I really don't think we are in the middle of an obesity crisis.
Sure, some kids are a little bit overweight, but some kids have been overweight for a long time.
I think it comes down to personal responsibility. You should have the freedom to be overweight, but when you have consumers threatening to sue companies like McDonald's for making them fat, we have a major problem. THAT is the crisis, not the obesity.
Now McDonald's has gotten rid of super sized meals. I enjoy super sized meals and they got rid of them. It was a real bargain at only 39 cents extra. I blame it on the food nazis.
When I was a child, nearly all the women who had borne children were fat and if anyone lost weight or was a normal weight, it was said that, "She/he looks bad." Some children were fat, but in those days children had little choice in food matters. At our home we had cornflakes, biscuits loaded with lard, sausage, gravy and eggs for breakfast, along with honey, jelly and fried apples. For lunch and dinner, the fare was always some variation of ham, fried chicken, fried potatoes, green beans, soup beans and always, cornbread. We did drink a lot of milk, straight from the cow. I was a chubby child, but when I was fourteen, a nasty bout of measles following chickenpox took that "babyfat" off and it has never returned..As an adult, 5'4", I weight between 110-112. Children today do not have to suffer the ravages of childhood illnesses that we did or even the bouts of bronchitis, pneumonia, flu, etc., thank God. They also do not get the exercise we got because we did not have TV and video games to render us sendentary. We also could walk to the home of a neighbor without the fear of abduction. Mom's who work need some help and most of them get that help from the fast food restaurants. They come home to chaos if they have school aged children. Everyone is tired and sometimes hours of homework remains to be done, along with laundry, paying the bills, seeing to baths and whatever is needed to function at work and at school the next day. Mothers, especially, are perpetually fatigued and it is understandable and rational for them to choose the purchase of fast food as a low cost way of conserving their time and energy. The liberals who pound on this issue are not really looking for answers because most of them probably do not have children. They are looking to blame someone they can sue for the problem. Education is needed as is the case with all human problems. For Christmas, I gave the older children in our family a child's book on nutrition which was written in an entertaining and inspirational way. Many children will respond with a desire to eat well if they can understand how different foods are used by their bodies to help them grow and stay healthy and well.