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Legislating Obesity: Can You? Should You?
Banning transfats, publishing calorie counts at restaurants, banning high fructose corn syrup, revamping school lunch programs, sin taxes … some of these ideas have already been implemented into law and some could be passed in your town soon.
What do you think about it? Can you legislate “fat people”? Is that even fair? Are we just creating a new level of classicism?
Some Approaches
There are a few viewpoints. First is that people are overweight because they made themselves that way. You can’t regulate what someone puts in their mouth. It’s not government’s fault that people are overweight and there’s no point trying to regulate it. (This opinion is heavily favored by food lobbying groups.)
Regulating the available food is another approach. Banning trans-fats and high fructose corn syrup. Taking vending machines out of schools loaded with junk food. Forcing fast food restaurants to visibly post nutrient information in their stores. Revamping the USDA guidelines with less lobbying influence and more common sense.
A final option is the sin tax. Similar to cigarettes and alcohol, if you want it you’ll have to pay extra for it and we’ll take that money and use it towards keeping you healthy when you inevitably wind up in our health care system.
A Huge Burden
There are some very serious problems related to obesity. Healthcare costs go up exponentially, worker absenteeism increases, disability claims increase, productivity goes down. The Medicare/Medicaid system will literally buckle under the weight of obesity as heart disease, diabetes and other weight related illnesses continue to tax our system. It costs Americans billions and billions now. Those costs will only increase.
There is a personal toll as well, the embarrassment, the inability to do things people used to do before, the personal health issues people have to deal with, just plain feeling lousy.
My Thoughts
Create a Tipping Point. Yes, I’m invoking Malcolm Gladwell. By educating people and creating buzz we can gain people’s awareness and start to create a change for the better. Let’s face it, we didn’t know trans-fat was that much worse for us when we started putting it in food in the ’70s, we just knew that it increased the shelf life of processed delicacies such as Ding Dongs.
Chide the Food Industry. Michelle Obama is doing a lovely job of this, we need to help her. Let them know they were naughty and they need to get on board now. With a little bit of chiding and a big threat of heavy legislation they can be strongly encouraged to stop using the bad stuff and start using the good stuff.
Legislate what our kids get. I do think we should rip vending machines out of every single school in the country. I didn’t have them when I was growing up and I didn’t feel deprived. If I was thirsty I just took a sip from the water fountain.
Create a sensible food lunch program. Jamie Oliver did it in England, why can’t we do it here? These are our kids people! Your child will eat 2,400 to 2,800 meals from the age of 3 to 18 in the school lunch program. Do you want them to eat crap? What will this do to their long term health? We need to fix this and fix it quickly.
Leverage the Media. Continue shows like “Food Revolution,” cover the statistics of the obesity epidemic to help give people a wake up call, show someone struggling with their weight (and not just for laughs) on a prime time sitcom. Make it real and people will notice and change.
Leverage the Medical Community. Doctors would much rather work with obesity prevention measures now than with scraping out someone’s arteries later. They don’t have the proper training and information though. Develop a new type of general care practice that has nutritionists and fitness specialists onsite to work with the public.
Lead by Example. Be the person who cooks healthy food. Be the family who plays in the park after dinner and goes on hikes on the weekends. Set the example, invite friends along, and see who else joins in.
What do you think? I seriously debated the sin tax as one of the items to throw in. What do you like or dislike? What would you do to lower obesity rates?
Popularity: 10% [?]
If the government taxes sugary drinks, and applied the tax to the health system overhaul, that would be a win in my book.
Of course my beverages of choice are primarily coffee and tea.
NOW a caffeine tax would seriously twist my nickers!
The body scan image was a solid choice to lead the topic with.
One of the major problems with food in North America is that fast food is cheaper than real home cooked food.
Have you seen the movie Food Inc.? If you haven’t rent it today! Shocking what is going on.
The movie shows how big fast food businesses (like McDonalds) control much of the food industry even down to the point of what the cows are fed so all the Big Macs will taste the same everywhere. Certain food industries are even subsidized by governments keeping the bad foods priced low so they’ll be cheap for the fast food joints. The list goes on and on.
Parents take need to take more responsibility. From a very young age we take our kids to fast food joints as a “treat”. McDonalds gives kids toys with their food to collect, so they’ll want to keep coming back. It’s a huge marketing machine and it takes a lot of will power to say “no” to all that. But parents can and have to.
Grocery stores sell pre-made, ready-to-eat, 5 minute meals so that we are at the point where we don’t even think about what we put in our mouths. We are just filling the void, because we are too busy working or whatever.
All of this fast and cheap food contributes to the growing obesity problem. Then we spend money on gyms and weight loss programs to get rid of the fat. So much for fast, cheap food! Take the time to do it from the start the results will show. You will feel better too!
Buy fresh vegetables and fruit, and buy good quality meats from small farms, cook with less packaged sauces, (use herbs instead), and prepare everything yourself. You will feel and look better both physically and mentally. No additives, MSG, trans fats, etc.
So what do all these random unorganized thoughts add up to? Personally I think the government already does regulate obesity, but maybe not in the way you think. They make it hard for the small boutique farms to compete. But you can still seek out better sources of food. If you care about your family’s health and weight you need to think about what you put in your mouth and your kid’s mouths. It’s that simple.
Two thumbs up on removing junk food / soda vending machines from schools and focusing on healthy school lunch programs. If parents insist on giving their kids junk food, they should have to explicitly pack it in their kid’s lunch box.
For adults, I’m all for freedom to make personal choices except when they directly (not indirectly) impinge on the freedoms of others. So, I’m not for legislating healthy lifestyles (even though I’m a fanatic about health/exercise myself). That said, give people lots of good education and examples to follow (as you suggest), so at least they’re informed about the implications of their decisions.
Great post, Lisa. I’m in favor of the sin tax in principle. It would be an interesting process to see what would be taxed and what would not.
Here’s a variant of the sensible school lunch program: take a packed lunch. (I pack a lunch every day for my daughters, and am highly motivated to do so when I read the school lunch menu.)
Thanks for all the great input. I’ll be back later to add my two cents :-) L–
Great post and great discussion… adding my $.02…
I think it comes down to personal accountability and responsibility.
When we stand up and say we are no longer willing to put up with being unhealthy change can be made… we will start casting our votes with where our dollars are going (toward healthier options) and the food companies will have no choice but to follow our lead.
I agree with Marlene – the stuff that’s worst for us is the cheapest. And, we’ve become a society on the move… no one “has time” to cook, and no one “has time” to be healthy. We’ve been jaded into believing that being healthy has to be complicated and time-consuming.
I have a 14 year old client who’s parents claim that they want to help her lose weight… when I make suggestions on easy things they can implement into their lifestyle, they make 100 excuses as to why they can’t do any of it. It’s crazy.
We’ve got to stand up and say enough is enough. We’ve got to grab the steering wheel and take a hard look at where we are, what we don’t like, and we have to be accountable to make the changes we say we want.
Until that happens and we keep on keepin’ on… well… we’ll create more of the same.
I’m okay with a “Sin Tax” on unhealthy foods…but it has to be taxed on both sides. Not only do you have to tax the individual making the purchase, but the company providing the unhealthy food also has to take up their share of the burden!
Marlene good points, when you’ve got Dollar Value Meals the food is just so cheap that many people turn to it as the best way to stretch a dollar. That’s really too bad, because as you point out the environmental impact to create that food hasn’t been counted into the equation and that will cost us billions by the time we’re forced to deal with it. L–
Bill, thanks for chiming in. Really appreciate it.
Joe, I pack a lunch for my son every day too. The only thing he buys is white milk and he doesn’t actually like chocolate milk so we don’t have to worry about that … yes, my son is a little weird ;-)
Everyone, have to say I’m surprised so many people are supporting sin taxes and I like the idea of corporations pay more as well. That hadn’t occurred to me at all.
L–
Jenn,
There was a pretty telling moment when Jamie Oliver had a Mom cook a week’s worth of food and pile it all on the table so she could see all the grease and starches she was putting into her kids (breakfast donuts dipped in chocolate!). She looked woefully at the pile and said, “I’m killing my kids.” Jamie Oliver gave her a gentle hug and said, “yes, yes you are.” That was her wake up call (sorta) she didn’t follow through as much as she should have.
When her 12 year old son was diagnosed as pre-diabetic then she really saw the light, the father did too and hopefully they’ll turn it around. She has all the tools imaginable, Jamie even gave her new pots … :-)
Lisa
Lisa,
Healthy living is a matter of personal responsibility and should not be legislated.
I appreciate FDA initiatives to ensure consistency in labels as it helps consumers make informed decisions. Forcing restaurants to add calorie info to menus crosses the line.
Our local middle school (with parental input) implemented a healthy lunch menu and removed vending machines a few years ago. Initially, the children were quite upset but eventually they got used to having “water only” vending machines.
Sin taxes do not work as a deterrent. As an ex-smoker (quit 15 years ago), I can attest ever-increasing taxes were meaningless to me. Sometimes we know something is not good for us, but do it anyway.
Thanks for posing the question.
Susan
Most of what I think has been said – and probably better than I can say it, but here goes:
PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY is my mantra. I am overweight by 25 pounds right now (having lost 20), because I let myself get stressed a while back when I found a lump in my breast.
I am slowly getting back down to the weight I have been comfortable at for 15 years prior. Slowly because I am still not making all the right decisions. I admit it.
That said, I feel that there should be legislation on child health safety. Children until the age of 18 (or matriculation, whichever comes first) should NOT be fed crap. Period.
Sin tax… now that’s something that gets me. I mean, where does it end? McDonalds is a sin. Is a small piece of Godiva Chocolate? What about a large bar that you’ll eat one small piece at a time over the next two weeks?
I’m not sure I’m against it, but I think that it’s a slippery slope.
Most states have taxes already on prepared foods Is that how the sin tax would apply? To prepared foods? Would Kashi Prepared pizzas have less sin than Pizza Hut?
In theory, it’s a good idea. In practice? *shrugs*
Heather, it’s definitely a slippery slope, Big Brother starts to loom … but the abuses of the food industry are pretty horrifying (referencing Food Inc. again). Knowledge is power, I’d like to think that’d be enough to fix this, but I suspect it’ll take legislation for companies to start acting responsibly. L–
Lisa – just reading what you wrote about the mom piling the food on the table struck my heart… my God that must have been powerful. But isn’t it amazing that it took her son being diagnosed as pre-daibetic for the light to REALLY go on??
I had a nutrition session with a client this morning who told me that making all these changes in her diet was taking a lot of effort. My response was “Yep, it’s going to – this is a LIFESTYLE change it isn’t going to be easy to change these ingrained habits…”
Making these changes DOES take effort… and that’s where lots of folks get hung up. We’re so used to living life a certain way, and it’s easy to slip back into what’s familiar and what’s become easy for us.
Heather – I could not agree more with the point you make about kids… the food marketing done toward children is APPALLING. As parents we truly need to be vigilant about educating our kids on what’s ACTUALLY healthy as opposed to what “big food” tries to tell them is healthy.
A little retro school lunch sharing.
In the mid 1970′s, not the 1770′s
I went to grade school in a 3 room schoolhouse 1-3 grade and a 3 room school house 4-6th grades.
In 1st & 2nd grade my mother was the cook and the playground referee.
She fed 75 kids every day, and probably a quarter only ate at the school and had nothing outside of school.
We had ground beef from the farmer across the street, potatoes from a mile away, frozen strawberries from our families patch, canned elk meat from hunters donations etc…
The district paid for stuff like bread, milk cartons, eggs and canned items.
It my 20 year reunion this fall, almost everyone was in good health.
The foundation laid early on in our community by my mom’s creatively sourced school lunches I think is the key factor, along with the exercise that came from living in a working farm/logging community.
For example, I rode my pink BMX bike with ribbon handle bar grips 1/4 mile to get to the mail box everyday and 1/4 mi to get back to the house and play, from the time I was 6 until probably 12 .
I still love riding my bike as often as I can.
Ok enough Rambling.
My point is Food and nutrition are critical during development.
People used to instinctively know this.
Now days I see communities blanketed under a mind control cloud of corporate marketing and 6 year old kids who weigh close to 100 pounds.
Are we headed to a future culture where people resemble the fat brother in the movie Dune?
Maybe the Sin tax should be applied to parents in the form of health tax credit requirements?
Lisa, thanks for your thought provoking post.
Jenn, I know, I almost don’t mind my son watching TV except for the danged food ads. He loves McDonalds even though we rarely let him go and it’s all about that dumb, China manufactured toy. (An eco-friendly problem, but that’s somebody elses’ blog post).
Deb, you’re community sounds amazing and your high school reunion pretty much says it all doesn’t it. Start with a healthy foundation and you’ll be able to carry it through your entire life. Start with a bad foundation (like most of our kids these days) and you’ll be struggling your entire life. Thanks so much for sharing the story.
It makes another point too. Your community was involved in what the kids ate. They contributed to the school lunch program. They knew what there kids were eating because they were helping the program. We need a lot more of that, we got lazy and just let the system take over for us. We need to take back control.
L–
I’ve never been a big fan of letting the government police free choice, having said that I do agree with fixing the school lunch program and teaching kids at a young age about nutrition.
I, myself, am over weight, but my children aren’t. I’ve battled it my whole life and I realize the choices I’ve made haven’t always been the best but I am in the process of a complete lifestyle overhaul. But, as far as my kids go, they know all about proper nutrition and we only eat healthy foods at home, home cooked meals almost every night.
It’s been our (my wife and I) goal, since the beginning, that they learn the ins and outs of proper nutrition. I don’t want them to have to battle through it like I have by ingraining in them, at an early age, the value of a balanced diet.
David, I think you’re quite right. You might want to pick up a copy of Food Rules by Michael Pollan or see my post on my top 10 Favorite Food Rules. One of them is eat your meals at home. You have much more control over what you put in your body if you’re the one who serves it on the plate. Better portion sizes, better food going into the dish, healthier oils, significantly less sugar and salt. L–
I’ll do that. Thank you, once again, for the advice.
At heart I’m a hedonist, I think legislated morality is based in ancient religions that serve no purpose in modern society. The cost of health care should be moot because our government should be guaranteeing health care to every citizen, and not waging wars that aren’t defending our soil. I can get behind banning HFCs, not because they are unhealthy, but because they make everything taste like crap, real sugar tastes better. Don’t get me started on “sin tax” its bad enough they tax the crap out of cigs and booze for no good reason other than to give the governing bodies higher salaries.
I just had a great twitter response from @CSPenn … Poli sci prof Stanley Michalak: You can’t legislate morality, but you can tax the hell out of vice. Thought that was a great answer. Maybe that’s the best way to go?
Any other thoughts? L–
I just had a great twitter response from @CSPenn … Poli sci prof Stanley Michalak: You can’t legislate morality, but you can tax the hell out of vice. Thought that was a great answer. Maybe that’s the best way to go?
Any other thoughts? L–
I think this is such a complex issue. We eat pretty darn healthy in my house. Lots of organic veggies. I can’t remember the last time I went to a fast food restaurant. And so I send my toddler to pre-school with healthy food. I was talking with the owner and she says lots of parents give their kids Lunchables. And I believe that the parents think they are giving their kids something that is good for them. But Lunchables are highly processed, high calorie, high sodium, hiugh fat, and high sugar, with a lot of packaging to go in the landfill to boot.
Lunchables help contribute to the obesity in this country, I have no doubt. Here is a link to a great article: http://bit.ly/9RVohi
And to me, here is where things get complex. Toddlers get fed lunchables. They get addicted to high calorie, low nutrition food. Their parents probably eat the adult version. When a person is 2 and 3, they not only grow their fat cells larger, they actually multiply the number of fat cells they have in their body. This makes for a fat kid who will have an even harder time losing weight.
With these patterns, you have set up such problems at such a young age that obesity becomes so much harder to conquer than simple diet changes. I don’t think most people understand enough about nutrition to regulate “what they put in their mouth.”
I think education is a big part of it. And I think we need to be more conscious of the companies we are hiring to cook the foods in public schools. I also think we need to encourage people to exercise!
So many factors….
it’s a really complex issue when you look at the school lunch program and throw in farm subsidies, Big Farms, factory production, etc. This is not an easy fix. I was saying today, that Americans looked the other way for decades. We assumed the US government was looking out for our kids when instead what was happening was food lobbying groups gradually adding loopholes here and loopholes there that got them to where they are today. Making a ton of money at the expense of our children’s health. It’s despicable and it has to stop. I am definitely not done blogging about this!
Lisa
David, I think you’re quite right. You might want to pick up a copy of Food Rules by Michael Pollan or see my post on my top 10 Favorite Food Rules. One of them is eat your meals at home. You have much more control over what you put in your body if you’re the one who serves it on the plate. Better portion sizes, better food going into the dish, healthier oils, significantly less sugar and salt. L–
I am a big fan of Food Rules! L–
Hi Lisa, found your blog through 3T. Great post. I definitely agree that we need to let the food companies have it as consumers by not buying the prepackaged, processed nonsense they are shilling in the name of convenience.
I’m a SAHD to my son and he gets very little in the way of processed foods. He loves the Clif Z bars for kids, but I otherwise keep him eating fresh fruits and vegetables. I even make all of my wife’s lunches for the week from scratch so she doesn’t have to fall into the convenience food trap. People ask me all the time how I find the time to do this, but it might take me an hour every week to prepare her meals in advance.
The reason why I’m so sensitive to this is because as an young adult I developed the worst eating habits and worked jobs that kept me at a desk or on the road 80 hours a week. I’ve always been a bigger guy, but I ballooned up to a ridiculous weight. I still have a ways to go, but have lost about 75 pounds since that time.
If people would think or get more informed about the things they eat it would help out tremendously.
PJ, I’m sorry you had to learn the hard way but it’s awesome that you’re doing so much for your family. Kudos to you and I’m glad you found us. I write about obesity fairly often, it’s a topic near and dear to my heart. I lost 42 pounds after the birth of my son and it took 2 years to get it all off! Since then I’ve crept back up about 15 pounds and I’m working to get that off now … I get where you’re coming from. Let me know if I can help in any way :-) L–