendy's for dinner.... Too tired from an afternoon of swimming to throw some dinner together.
glynch, this is a very irresponsible thread title. Claiming that Tyson Foods, Coca-Cola and Wendys, three companies that make products that do better when people eat their food and drink their sugar-packed soft drinks, represent all corporations is not accurate. We all know you hate big, bad corporate America, though, so it's not entirely unexpected.
The guy who invents a tasty, convenient, cheap, and healthy fast food lineup will become an instant billionaire. Jared would be his b****...
This is a matter of national security... Military Concerned About Troops' Weight By MARILYNN MARCHIONE, AP Medical Writer Sun Jul 3,10:32 PM ET WATERTOWN, Wis. - With America at war and in need of a few good men, Jon Schoenherr expected a warm reception when he walked into an Army recruiting office in this Midwestern farm community, intending to enlist. But a sergeant gave the 17-year-old some surprising news. "He told me I'd have to lose a little bit of weight," said Schoenherr, who dropped 50 pounds to qualify. Besides terrorists, germ warfare and nuclear weapons, military officials increasingly worry about a different kind of threat — troops too fat to fight. Weight issues plague all branches of the military, from elite Marines to the Air Force, often lampooned as the "chair force" because of its many sedentary jobs. Thousands of troops are struggling to lose weight, and thousands have been booted out of the service in recent years because they couldn't. However, one of the biggest worries concerns those not even in uniform yet: Nearly 2 out of 10 men and 4 out of 10 women of recruiting age weigh too much to be eligible, a record number for that age group. "This is quickly becoming a national security issue for us. The pool of recruits is becoming smaller," said Col. Gaston Bathalon, an Army nutrition expert. Unless weight rules are relaxed, "we're going to have a harder time fielding an Army," he said. Today's soldiers are supersized, averaging 37 pounds heavier than their Civil War counterparts. Military officials say that's not all bad, because most of it is muscle, not fat, and the result of better nutrition. "Large and in charge" makes soldiers look more formidable to the enemy, they note. But at an obesity conference in Las Vegas last fall and in interviews since then, Bathalon and other military officials detailed the heavy burden that excess pounds are causing for some troops and taxpayers. Weight problems add stress to already stressful jobs, costing many soldiers promotions and leading some to try desperate measures like rubber suits and risky pills to shed pounds. Problems don't end when active duty does, either. The Veterans Affairs health system increasingly is strained by vets piling on pounds and developing weight-related diseases like diabetes. Ironically, the big concern used to be soldiers not weighing enough. Congress passed the school lunch program after World War II, worried that too many high schoolers were malnourished and unfit to fight. "This is the same deal in reverse. We've got young kids who are not going to be qualified for military service. They're either unfit or overfat," said Col. Karl Friedl, commander of the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine at Natick, Mass. USARIEM, as it is known, has 170 doctors, dietitians, psychologists and other scientists who study military medical issues, from preventing heat exhaustion to coping with sleep deprivation. They view soldiers as specialized athletes whose physical condition can be a life-or-death matter. Increasingly, they deal with weight. It starts with new recruits. Each branch of the service has its own entry rules, but by federal weight guidelines, 43 percent of women and 18 percent of men in prime recruiting ages exceed screening weights for military service, Bathalon said. Army standards are based on body fat, using a chart for body-mass index — a ratio of weight and height — as a screening tool. If soldiers or recruits exceed chart limits, body fat calculations are done using a formula based mostly on waist size. Marines can be as much as 10 percent over weight standards to ship to boot camp. "The Marines say, 'Send us anybody and we'll turn them into a Marine.' They're pretty successful at it," Friedl said. Schoenherr, the Wisconsin Army recruit, was pretty successful, too. After weighing in at 215 pounds, he did his own boot camp during his senior year in high school, going to the recruiting center for 6 a.m. workouts, then downing a boiled egg or two and orange juice before heading to class. Lunch would be "tuna fish right out of the can" or a low-carb wrap at school, he said. After school, he'd lift weights. He's now a svelte 165 pounds and about to join a special forces unit. "I've had some people who have lost close to 100 pounds to join," said Sgt. Chad Eske, his recruiter. But often, making it into the military is just the start of the struggle. The military even has its own version of the "freshman 15" — after basic training, Army women gain an average of 18 pounds in their first year and often have problems with annual weigh-ins that determine whether they can stay. A survey Bathalon and others did of 1,435 troops referred to Fort Bragg Hospital for weight loss helps show the drastic measures some try. Roughly three-fourths did things doctors recommend — eating less, exercising more and downing more fruits and vegetables. But many resorted to potentially harmful things. Nearly half tried using rubber suits or saunas to sweat off pounds, a third of men and half of women tried appetite suppressants, and 1 in 5 tried laxatives. Eleven percent of women and 6 percent of men had tried vomiting. Half of the troops said stress was a reason they had gained weight, and half had come for help because they'd been denied promotion. "The Air Force is not escaping the national trends," Maj. Christine Hunter said at the obesity conference, showing a photograph of the new Baghdad Burger King, already the third busiest in the world. About 1,500 troops were involuntarily separated, or kicked out, of the Air Force from 2000 to 2003 for failure to maintain weight, she reported. In 2003 alone, more than 3,000 people were kicked out of all branches of the military for failing weight standards, Bathalon's study reports. "You lose your income, you lose your retirement, you lose your medical benefits," he said. Even those with long military careers sometimes develop weight problems afterward, burdening the VA health system, which treats about 5 million veterans each year, half of them over 65. They tend to be sicker than the general population. More than 70 percent are overweight and 33 percent are obese, said Richard Harvey, a health psychologist at the VA Center for Health Promotion. Pain is the biggest reason they give for not exercising, and 31 percent say a disability prevents it, he said. About 20 percent of veterans have diabetes, compared to 7 percent to 8 percent of the general population "We knew that there were enormous costs with that," Harvey said, so he developed MOVE, a comprehensive program of psychological counseling, nutrition, exercise, medications and even sometimes bariatric surgery. Parts of it started in October 2003 at 17 pilot sites, and the hope is to have a standardized program available to all veterans, said Dr. Steve Yevich, director of the VA health promotion center. It will be a big improvement from 2001, when a survey by chief of staff Mary Burdick revealed that only 37 of the VA's 160 major medical centers had weight management programs, ranging from intense programs "down to just a little old dietitian sitting there," Yevich said. Sending soldiers home healthy is the top goal, said Friedl of the Army research center. "It's not enough to recruit healthy young men and women and later return them safely to their families," he wrote in a recent medical journal article. "We now try to return them better than when they joined the Army with the promise that they will 'be all they can be.'" Increasingly, that means weighing a little less.
Isn't Subway tasty, convenient, cheap, and healthy fast food? I eat it all the time, it is good stuff. I rarely go to McDonald's or Taco Bell or order pizza. I do go out to eat a lot though, to regular restaurants, which in many cases is just as bad as fast food.
I would hardly call it healthy.....processed imitation cheese, processed cold cuts full of nitrates, pesticide laden genetically modified vegetables, artificially colored and food technology developed sauces squeezed out of rarely cleaned squirt bottles, and bread made from processed white flour and gluten.....not to mention, would you like chips and soft drink with that?
This is a very good point. People tend to forget/ignore there're more than just calories in the food they eat.
So the conservatives on the bbs think that anything goes when it comes to corporations pushing unhealthy food? How about coke machines and candy in the elementary schools. Does any concern about that still lead you with a "huh". I guess it is sort of like the reflex anti-environmentalism of the conservative faithful.
But even these mild steps have run into fierce opposition from conservatives....There was much glee on the right... Haven't seen/heard anything of the sort, anyone have some documentation (not from trade groups & the fringe, but from mainstream conservative punditry)? The quality of food in schools is a problem, and it needs to be addressed by parents, school administrators & school boards.
No doubt. I recently paid a visit to a local Middle School and had to walk through the cafeteria to get to the office I was visiting. The things they are feeding these kids just shocked the hell out of me. This must be addressed.
