Posted on 05/29/2007 3:14:12 PM PDT by Eric Blair 2084
TRENTON, N.J. - New Jersey's health department is escalating the battle against the bulge by starting a new Office of Nutrition and Fitness to better coordinate programs aimed at preventing obesity. The agency is particularly needed in New Jersey — possibly the first state to create such a government body.
The Garden State has the highest percentage of overweight and obese children under age 5, at 17.7 percent, according to a 2004 survey by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. New Jersey also has many black and Latino youth, who are more likely to be overweight than white kids.
Dr. Fred M. Jacobs, commissioner of the state Department of Health and Senior Services, said young people are a crucial target for the new agency because it's easier to instill good diet and exercise habits to prevent obesity in young people than it is to reverse weight problems in adults; adults almost always gain back any weight they lose — and then some.
Jacobs says he wants to tackle the obesity problem through education, support groups and encouraging physical activity, rather than by banning particular foods. One goal is to "de-normalize" the massive portions served in restaurants.
"I want to do that without creating a further stigma on individual people," Jacobs said. "It's bad enough when you're fat that people think less of you. I don't want the government piling on."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
See, the problem is, Eric, that too many Jersyites are getting oput of New Jersy's many second rate schools with degrees in nutrition and phys ed. What else are these useless eaters supposed to do unless the omnipotent state creates a no-heavy-lifting job for each and every one of them.
A Ministry of Big Hair Reduction?
It’s not for a lack of effort on the nanny’s part. The food police and the beer fun patrol folks are still decades behind the anti-tobacco zealots as we both know.
It’s all about the new “public health” and preventative medicine. Saving health care costs for the State trumps all.
Let’s see: Keansburg, East Orange, Bayonne, South River, Linden; Newark; Camden; Trenton together should comprise about 80% of the obese people in this state, based upon observation.
Hey, I graduated from one of those fine NJ public schools. And now thanks to capitalism, I'm making a great living as a pimp and a drug dealer.
(And to think, my guidance counselor said I would never amount to anything)
Absolutely. A couple of years ago I was walking out of Yankee Stadium with a friend after the game and I lit a cigarette. Some woman who was about 4'11" and pushing two bills told me to put the cigarette out. Let's just say I made a snide reference to White Castle and her fat drunk boyfriend/husband tried to be the alpha male and intervene by attempting (very poorly) to assault me. He threw a righthand haymaker at me. I sidestepped to my left, threw an inside block with my left hand and he swung at air and went down face first onto the pavement. While his wife/girlfriend tried to help him up, we just walked to our cars and went home.
"Earlier this year in New York City, a public health regulation went into effect that set a new and very troublesome precedent, one that insinuates government agencies into personal medical matters. In mid-January, the City began legally requiring laboratories that do medical testing to report to the Health Department the results of blood sugar tests for city residents with diabetes -- along with the names, age, and contact information on those patients."
"When the government's phone calls and letters nagging people to eat better, quit smoking, and be more physically active don't work, the next phase of the war on chronic disease may be a harshly punitive one, with fines and other restrictions on those who fail to heed the health warnings. The message will be: live a healthy life or the government will punish you."
Thanks for the ping!
You’re welcome.
You’d be doing better if you had a graduate degree in pimping and drug dealing.
I just do not know what we would do without dogooders looking out for our well being.
As Mark Twain wrote about the miners and prospectors of Virginia City; "They lived for gold, whiskey, fights and fandangos and, in a word, were deleriously happy."
Many smokers said this years ago -- first it's us, then it's going to be "Go to aerobics class or lose your health insurance" for the rest of you.
I moved from California (where I was born & raised) to Jersey in 1996 and lived there for 4 years. I had always been naturally on the lean side -- not skinny but not fat either.
In the first 9 months in Jersey I gained a whopping 17 pounds -- from 120 to 137 so fast it scared me! I had digestive problems that I hadn't had before that sent me to the doctor. (Yet even after to putting on that weight, I was still thinner than most of the women my age around me.) But I understand how I put the weight on and why Jersey has some of the fattest people I have ever seen.
I saw and ate foods in Jersey that I hadn't even seen since my 1960's childhood in CA-- big gooey cinnamon rolls at Sam's Club, so buttery that a dozen of them weighed as much as a bowling ball. Pizzas that were cheap, delicious and enormous. Plates of spaghetti, meatballs and garlic bread that would feed four, doled out as a "single serving". But with the exception of tomatoes and corn -- all the other fruits and vegetables tasted like cardboard to me after having come from a state that offers a year-round cornucopia of fresh fruits & veggies.
When the rest of the US changed to lighter more healthy foods and portions, Jersey did not. My husband, who is 57 and who was born in NYC and spent most of his life in New Jersey, still has the eating preferences of a seven year-old -- macaroni & cheese, hot dogs, hamburgers, bowls of spaghetti and a loaf of bread. He is also -- no big surprise -- borderline type-two diabetic. And the only reason that he is only "borderline" is me & his move to CA.
The other thing that contributes to fat Jersey-ites is that often times, with working mothers and ridiculous commute times, few women (or men) cook regularly. I worked with several women, who had husbands and children, who didn't even know how to cook!
My stepdaughter is one of those women -- a prominent attorney, married with two sons and no one in the house cooks. The whole family, including the two kids, are somewhere between overweight and obese because its is all eating out, or fast foods or snacking on chips instead of eating real meals. Eating homecooked foods is reserved for special ocassions at some Italian relative's house when the portions are huge and the foods are literally "special occasion" foods -- but the kids don't know that.
My take on it is that Jersey's weight problems are cultural, not just medical. And only a real cultural shift is going to change that, not some government office of "The Fat Police"!
I hear ya.
Interesting take on the whole issue. Sometimes when you live in a place or do something for so long, you start to think it is normal. I thought that pork sausage pizza was common around the country. Now I know that it is not. Thank you. As a kid, I couldn't gain weight no matter how hard I tried. I was scrawny. I took Joe Weider weight gainer shakes, worked out at Gold's Gym for two hours a day to try to beat the horribly disease of scrawniness. This was back in the 80's.
As an adult I am now cursed with a muscular lean physique that I will have to live with for the rest of my life.
But think for a second about that last paragraph of your post. Cultural shift = Social Engineering. People should indeed eat less and excercize more. Nobody debates that.
I won't demand that the Gubmint make you and everyone else go through my rigorous workout regimen. No action is truly legitimate unless it is done voluntarily. I do it because I love it and I want to. Not because the Gubmint tells me to.
And that goes for Gubmint efforts to coerce people to get with the collectivist program to stop drinking, stop eating fries and stop smoking for the common good. It's none of the Gubmint's f'ing business what free citizens do.
"Your body belongs to the state. Your body belongs to the Fuhrer. Health is not a private matter."
---Nazi Socialist Party slogan
That’s the progress/Socialism/Collectivism that those sneaky little liberal “Progressives” are talking about.
Liberal progressives are miserable people. They won’t be happy until everyone else is as miserable as them.
At which point, conservatives and libertarians become the “progressives” I guess.
Eric,
You are right, of course. One’s body — like one’s mind — is and should be one’s own. And when you had a problem you fixed it, as it should be — and as I did when I recognized that what I was doing wasn’t working for me.
By “cultural shift”, I did not mean “social engineering”. Social engineering is when others think for you and tell you what you must do. It’s none of the government’s business how much you or I weigh — or what we eat.
However, having said that, what you heard was a sociological term from my education in Behavioral Science.
It is one thing to study human behavior in groups which is what sociology is — and that I do believe in. It is another thing for the government to play Big Brother in solving what they believe to be “society’s ills” by using social engineering methodology.
None of us should ever have to be some social engineer’s lab rat!
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