THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume VI, Issue # 200, September 13, 2004
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
THE GREAT OBESITY SCAM
By Alan Caruba
FULL STORY:
Is the day far off when the federal government will decide what you eat and how much? The assault on the personal freedoms of
Americans continues unabated. First it was the decision whether to smoke or not and now it involves every piece of food you
ingest.
When the government decided that obesity was “a critical health problem in this country that causes millions of Americans to suffer
unnecessary health problems and to die prematurely,” your right to decide what, where, and how much to eat disappeared.
The “obesity epidemic” is a scam. The players involved in it include animal rights advocates who want to disparage consumption of
beef, chicken, pork, milk, cheese, and other nutritious foods that come from animals. Others include pharmaceutical companies who
are either selling or developing drugs to deal with obesity or just weight loss.
A third are radical nutrition activist groups like the Center for Science in the Public Interest who has declared that Chinese food,
consumed daily by billions of people on the planet is dangerous. They also don’t like Mexican food. Or, for that matter, almost
anything else people consume. Their answer to obesity is a tax on foods they dislike.
Then, of course, there are the tort lawyers who made billions suing the tobacco companies and who are lining up to begin suing
restaurant chains and food manufacturers of every description.
The lies upon which the socalled “obesity epidemic” is based are largely ignored by both the government and the mainstream press
upon which the public depends for information. The lies are based on statistics. The assertion is that (1) obesity causes 300,000
deaths annually in America, (2) 61 percent of Americans are overweight or obese, and (3) this is costing $117 billion annually in
medical costs.
In an August, 2004, article written by David Martosko, published by The Heartland Institute, this consumer advocate revealed just
how specious the statistical basis for the “obesity epidemic” really is. Martosko is the Director of Research for the Center of
Consumer Freedom. Briefly, the assertion that 300,000 U.S. deaths are attributable to excess weight was disputed in the January,
1998, edition of the respected New England Journal of Medicine. In an editorial, the Journal called the data “limited,
fragmented, and often ambiguous,” adding that the figure “is by no means well established.” One would literally have to assert that
everyone deemed overweight died as a direct result of that condition.
The claim that obesity costs Americans $117 billion per year comes from a claim made in the March, 1998, issue of Obesity
Research, a claim the authors of which admit: “We are still uncertain about the actual amount of health utilization associated
with overweight and obesity.” Moreover, they did not take into account factors such as height and weight from their primary data
sources! Instead, they erroneously included the economic cost of individuals with a Body Mass Index (BMI) between 29 and 30.
That added ten million Americans to their estimate, many of whose weight is not fat, but muscle. With this kind of flawed thinking,
Arnold Schwartzenegger is fat! The BMI standard is seriously flawed, and even the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
casts doubt on it.
The extortion inflicted on the tobacco industry is likely now to be inflicted on food producers and providers. When the attorneys
general in Mississippi and West Virginia decided to make a case out of their state’s Medicaid costs, they and 44 others who joined
the suit reaped $240 billion in a settlement. According to the General Accounting Office, only 19 percent of this year’s $11.4 billion
tobacco settlement will go to health care and smoking cessation. Fully 54 percent of the tobacco industry funds will be used to
cover the state budget shortfalls due to reckless spending.
The 300 lawyers for 86 firms involved in the tobacco rip-off will pocket about $1 billion a year for helping negotiate the 25-year
settlement.
It was a rip-off of the tobacco industry, and the same will occur if this bogus “obesity epidemic” is allowed to continue. Looking for
a way to underwrite the new prescription-drug benefits that have been added to Medicare, states will surely seek to extort funding
from food producers and providers. That means everything you eat, no matter where you eat it, will cost more. It has nothing to do
with health and everything to do with ill-conceived, profligate spending programs.
Just as smokers have now been demonized, so too will fat people. Restaurants may begin to turn away any rotund person for fear
of the liability of feeding them. Various kinds of foods in the supermarket will carry warning signs and, of course, higher prices. All
of this and more comes down to the insatiable (no pun intended) desire of the federal government to control every single aspect of
our lives and, in this case, every single decision we make regarding our health.
The government may call being overweight an illness or a disease, but it is not. It is fundamentally a personal lifestyle decision and,
just as people start or stop smoking of their own volition, it is not the function of government to make such decisions for citizens.
Being overweight is also a genetic condition, as one can easily see when families of overweight people gather for a picnic and two
or three generations chow down together.
This nation is moving inexorably toward a cradle-to-grave philosophy of government control. What you eat and how much you eat
is being targeted. You have precious little time left to tell every state and federal legislator to put a stop to this.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Liberals, Statists, Socialists, & Other Leftists
Alan Caruba is a veteran business and science writer, a Public Relations Counselor, Communications Director of the American Policy Center,
and Founder of the National Anxiety Center, a clearinghouse for information about media-driven scare campaigns. Caruba writes a weekly
column, "Warning Signs," posted on the Internet website of the National Anxiety Center
(www.anxietycenter.com). A compilation of his past columns, entitled Warning Signs, is published by Merril Press. In addition
to Warning Signs, Caruba is the author of A Pocket Guide to Militant Islam and The United Nations vs. the United States,
both of which are available from the National Anxiety Center, 28 West Third Street, Apartment 1321, South Orange, New Jersey, 07079.
Copyright 2004 Alan Caruba
Published with Permission of Alan Caruba
ACaruba@AOL.Com
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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