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The Government Says You're Fat
CNSNews.com ^ | May 15, 2003 | Tom DeWeese

Posted on 05/17/2003 11:29:39 PM PDT by 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.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Editorial; Extended News; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: foodpolice; government; health; intrusion; privacy; pufflist; screwtheun; soisunclesam
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To: Shooter 2.5
Why don't you quote what I said instead of putting words in my mouth in order to build up that straw man you just knocked over?

Never said I knew is was supposedly bad - what I said was that I could deduce what "hydrogenated oil" was - but you knew that, as did everyone else reading this thread.

The point I made then is still valid, and you have done nothing to change that, or debate it:  A manufacturer does not have a duty to foresee everything that might be wrong with their product in twenty or even ten years, especially if it affects less than one one-hundredth of the population.  People with allergies and sensitivities have a responsibility to look out for themselves and all your whining is just that.

In addition, the governments only course of action in any case should be to recommend that people not eat it or feed it to children, especially considering that the conclusion is not concrete by any stretch.

Col Sanders

101 posted on 05/24/2003 6:59:43 PM PDT by Col Sanders (I ought to tear your no-good Goddang preambulatory bone frame, and nail it to your government walls)
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To: Col Sanders
I suppose I should apologize for being rude. I didn't mean to but I had just been released from the hospital and I was still hurting. Sorry.

I am not sensitive or allergic to anything. I simply enjoyed pop-tarts in the morning, two or three cookies a day and I loved my salsa at night and in the afternoon. Because of that, I had what could have been, because I was cutting the grass and riding my bike alone, a death sentence. I also did what the doctors have said, everything right. I exercised, checked my cholestral and they are perplexed. I had high blood pressure during the period when I lost my job and since retiring, it's normal. Heart disease before 65 is not in my family. I have never smoked or drank socialable except one or two drinks on a holiday as toasts.

I'm going back in a couple of weeks to find out why this happened by running blood tests. I also start re-hab next week for the next ten weeks.

The hernia that the doctor caused when he forced the plug in my main artery will have to addressed next month. I'm still black and blue and swollen from the angioplasty.

102 posted on 05/25/2003 9:24:24 AM PDT by Shooter 2.5 (Don't punch holes in the lifeboat)
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To: FairOpinion
Which is what I meant. SOme people are "fat" because they have good reasons to want to be so. The government should stay away from telling people how much money or reserves is bad for their health... lest we become malnourished like most of those Euro kids whose parents are too cheap to buy them steak.
103 posted on 05/28/2003 5:25:38 AM PDT by JudgemAll
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To: FairOpinion
It's not the issue of fat, it's the issue that it's none of the government's business whether anyone is fat or not, and what anyone eats.

Which is what I meant. SOme people are "fat" because they have good reasons to want to be so. The government should stay away from telling people how much money or reserves is bad for their health... lest we become malnourished like most of those Euro kids whose parents are too cheap to buy them steak.

104 posted on 05/28/2003 5:26:18 AM PDT by JudgemAll
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To: NittanyLion
Then I would suggest you concentrate your efforts on the root cause of the problem: government's role in healthcare.

Bingo!!! We have a winner. When you pay for your own healthcare, if you are fat and get sick, YOU pay for it. But when the burden of resposiblity shifts from the individual to the group, then we all "pay for it", and then it is "my business" what you do and eat. But of course, the flaw is that nobody else should really be paying for mine or your healthcare. This is the core of socialism, pure and simple.

105 posted on 05/28/2003 5:34:27 AM PDT by machman
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To: Celantro
Yeah, Atkins says to stay off fruit too. Berries he likes but not fruit.

He does (did) not say this......only in the induction phase of the diet. Plums have only 9 or 10 carbs in them. Bananas are a no no. Please read his books. So much disinformation here.

His diet lifestyle works.......I lost 44 pounds and am still losing weight while I gradually increase my carb intake.

106 posted on 05/28/2003 5:49:02 AM PDT by MadelineZapeezda
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