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By Jack Markowitz, FOR THE PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Uh-oh, it’s an “epidemic.” And an epidemic of course requires action.
So look for hundreds of millions to be spent before the menace is conquered, because this endangers the welfare state’s undeniable favorite — the children.
It’s an epidemic of childhood obesity. Too many kids that are too fat. With obvious implications for national health care costs.
The goal is to shrink the body profiles of our youngsters back to 1970 levels?
Back then, it’s said, only 5 percent of American kids were egregiously rolypoly. Now it’s 30 percent. It’s got to stop, and that’s straight from the White House.
Michelle Obama, wife of the president, identified beating childhood obesity as her particular project this past February. Getting it accomplished in one generation is her aim and things have moved fast. A “Childhood Obesity Task Force” came out Tuesday with an “action plan.”
…
But no, the epidemic requires “goals, benchmarks, and measureable outcomes,” said Mrs. Obama. “Every resource must be marshaled” — she cited mayors, governors, parents and educators, business owners, athletes and more – to help provide “each and every child the happy, healthy future they deserve.”
The task force came up with plenty of recommendations, 70 of them, with an unmistakable flavor of compulsions and costs. One way or another a golden age of food police seems to be coming.
From the article:
Let me summarize first lady Michelle Obama’s anti-obesity agenda: Shed as I say, not as I gain. While she crusades for organic foods and puts government pressure on corporations to stop marketing fast food and junk food to children, Mrs. Obama herself profited from the very same processed food industry she now demonizes.
In June 2005, a few months after her husband was elected to the U.S. Senate, Mrs. Obama hustled a seat on the corporate Board of Directors of TreeHouse Foods, Inc. Despite zero experience, the food-processing company put her on its audit and nominating and corporate governance committees. For her on-the-job training and the privilege of putting her name and face on their literature, the company forked over $45,000 in 2005 and $51,200 in 2006 to Mrs. Obama — as well as 7,500 TreeHouse stock options worth more than $72,000 for each year.
Salt and pepper shakers sit on a table at the Elysian Fields Cafe in Hoboken, N.J., in this 2008 file photo. Under ObamaCare, will bureaucrats limit individual rights, like how much salt we eat?
Ann Hermes/The Christian Science Monitor/File
As government becomes more and more involved with healthcare, the expenses associated with it become increasingly socialized. Taxpayers now have a stake in the health of everyone. My irresponsibility is no longer my problem alone; now it becomes your problem too.
What of individual autonomy? We can see the handwriting on the wall. All sorts of clever proposals to turn us into wards of the state are coming forward. There are proposals to tax sugar in soft drinks In New York and other “progressive” states, and now the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) is planning to “slowly” reduce the salt content of food.
I am not arguing for people to increase their consumption of sugar or salt or even not to reduce it. I am simply saying that if we wish to be individuals and not automatons, we need to make our own decisions about health and much else. There are few decisions more personal or more intimate than deciding what to eat.
Retailers are afraid the proposed soda tax would affect their local businesses and say it is not fair to consumers who buy these beverages in moderation. Photo by AP.
The business community has not been happy since what they see as a dark cloud — the governor’s proposed tax on sugar-sweetened beverages — began looming over the state.
Even though the proposed tax was not included in either the Assembly or Senate’s budget resolutions, retailers say they will continue to protest the tax until the issue has been resolved and excluded from the final 2010-2011 state budget.
New York State Association of Convenience Stores President Jim Calvin said the association is encouraged to see that both houses of the Legislature have deemed it fit to exclude the tax on sugar-sweetened beverages from their budget resolutions. Nevertheless, he admits that what the final decision will be is unknown.