RSS Feed MenuWhile changes to the school lunch program are long overdue, I’ve been critical of the child nutrition bill, in part because it replaces a set of clunky and flawed regulations with a new set of clunky and flawed regulations.
Such criticism seems downright tame compared to the objections raised by some on the right. Passage of the child nutrition bill has evoked a conservative firestorm. A FoxNews segment, as an example, was titled: “Don’t touch my muffins!” There’s a grassroots movement – cleverly titled “My Food. My Choice!” – that’s declared December to be National Bake Sale Month.
And, on the larger issue of obesity, conservative heavyweights Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh have scoffed at White House ideas.
Are conservatives beginning to sound on this issue like… liberals?
RealClearPolitics columnist Cathy Young notes the parallels between the left and the right on the obesity issue.
The irony, too, is that right-wing griping about the food police can converge uncannily with the left-wing “fat acceptance” movement. This movement champions the idea that fat people are an oppressed group and that disapproval of obesity is bigotry…
Strange bedfellows. Some conservatives grouse about the rising influence of the state – but end up dismissing any policy initiative that would address the obesity epidemic. Liberals, unable to criticize people no matter how pathological their behavior, fall into a similar policy inertia.
That’s not quite to suggest that all conservatives are in the nanny-state-dismissal group; nor are all liberals in the fat-acceptance crowd. Still there are strong voices on both sides of the spectrum with – ironically enough – a similar policy prescription, or lack thereof.
But neither position is particularly thoughtful. There is a role for public policy here – both in what government should be doing (more physical education in our schools, for example) and what it shouldn’t be doing (some agribusiness subsidies). Likewise, while important to remember that life events can lead us to bad life choices, a permissive approach to obesity is as absurd as excusing the smoker for his habit because dad didn’t like to play baseball with him.
For the record, Ms. Young’s column closes with a nice observation:
Conservatives have often argued that, in order for a free society to flourish, individual freedom must be coupled with self-restraint. Perhaps some appreciation of this old-fashioned virtue is just what’s needed in the debate over food and fat.
Non-Contributor // Dec 20, 2010 at 10:42 pm
Kurlis,
I’ll say it. You forgot to take your meds today and it shows.
Brad Smith // Dec 20, 2010 at 11:24 pm
As I understand the bottom line of Ms. Young’s final comment, it is that the solution to obesity is self-restraint.
Assuredly there may be room for public policy that removes subsidies – there always is. But conservatives are opposing overbearing government, not favoring obesity. The comments Mr. Gratzer objects to are opposing bans on Happy Meals, threatened bans on transfats, and the like. Conservative opposition is entirely appropriate, and the headline to this post is no more useful than one asking “When did the right get pro-nanny state?”
shecky // Dec 21, 2010 at 12:53 am
“When Did the Right Get Pro-Obesity?”
Have you ever driven through flyover country? The right knows which side it’s bread is buttered.
larry // Dec 21, 2010 at 3:38 am
the guy in the yellow t-shirt is slim and fit in my wal-mart. i was today run-down by a go-cart bearing a 450 pound female of uncertain age who envleped the cart like a tent with her bulk. goodbye America, hello east east Asia.
jerseychix // Dec 21, 2010 at 7:27 am
My word, the GOP is now throwing around “choice” the mind boggles.
And for crying out loud it isn’t the bake sales that are making the kids fat. It is the calorie laden simulated food substances that the family ingests for breakfast lunch and dinner that are making us fat. I’m sorry, but I can’t see a “lunchable” as real food. Pop tarts, breakfast cereal, or meatloaf from Stouffers either. But hey! They are cheap cheap cheap. Cause we subsidize the production of the ingredients.
And while I fully support a soda tax, it seems like we are subsidizing the industry at one end, and taxing it at the other.
Why not just get rid of the agriculture subsidy and make the big Agro businesses stand on their own two feet? If there’s a small family farm that gets hit, that can’t possibly grow something else to sell to the local school district or university, then send a USDA inspector out to give them a check. Stop penalizing the production of diverse vegetable crops. Start a buy local program for schools with the money. And when a buy local doesn’t come through, then we can ship in lettuce from CA. There are LOCAL MARKET solutions to obesity. Why not try them?
sinz54 // Dec 21, 2010 at 8:28 am
jmp: It is well within a reasonable role for government to play to ask government to provide sidewalks for the most widely traveled paths to and from schools Have you ever lived in the suburbs, exurbs, or rural areas of the Northeast or Rust Belt?
You’ve got a zillion private homes constructed on back country roads. It would cost a fortune to put a sidewalk on every back country road in America. It’s not even clear you could do it without a zillion easements, since the frontage of those roads often belongs to the homeowners. Not to mention the astronomical cost of keeping all those new sidewalks free of snow in the winter. We’re not talking about cities, but rural areas now.
What you’re suggesting might work for California or New Mexico. But here in MA where I live? Sidewalks on every back country road? Give me a break!
sinz54 // Dec 21, 2010 at 8:32 am
jg bennet: here is an evolving obesity map from the CDC tracking from 1985 to 2009 and as it evolves it follows the red state blue state trend in politics….
Your observation is biased by the large number of fat black people in the South, who like all black people vote strongly Dem.
Southern African Americans are among the fattest people in America. It’s all that soul food and fried food that’s traditional with them.
sinz54 // Dec 21, 2010 at 8:37 am
As I’ve said before, this controversy over obesity (along with the controversy over smoking bans) illustrates how too many of today’s conservatives have trouble distinguishing themselves from libertarians.
Libertarians insist on the unalienable right to live any way they want, even a way that is free of ethical responsibility or patriotism. Their attitude is let the free market decide just about everything.
But we traditional conservatives believe that freedom comes with responsibility, as Mr. Gratzer said. We are also nationalists who want the best for our own nation. And this epidemic of obesity is hurting America; it drives up health care costs and it renders too many young people unfit for military service.
Historically, it’s been right-wing parties, not left-wing parties, in nations around the world that have emphasized physical fitness and physical health. These right-wing parties recognized that a strong people was vital to a strong country.
We modern conservatives need to place ourselves in that tradition (as we’ve always emphasized tradition), and forget this Ayn Rand foolishness. William F. Buckley threw Ayn Rand out of the conservative movement 50 years ago. He also threw out the John Birch Society and other radicals. As soon as Buckley passed away, it seems, these extremists started making their way back into respectable conservatism.
That needs to be reversed.
TerryF98 // Dec 21, 2010 at 9:01 am
Sinz,
Can you have a chat with your friends in the white supremacist movement and ask them to not be so silly about Thor.
A US white supremacist group has called for a boycott of the Kenneth Branagh-directed superhero movie Thor on the grounds that a black actor has been cast in the role of a Norse god.
The Council of Conservative Citizens is upset that London-born Idris Elba, star of The Wire and BBC detective series Luther as well as a number of Hollywood films, is to play deity Heimdall in the Marvel Studios feature. The group, which opposes inter-racial marriage and gay rights, has set up a website, boycott-thor.com to set out its opposition to what it sees as an example of leftwing social engineering.
“It [is] well known that Marvel is a company that advocates for leftwing ideologies and causes,” the site reads. “Marvel frontman Stan ‘Lee’ Lieber boasts of being a major financier of leftwing political candidates. Marvel has viciously attacked the Tea Party movement, conservatives and European heritage.
“Now they have taken it one further, casting a black man as a Norse deity in their new movie Thor. Marvel has now inserted social engineering into European mythology.”…
Houndentenor // Dec 21, 2010 at 10:01 am
I’ll tell you what happened. We now have a political “system” where many on the right are automatically against anything a Democrat proposes (and vice versa). Michelle Obama just wants children to eat more vegetables. How can anyone object to that. Sarah Palin mocks the 1st Lady by eating ice cream? When did MO say people shouldn’t eat ice cream? It’s stupid.
Kurlis // Dec 21, 2010 at 10:11 am
“Kurliss, feel free to die a fat diabetic decades early, and spare yourself the fascism of good health and cheaper and more efficient health care. I would volunteer to carry your coffin but I think it will necessitate a forklife to get you off the ground.”
Human beings need religion. Secular humanists, for whom religion is something to be avoided, invent something else to take its place. A religion of Big Central Government as God. Mysticism is channeled into environmentalism, eschewing the scientific method with a religious faith in global warming as the apocalypse.
According to the American Leftist narrative, unless Big Central Government drastically re-orders society, climate change will cause an apocalypse . The horror.
Now comes along a new focus on human consumption and the need to regulate it. The equivalent of dietary laws evident in Judaism and Islam.
I think I really would rather die than accept the new religion of the fascist paternal nanny state and adult day care from cradle to grave.
All Praise the Government God.
TerryF98 // Dec 21, 2010 at 11:15 am
“I think I really would rather die than accept the new religion of the fascist paternal nanny state and adult day care from cradle to grave.”
Be the rest of rational society’s guest.
Have a nice Death
TJ Parker // Dec 21, 2010 at 12:07 pm
With God all things are possible. Camels walk through needle eyes and rich men enter Heaven and the GOP’s leading spokesmodel leads them with a wink and a jiggle and sympathy for her bastard daughter’s over-sized tush. Oh brave new world that has such conservatives in it!
narcissa // Dec 21, 2010 at 1:09 pm
While I agree with getting America eating better (and try to improve my own habits), and am horrified by this pro-bad food side of the right, I don’t think you can call obesity pathological as a rule, nor compare it to smoking.
You don’t have to smoke. No, you don’t have to eat a bucket of chicken either, but most obese people are not eating by the bucket. They are eating a little more calories than they need, every day. Since losing weight is much harder than gaining it, there is a culmative effect, which also causes insulin resistance which increases craving which increases weight which well you get the cycle.
We know how to not be a smoker. Don’t smoke. Aids to nicotine addiction are expensive but available, and the answer is clear.
A fat person could improve their diet dramatically and never lose the weight they already gained. Eating healthy and losing weight are not the same thing.
No doubt 30 people will suddenly offer their “obvious” or “simple” or “easy” way to lose weight. We’ll hear a raft of success stories with the little moral, if I can do it so can you fat slob…
…but it takes a lot of experimentation to find out the diet that works for each individual, something most physicians and nutritionists are not willing to do (if they even know. Have you seen a hospital meal?)
It isn’t calories in, calories out for many people. Women lose weight less easily and people have quite different set points and metabolism. The French, the Massai, clearly lean towards tall and slim, the polynesians quite the opposite. Diet isn’t the entire explanation. The state of the womb, the state of nutrition as a baby, all these effect weight. Indeed, sometimes, dieting itself can cause yo-yo effect that increases overall weight.
That’s what the call not to demonize fat people is about, understanding the differences in bodies, and not automatically attributing moral failure to people based on surface knowledge. Do some fat people eat crazy amounts of food and take no responsibility for their actions? The presence and words of Rush alone shows that to be true (smile). But many, many skinny people are living dangerously, and irresponsibly unhealthy lives. Heroine addicted models, coke-addicted wall streeters, bulimics and well, smokers.
So yes, stop making judgments about situations you know nothing about, but do create an atmosphere and that makes it more likely people will adopt healthy eating habits. Even if they never lose the weight, they will be healthier.
baw1064 // Dec 21, 2010 at 3:15 pm
That’s one way to grow the Republican base!
jjv // Dec 21, 2010 at 3:49 pm
I do not think the Right is pro-obeisity. They just choose big bellies over big government; Carbohydrates over Calorie Commisars.
jerseychix // Dec 21, 2010 at 5:38 pm
jjv-
and then expect the rest of us to pay for it. Big bellies and carbohydrates have a cost.
pnwguy // Dec 22, 2010 at 1:59 am
Having spend a few weeks in Europe this summer, the first thing that really slams you when you get back to the US is obesity. We almost never saw obese people in Europe – cities or countryside. People eat sensible meal portions, and EVERYONE walks in daily life.
But on the other hand, when you think about things evolutionarily, most every animal on the planet spends most of their daily effort in search of calories. We are biologically wired to intake all we can, having evolved with food scarcity and competition for meals. This is likely only the first or second human generation that has widespread abundance of food at prices that take a small percentage of incomes. It probably shouldn’t surprise us that we as a culture need to make adjustments in our thinking, to overcome our biological bias.
I’ll put in a plug for watching Food, Inc., for those who didn’t see the 2009 documentary.
xiamenb2c04 // Dec 22, 2010 at 2:58 am
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TJ Parker // Dec 22, 2010 at 9:17 am
“That’s what the call not to demonize fat people is about, understanding the differences in bodies, and not automatically attributing moral failure to people based on surface knowledge.”
Nevertheless, there *is* a difference between fat and morbidly obese.
Slide // Dec 22, 2010 at 11:16 am
Houndentenor // Dec 21, 2010 at 10:01 am
I’ll tell you what happened. We now have a political “system” where many on the right are automatically against anything a Democrat proposes (and vice versa).
I hate false equivalencies. Can you show me examples where Democratic party is automatically against anything that a Republican proposes? Not saying it hasn’t happened by there is absolutely no comparison in my estimation between the parties in this regard.
Rob_654 // Dec 22, 2010 at 3:25 pm
The Far Right become pro-obesity when they saw it was something that they could bash the President and First Lady on – and because there are so many fat \ obese voters that they want to try and score points for votes – its easier to do that than offer up policies and solutions. Of course the Far Right won’t want to discuss the horrendous health care costs associated with obesity – AND that since they won’t touch Medicare – how much they support our tax dollars going to pay for obese older voters insulin and medication for diabetes…