Today’s challenge: Try to find any indication in this Washington Post article that there might be a legitimate perspective* other than the authors’ screamingly obvious desire for federal programs to combat childhood obesity:

Since the alarm was finally sounded in the late 1990s, the problem has been the country’s reaction: a fragmented, inchoate response that critics say has suffered particularly from inadequate direction and dollars at the federal level. . . .

Health experts insist that strong leadership from the top is crucial . . .

Critics say the White House has not pushed the issue much beyond personal responsibility. They say the administration and lawmakers are not aggressively pressing for industry or food policy changes. . . .

Advocates say the limited power of persuasion and lesser state and local resources make forceful federal measures imperative. . . .

Congress has paid tepid attention to childhood obesity . . . . A measure by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), to create a federal commission on childhood obesity prevention, among other actions, wasn’t even debated.

They even quote, with a straight face, Yale’s Kelly Brownell. Who handed control of the Post over to the interns?

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* E.g.: Whether childhood obesity is good or bad (my vote: bad!), it isn’t the federal government’s job to make kids eat healthy foods any more than it is the federal government’s job to make kids watch educational TV programs.

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P.S.— There’s good advocacy journalism and then there’s bad advocacy journalism. This isn’t either one of them! It’s . . . agitprop? Bad advocacy journalism would resemble this piece with one or two token quotes from Obesity Myths or somebody at the Heritage Foundation thrown in, to make it seem as though the reporters were at least checking off boxes to appear evenhanded.

Good advocacy journalism doesn’t make the reporters’ own feelings quite so obvious. But by the end of it, you arrive at a certain conclusion without realizing you’ve been led there, and you have a vague sense that anybody with at least a median IQ would arrive at the same conclusion too, if they thought about the issue a little. 

Since when is it the function of the federal government to monitor what and how much I eat? 

The FDA has done a good job of requiring labeling providing nutritional information.  If people can’t or won’t read it and make the slightest effort to learn that drinking a gallon of high fructose corn syrup a day is bad for you, why does the government need to do anything about it? 

Last I checked, the Dems have been in control of Congress for a while now.  Where’s the life-saving legislation we all so desperately need because we’re all to helpless to figure out for ourselves what, when and how much to eat?

Great laugh today: “You are the watchdog of your own health because the government under the conservatives watch does not give a tinker’s damn.” Another inane post from a Dem.

Obviously two DC liberals advocating for government control over household menus and grocery shopping. Food detectors will be at Ukrops and Kroger to prevent buyers from leaving with too many calories, fat or chloresteral. Welcome to 21st Century ObamaWorld.

Damn, Kennedy is still alive!

I read the WP piece expecting to find some awful biased and distorted screed full of slanderous lies and imprecations, misspellings, bad punctuation, and juvenile thinking.

Nah. Not a bad piece at all. I found out instead most of the world is heading in an opposite direction from the U.S. on food, and they take the moral high road, not us.

OK. So then I went to “Obesity Myths” to see what the other side is thinking. They say busybody people are trying to shove us around and the problem is we are too sedentary.

That sounded suspicious, so I looked at their disclaimers. They say they are funded by over 100 corporations but most ask for anonymity because of “violence”. Hmn. (check it out if you do not believe me)

Another advocacy group on the internet claiming to be non-partisan but obviously promoting a very dubious and pointed agenda and funded by special interests.

So, let me get this straight, you think the WP should quote some mysterious website that won’t publish its contributors but wants us to believe we aren’t eating and drinking bad stuff, just not hitting the treadmill enough.

There is more. You want us to also believe all the Europeans are delusional, even Mexico, for restricting those same food and drink products.

Even more. You want me to not believe that corporations could have an agenda to promote unhealthy foods to pad the bottom line.

Even more. You want me to deny what my own eyes tell me. I have been looking at those cute little ingredient labels lately and it is a real can opener for the mind.

Never mind trans fats and cholesterol and saturated fats. How about nearly all the popular “health” drinks, the vitamin and antioxidant enriched lifewater and whathaveyou, sporting high levels of plain ‘ol sugar. ???

If it says 100 cal., that means a toxic load of sugar or fructose (same thing). If it says 100 cal., but two servings to a bottle, that’s 200 cal., which is twice as deadly.

How can they get away with that ? Simple. Everone believes we are Mexico --- the government is looking out for our health. Not so. You are the watchdog of your own health because the government under the conservatives watch does not give a tinker’s damn.

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