Speaking Of The Nanny State
A growing number of Americans are dangerously obese and obviously need big government intervention to help win the battle of the bulge. That’s the conclusion of new report released by the Institute of Medicine at a three-day Weight of the Nation and Centers for Disease Control conference.
The IOM warns that 42 percent of Americans will be obese by 2030, in the absence of new government programs, policies and taxes to help avert the healthcare crisis.
America’s obesity epidemic is so deeply rooted that it will take dramatic and systemic measures – from overhauling farm policies and zoning laws to, possibly, introducing a soda tax – to fix it, the influential Institute of Medicine said on Tuesday.
In an ambitious 478-page report, the IOM refutes the idea that obesity is largely the result of a lack of willpower on the part of individuals. Instead, it embraces policy proposals that have met with stiff resistance from the food industry and lawmakers, arguing that multiple strategies will be needed to make the U.S. environment less “obesogenic.”
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“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 of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine told Reuters. “That advice will never be out of date.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 way to change that environment is through the free market and allowing individuals to take personal responsibility for … um, never mind. The solution, of course, big government and the collective society:
Strategies like a possible soda tax and new zoning laws to encourage walking and biking are designed to “reinforce one another’s impact to speed our progress,” said panel Chairman Dan Glickman, a former secretary of Agriculture.
The food and beverage industry, as well as its marketers, must cooperate or face possible federal intervention on issues like childhood nutrition standards, the panel warned.
Schools and employers also have a part to play, the report says, recommending students spend 60 minutes each day exercising and that workplaces expand wellness programs.
This is how government expands its reach and pads its own pockets, starting out with lofty recommendations that inexorably morph into actual policy. Before long we’ll be reading horror stories about government agents searching school lunch boxes, confiscating homemade meals, and forcing children to eat government-approved nuggets.
Wait, what?
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