Obesity in America, the HBO documentary and why “Big Government” needs to intervene!

[itaest]

Obesity is responsible for an additional $190 billion a year in healthcare costs, or one-fifth of all healthcare spending. Billions more come in the form of higher health insurance premiums, lost productivity and absenteeism.

HBO's “The Weight of the Nation” is a wake-up call for America. The LA Times has a great article introducing the HBO documentary and notes that the program painstakingly documents “how hard the body fights weight loss and how ubiquitously our social and economic systems sabotage our best efforts to shed pounds.”

I believe there are two main culprits, (1) the US food industry and (2) the belief by many Americans (and promoted by Republicans at the $$$ bequest of the food industry) that eating habits are a personal matter and nobody has the right to regulate it, especially not the government.

A majority will easily agree with the first one, but regarding the second one, I believe it needs to be discussed a bit more and compared to the tobacco smoking situation. It took decades to convince people that smoking is bad. Even if some people still smoke today, they know it’s bad. And it was because the government intervened. But people have been told that food is good and have difficulty distinguishing between good and bad foods and the right and the wrong amounts or the right body weight.

What is the ‘normal weight’ in America?

Here in America (I have also lived in Europe and Latin America), some parents scoff at me when they hear me tell my daughter not to eat too much of certain foods and when I explain that I want her to have a normal weight. And they ask, rightly so, what is a “normal weight” to you? What I can say is that normal weight is already a very different concept if you ask anyone else in the world than if you ask an American.

The Catholic Online asks a good question :

Does the U.S. have an 'obesity-promoting environment?'
‘People have heard the advice to eat less and move more for years, and during that time a large number of Americans have become obese,’ IOM committee member Shiriki Kumanyika told journalists. ‘That advice will never be out of date. But when you see the increase in obesity you ask, what changed? And the answer is, the environment. The average person cannot maintain a healthy weight in this obesity-promoting environment.’

The Food Industry
As argued in a New York Times article, the commercials for sugary snacks and gut-busting meals that appear on TV are seducing our senses and are especially difficult to resist for children.

HBO television executive John Hoffman knew exactly which buttons the ads were trying to push and why, yet he still was not immune to them. “When salt is sprinkled over fries and juicy meats are sliced open in front of my eyes, I can feel myself going, ‘Oh, that looks good,’ ” Mr. Hoffman said in an interview, recounting a day when one of the advertising sequences was being stitched together by editors. The ads, he said, “were operating in parts of my brain that are outside my control.”

Just as difficult as it is for some people to fight the temptation of eating junk food or overeating, an equally difficult task is to regulate the food industry. From the LA Times article:

The Center for Consumer Freedom, funded by restaurant, food and other industries, condemned the National Institute of Health as joining forces with the nation's "food nannies." The Center said the agency's recommendations would "actively reduce the number of choices Americans have when they sit down to eat" and emphasized that "personal responsibility" alone was to blame for the obesity epidemic.

The Solutions
Restaurant giants and food manufacturers must curb their drive to hawk products that entice our brains’ pleasure centers and promote overeating; health insurance companies must quit their long-standing practice of paying doctors only to treat obesity-related diseases and make it their business to prevent obesity in the first place; and Americans must band together, pull themselves and their neighbors off the couch to exercise, and agitate for policies and communities designed to fight fat and promote health.

As the HBO documentary subtitle says, "To Win We Have To Lose".

For a longer version of this post with obesity charts - see immizen.com

[cynatnite]

1. Saw the previews for this today. It's on my to watch list. n/t

[SoutherDem]

2. Isn't big government already intervening

by making corn syrup and the like so cheap with subsidies? It is easier and cheaper to buy bad food than good.
Where I live I have 5 stores I could walk to and purchase processed food. I have to drive 5 miles to purchase a vegetable, fruit or raw meat. Also, some processed foods are dirt cheap. I have a car, some don't and that 5 mile drive would be more like 10-25.

[itaest]

3. Yes it is intervening in the wrong way ...

and when they try to intervene the right way, guess what happens?

The soda and food industry fights back with ads like the one in link below (paid by an industry group called Americans Against Food Taxes)

Links (can't add - disappear):

http://www.alternet.org/health/146947/big_soda_wants_to_keep_america_fat:_here?page=3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soda_tax#Lobbying

[unc70]

4. A virus is a major cause of obesity

Adenovirus-36 is probably responsible for 25-30% of the obesity epidemic, far more of the morbid obesity - the most overweight. I keep wondering how many decades blame-the-victim moral outrage can suppress scientific research?