Obesity Epidemic

[sjf911]

An employee came to me the other day looking for ideas for a graduate class he was taking. The question was given the severe impact of the rising obesity epidemic on individual health and societal healthcare expenditures, what community based interventions would potentially be effective given the abject failure of individual interventions?

My perspective of the epidemic having grownup before it manifested is that it is predominantly related to the rapid growth in availability of and our increasing dependence on highly processed cheap "convenience" foods. Foods that are specifically engineered to maximally appeal to the eating reward center in our brain such that they induce unintentional overconsumption. Simultaneously, we have been subjected to an intense advertising campaign by the food industry over the last 50+ years that has had the (? unintentional) the effect of normalizing their role in our lives as well as creating a reward culture.
So based on my views, if we really valued collective health of our society, my recommendations would start with:

1. Root out and eliminate all forms of direct and indirect government subsidies that benefit the processed food industry.
2. Ban all convenience food advertising especially those that target children/teens
3. Start with the removal of all snack food vending machines from schools and other venues readily accessible by children with the goal of banning them entirely.
4. Place a healthcare tax on all associated foods with the goal of raising enough money to offset cost to society.

I realize that this impinges on personal choice and potentially even freedom of speech and there are plenty of people that can actually tolerate and remain relatively healthy in the current culture but we do have some experience with tobacco. There is also the argument over what is a healthy versus unhealthy food.

[vash]

the only way i think is education.

lobbyist OWN the lawmakers..so the big corporations that are treated like individuals are deeply entrenched. i say 1 - 4 are doomed.

the only way to do it is to educated people, and then they will vote with their $$..and then..you would have change. the corporations historically follow the money.

[Crowbob]

What needs to happen is that the people need to start feeling the consequences of their behaviors even if their behaviors are being manipulated.

Apparently, societies' tendency to keep themselves in constant turmoil is good for the velocity of currency. I wonder if human beings have population cycles similar to other species. We seem to be demonstrating migratory habits secondary to stresses in the environment so why not fluctuations in our population?

Maybe obesity is one of our methods of achieving long-term survival as a species.

[wdfifteen]

1. Root out and eliminate all forms of direct and indirect government subsidies that benefit the processed food industry.
CHECK!

2. Ban all convenience food advertising especially those that target children/teens
Only ban advertising that targets children

3. Start with the removal of all snack food vending machines from schools and other venues readily accessible by children with the goal of banning them entirely.
ABSOLUTELY!

4. Place a healthcare tax on all associated foods with the goal of raising enough money to offset cost to society.
Problematic. Maybe tax food based on sugars and salt content.

[Crowbob]

Why not simply deny healthcare to the offenders?

[jyl]

I like the idea of a significant tax on sugar content in food. Include HCFS too.

Sugar and similar sweeteners are absurdly cheap, highly addictive, and very damaging to individual and public health. If you eat a reasonable, healthy amount of sugar, a tax won't affect you. If you live on junk food and soda, it will, and that's the point.

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by Crowbob

Why not simply deny healthcare to the offenders?

Are you going to deny someone care for a broken arm because they eat too much processed food?

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by jyl

I like the idea of a significant tax on sugar content in food. Include HCFS too.

Sugar and similar sweeteners are absurdly cheap, highly addictive, and very damaging to individual and public health. If you eat a reasonable, healthy amount of sugar, a tax won't affect you. If you live on junk food and soda, it will, and that's the point.

Perhaps something like a VAT tax on food. Tax the non-food content added to the "food" component of the product. This would include packaging too.

[Jims5543]

Base health insurance premiums off of waist to chest ratio on men.

Like they do when you sign up for life insurance.

[LEAKYSEALS951]

Reminds me of the Jamie Oliver reality show on foods in WVa schools.
It's a hard video to watch (really gawwdawful now rewatching it ) because it is so overproduced and dramatized, but the series showed you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. He basically got his arse sh#$canned and headed home to England. The comments in the video section are interesting though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLgmk323H6k

I'm all for the above suggestions btw, but how far would one be able to get in those endeavors before it all became politicized and annulled by partisan politics? Who makes the decisions? Who oversees it?

After all- this is America by golly. Dont tell me what to eat dagnabbit!! (any more than telling me to sell my 911 for a prius, sell my guns, etc....)

[speedster911]

I would say 80% of the people in my office are on High blood pressure meds and/ or cholesterol lowering meds. yet, Dinner for them is bar food or a box of crap from the freezer. They are all educated, well paid and intelligent people. No government program will affect their behavior. A tax on processed food will not affect their behavior.

Breakfast for them is Coffee full of chemical flavoring and a fried/ frozen or chemical filled something.

Lunch - processed meat sandwich, chips and diet coke

Dinner - more junk

I also find it interesting that the majority have all spent 75 -150K remodeling their kitchens - yet they say they do not cook

Everyone has a PC to search the net and educate themselves on the health risks of what they are putting in their body - what would the government program or a tax do to change this behavior???

[Evans, Marv]

How about bringing back things like physical education into the school curriculum? How about getting away from the PC attitude of not offending anybody no matter how gross or badly their life choices are? You can't call anybody "fat" anymore. You have to refer to them (women at least) as "curvy" instead of just saying, "You're fat! You need to quit eating junk, start getting some exercise, loose weight, and concentrate on better life choices."

[911 Rod]

The biggest problem is it is cheaper to eat junk food than healthy food.
We've gone pretty much 100% organic and it is stupid expensive.

[Crowbob]

Originally Posted by wdfifteen

Are you going to deny someone care for a broken arm because they eat too much processed food?

No.

But the costs of weight-bearing joint replacement and related medications, therapies, etc. on a chronically obese person might be paid substantially out of pocket, perhaps.

I dunno. Hate to sound cruel and stuff but...

[911 Rod]

Originally Posted by Evans, Marv

How about bringing back things like physical education into the school curriculum? How about getting away from the PC attitude of not offending anybody no matter how gross or badly their life choices are? You can't call anybody "fat" anymore. You have to refer to them (women at least) as "curvy" instead of just saying, "You're fat! You need to quit eating junk, start getting some exercise, loose weight, and concentrate on better life choices."

Remember when we had physical fitness awards in school?
All was good until it made some fat kid cry .....

[pwd72s]

Paging Michelle Obama....

[Geary]

Candida is heavily tied into our health issues ..
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gkvCYV2LBtg

[fastfredracing]

It is really hard to eat healthy. My family has been trying hard to get on the wagon, but we get up at 6 am, run our asses off all day, get home at 6, and honestly, most nights, none of us feels like shopping or cooking . By the time we prepare a good wholesome meal, it is 8 o clock.
It is so easy to toss a frozen pizza in the oven, or open up a box of chicken nuggets . Times are not like 30 years ago, where mom was home all day, and could shop, and make good food .
I carry a few extra pounds, but I am active as hell, so that helps. My son is going to struggle with it. He will not eat good food, and his idea of exercise involves a hand held controller .

[vash]

Originally Posted by 911 Rod

Remember when we had physical fitness awards in school?
All was good until it made some fat kid cry .....

hey..i got dust in my eye! nobody ever cleans those gym mats.

[Tervuren]

I could eat all the junk food I wanted when I was at work 12-15 hours a day setting up, programming, and running CNC machines across a 60K square foot building without ever worrying about my weight.

Now that I do design work, I'm more stagnant, and what I eat is really important. Phasing in something like swimming, running, etc, can restore the balance where I can keep old food habits without being fat.

There are two sides to it, calories, need a way of getting burned. Calories are different from nutrition. You can grow fat and starve to death at the same time if all you are getting is calories.

Ultimately, rising obesity is just a side effect of problems better discussed in PARF. Until you hit the real roots (information acquisition and decision making), you simply make life more expensive with your plans.