Jelly Donuts and Junk Food: Uncle Sam, Save Us!

In light of all the heated discussion about health care reform, this Houston Chronicle article seems pretty timely:

Obesity is causing “death and illness on a massive scale,” according to a new study by University of Virgina and Urban Institute researchers. And it is all but impossible to treat.

“Unless there is some vast improvement in the efficiency of the health care system — and I mean vast — we’re going to be spending a lot more just because a lot more people will have diabetes” and other obesity related diseases.

Prevention is the only cure.

If prevention is the only cure, then it really doesn’t matter how efficient the health care system becomes, does it? Preventing obesity, however, is quite the sticky wicket. I mean… just how would a government go about that?

Junk food taxes are part of a growing consensus among public health experts to adapt the successful fight against tobacco to the more complex obesity epidemic.

So… everybody’s getting fat because they eat too much junk food? Have these experts not eaten out at a real restaurant in the last decade? I dunno about you (or them), but being served enough food to feed a small African nation seems a bit over the top to me.

Or maybe it’s just all that ethnic food?

Texas Sen. Leticia Van de Putte of San Antonio said education programs that have tried to teach kids about eating nutritious foods have “backfired” because they made the food their families cooked for them seem bad.

“We love Mexican food in this state,” Van de Putte said, adding that there are ways to prepare it to be healthier.

That’s funny, actually. They’ve been eating Mexican food in Mexico for… like… ever – but they’re facing a sudden, recent obesity crisis there as well. Did they suddenly change how they prepare it? Seems pretty unlikely.

Seriously. Aside from certain medical conditions, the cause of obesity isn’t particularly mysterious: Folks are eating way too much!

**gasp**

How can this be? Surely intelligent, self-respecting people aren’t doing this to themselves, are they?

Why no, they’re not. They’re innocents, caught in a nefarious plot to destroy the health of a nation.

“Every successful public health movement, whether it was sanitation or air pollution or drunk driving or tobacco, has shown that people can only be healthy if there are policies in place that support them in making healthy choices,” said Harold Goldstein, executive director of the California Center for Public Health Advocacy.

“We put fast food on every corner, we put junk food in schools, we got rid of PE, we put candy and soda at the checkout stand of every retail outlet you can think of,” he said. “The results are in. It worked.”

Indeed. I got my memo telling me I must eat junk food and candy bars a minimum number of times each week. Didn’t you?

Sigh…

Listen. I personally believe everyone’s well within their rights to consume 5000 calories of whatever they want every single day — even if they only burn off 1000. But we need to get a couple of things cleared up:

1. You have a choice about every single bite that goes into your mouth.

2. Obesity doesn’t simply appear overnight. It isn’t sneaky or sudden. As weight comes on, clothes get tighter. And tighter. That’s your body telling you to pay much closer attention to number one above. Listen to it!

Otherwise, we’re going to be having some very difficult conversations about this:

“Rising obesity rates are increasing health care expenditures per person in a way that is going to be very difficult to finance,” said Jay Bhattacharya, a doctor and health economist at Stanford University’s Center for Primary Care and Outcomes Research.

Because like the mortgage crisis, people who made less-risky choices are going to be pretty darned resentful at having to fund the problems resulting from those who didn’t.