The Government Says You're Fat

CNSNews.com ^ | May 15, 2003 | Tom DeWeese

[Tailgunner Joe]

The government - ever eager to control every aspect of your life - has now launched a campaign to determine what and how much you eat.

Having taken over much of the health system via Medicare, the government is now concerned about the cost of illnesses resulting from obesity, the same way it worried about the cost of illnesses associated with smoking. As such, the government has embarked on an effort to control individuals' personal lifestyle choices, as well as accusing the fast-food industry of causing obesity.

The lessons of Prohibition, the outlawing of alcoholic beverages in the 1920s, have not been learned and the result is the virtual criminalization of the tobacco industry and now, it would seem, the fast-food industry.

In her book, "Dependent on D.C.: The Rise of Federal Control Over the Lives of Ordinary Americans," author Charlotte A. Twight says, "Few things are more personal than health care, nor more alien to the legitimate functions of limited government. Yet few things are higher on the U.S. government's agenda at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Step by step, the federal government is usurping power to substitute its medical judgments and therapeutic choices for those of individual patients and their physicians." Most Americans are unaware that the newly proclaimed US policy comes right out of the United Nations.

The UN's World Health Organization and its Food and Agricultural Organization issued a draft report making the case that various restrictions must be imposed on everything from soda to snack foods in order to save the world from fat people. The UN report manages to ignore the estimated 815 million undernourished people in the world.

It is a plan to create an Orwellian world in which everyone is compelled to do what Big Brother tells him or her to do. The US campaign, though couched in terms of obesity's financial costs, is a subterfuge for even greater control over our personal lives.

Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson was on television recently, pointing a finger at the fast-food industry and urging it to "do what is right for Americans."

What is right is the right of every American to determine what and how much they eat, and to be responsible for whatever consequences they encounter. This is not a public issue. It is a private one. It is one in which the government should have no role nor say.

The absurdity of the new war on fat people is the assertion, soon to be a nationwide environmental campaign, that housing developments actually cause Americans to exercise less, thus contributing to obesity, diabetes and other disorders.

This is pure junk science that defies common sense, but watch as Americans are told that suburban life is the new enemy that is killing them.

It is a hop, skip and a jump from telling Americans they are too fat to issuing regulations to ensure they do not exceed daily food intake rules set by the government. It's an extension of the same government control that now includes smoking restrictions.

Getting fat or staying slim is a personal lifestyle decision. It is not the government's right, nor role, to determine, and the new campaign, initiated by the UN, can lead to still further loss of freedom in America.

[tomakaze]

last country that really started worrying about this crap had a fuhrer.

[JustPiper]

Well I know I am and because of health I am working on it and Low Carbs does work, especially with a supplemental carb buster tablet .

[FairOpinion]

"What is right is the right of every American to determine what and how much they eat, and to be responsible for whatever consequences they encounter. This is not a public issue. It is a private one. It is one in which the government should have no role nor say. "

---

Exactly. It's none of the government's business.

Even reasonable sensible people fall victim to this and miss the point, which is NOT the issue of general medical recommendations of what you should or should not do, but YOU are the final decision maker, but that the government has no right to tell you what you eat or do.

It is interesting and disconcerting to me, that the very same people who are so upset when the government passed the Patriot Act to catch terrorists and keep us safe, embrace the idea of the government telling us what to eat,"because after all low fat is good for us, so let daddy government take care of us", how much water you can use to flush your toilet in your home, and so on.

[tomakaze]

congrats - stick with it, it works.
(I dropped 80 lbs 5 years ago the same way)

[Jay D. Dyson]

I am obliged to remind these talking heads from the USG that they should refrain from thinking they know what's right for me.

I may start thinking I know what's right for them.

-Jay

[Reagan79]

The government needs to trim a little pork themselves. Maybe all those morbidly obese people on food stamps can turn some food stamps in at the end of the month.

[supercat]

This from the diet that pushes the carb-laden low-fat diets that cause obesity for many people? [Many people are prone to carbohydrate addition, an epidemic health problem which the government not only hasn't warned against, but actually encourages with its "foot pyramid". Once carbohydrate addition sets in, the only effective cure for the resulting problems is cutting carbohydrate consumption, and yet the government has completely failed to promote this.]

[Celantro]

You're right. The low carb, no sugar lifestyle works dramatically well. I got on the scale today and weighed in at 20 pounds less than I weighed last August and that's exactly as much weight as I wanted to lose. Cut out sugar, eat no white rice, little bread and no white bread, no cereals and no pasta. The weight drops off and stays off. It's a "diet" you can live with forever.

[JudgemAll]

last country that really started worrying about this crap had a fuhrer.

Indeed, it makes no sense for a nation interested in growth to punish growth and signs of growth, even if it means we are fat.

Anyways, there is fat and there is fat. Fatness is only a temporary state. Camels have humps for a reason and people get fat for a reason. It's not because one is fat today that it is against their interest for the future.

End of story.

[Bella_Bru]

Chubby feds have no right to be calling anyone fat.

[The Red Zone]

Just don't take away our partially hydrogenated fats!

[LIBERTARIAN JOE]

In a country where we've allowed the gov't to tell us which intoxicants we can and can't use, tell us which safety devices we can and can't use (seat belts mandatory, body armor illegal), tell us how to design our homes and workplaces, demonize some dangerous activities (smoking) while forcing us to pay for others (gov't school sports), this is just another logical, unconstitutional step on the path to complete gov't control of how we live our lives.

[I_dmc]

As many said when the demonification of smoking began....

[SamAdams76]

Well, I guess we could start with the Texas Democrats. They've been skipping the salad bar for far too long now.

[raybbr]

What the heck let's all look like this.

To all of you who say: "Let me get as fat as I want." When this thing gets sick and my wife has to take care of her in Cardio-Thoracic Intensive care because she has forced her heart to do the work for three people and it costs the health care system a couple of hundred thousand dollars, don't complain about the cost to you in the form of higher rates.

[hadaclueonce]

I think they are bring up anything to ensure their continual budget funding.
From the BATF to this hoxie group, you have to be in the news to get more of our money to "fix a problem."

No press releases, no additional budget funding...

[metesky]

When this thing gets sick and my wife has to take care of her in Cardio-Thoracic Intensive care because she has forced her heart to do the work for three people and it costs the health care system a couple of hundred thousand dollars, don't complain about the cost to you in the form of higher rates.

"This thing" just happens to be as human and fallible as raybbr.

One would think that the conservative position would be to fight socialized medicine in all its aspects, but the small minded concentrate on calling others fat and blaming high costs on people who don't adhere to the lifestyle choices of the great raybbr.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

The present government of the United States is the last entity that should be accusing anyone of being fat.

The Gubmint is so fat now....the back of its neck looks like a package of hot dogs.