Draug, I agree with you 100 percent. It's true. you want to smoke, fine. People like to drink and that can be harmful too. People need to watch what they put in products. seriously.

I was being sarcastic, semck. I actually don't support a ban that makes welfare recipients into a second class group. Ban purchasing soda with food stamps. That is legit. It already happens for other things not considered necessary at the grocer. But that is pretty much the limit of what could be done in a free society.

Gotcha, Draug, sorry to misinterpret. It is, unfortunately, an actual position, so it's hard to tell sometimes.

Thanks for the article, Thucy, it was fascinating. However, I disagree with you that it doesn't describe "the consumer demanding it." What I saw in that article was precisely big food companies using science like never before to create more and more precisely what the consumer wants.

Right now, for various reasons, that is a good-tasting snack food (and that has a lot to do with lifestyle issues outside the control of food companies -- see the section on baby boomers, for example). If you want to change that, then argue to the public. People think that never works, but it does.

I've seen articles from as recently as 10-15 years ago arguing that people would never care about local produce, so laws would have to be passed if we ever want to return to an economy where that is valued. Now, due entirely to consumer demand, it's a huge and growing sub-market. This is because consumers demanded it and rewarded those who provided it. That is what companies respond to.

So if you want to reduce the junk food problem, work on convincing people it's a problem. Convince them they're addicting themselves to unhealthy stuff. Big food companies will be happy to spend their money on healthier food if that's what the demand is for. (Again, you already see this in the article to some extent). You don't need to turn into the nanny state, legislate what people can eat, or be everybody's parents, as satisfying as you'd find that.

Those examples that Thucy posted are shown to every business student in the united states in their intro to marketing class. Its well known. Companies are creating demand, not responding to it. They're using science's knowledge of psychology and how are body functions to create foods that we will crave. Its great business, yes, but we have to respond the affects of highly addictive and prevalent junk food.

As for Europe vs. America - I've lost probably 10 pounds since I came here in October. The amount I eat hasn't changed much. I still find a McDonalds every once in a while to eat at too. The problem is that the shit that our food is made of is so much worse in the US than it is in Europe. The UK has some of the most stringent food laws in the world. First week I was over here I bought some raspberries. They had mold within 4 days in the fridge. Pineapples? A day or two longer. That's realistically how long they should last. I remember fruit lasting much much longer in my fridge back home.

In response to Draug's (over)reaction, I was referring to the Medicaid bills that we all pay. These companies relentlessly target the poor, who can't afford to build balanced meals for their kids. 2 liters of soda costs a ton less than 2 liters of milk or juice. The poor are simultaneously the ones who have the highest chance of being obese and the ones with the lowest chance of having medical insurance. Hence, everyone else foots the bill. Whether its through hospitals being forced to treat them in the ER and the rest of us paying higher rates or through money Medicaid pays out, we pay the bill.

We can all at least agree that obesity is a problem? We've been trying to educate and convince people for a decade. It hasn't worked. Given the freedom of choice, people will on average choose suboptimally due to myopia, so something needs to be put in place to overcome that.

I realize you were talking mostly of the poor, goldfinger. I was quite explicit in rejecting legislative proposals aimed specifically at them.

" We've been trying to educate and convince people for a decade. It hasn't worked. Given the freedom of choice, people will on average choose suboptimally due to myopia, so something needs to be put in place to overcome that."

What you do is you keep working to educate them. If they have the information and they still choose to be unhealthy, that is up to them, not you.

But what happens when 40% of the population continues to choose unhealthily, semck? At what point do we step in and prevent civilization form becoming like the people in WALL-E?

Never, goldfinger.

"The poor are simultaneously the ones who have the highest chance of being obese and the ones with the lowest chance of having medical insurance."

While I agree with the second part of this statement, please provide proof to the first part. Most of the truly obese people I see (myself included) are middle to uppoer middle class. We have such busy lives we eat junk food out of convenience and don't have time to exercise.

With regards ot the second part, the poor may be the least likely to have health insurance, but only 44 million people are uninsured out of over 300 million. So passing a law because 44 million uninsured people (or about 15%) might use tax dollars if they became obese is just fucking stupid and unfair to the other 85% with insurance.

And goldfinger, it is only 15% of the population uninsured. Even if that entire 15% were obese, the other 25% of the population that is obese is insured so no tax dollars. Legislating health is fucking stupid. Period. It is discriminatory against those who have a right to live as they wish because they pay their own way.

And onto obesity... Not all obesity is a result of bad eating habits. I have diabetes and a fucked up thyroid. Guess what I had for dinner tonight (and similar for most nights). I had a grilled chicken breast with green beans, collard greens, and a slice of "light" wheat toast (9 carbs, 1 sugar per slice) with sugar free Smucker's blackberry jam on it. Lunch was a bunless burger from Dave and Buster's and a Caesar salad with no croutons. To drink? Iced tea, unsweetened of course, with a lemon slice. I'm 5'11" and weigh 260lbs despite eating a very healthy diet and having an excellent blood sugar maintained lately (6.3 A1C and a typical nightly blood sugar of 125-130). I can't get my weight down because my thyroid just won't let me.

Haha Jesus Christ.

Everyone, semck83 defends a society's right to be obese even if it means destruction of the entire civilization.

A brave freedom fighter, he is.

#fuckthucy - How the fuck did you ever become a mod?

Here's an article I tried to pull up from an unbiased source, Draug. It clearly outlines the connection between income and obesity.

http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/79/1/6.full

And I'm pursuing this line of logic for the argument to try and convince others. I believe the government has a moral right to society to try and prevent obesity, regardless of monetary considerations.

I'm sorry about your case, Draug, but how many obese people have that condition? What I'm driving at though is that to fight the obesity epidemic, I don't see how we can do it without government intervention.

How many have that condition and others similar to it? My exact condition accounts for about 8-10% of all obesity cases and other glandular conditions are believed to make up more than 25% of all obesity cases.

Bit the fact remains that, even with a clear cut case of obesity and poverty, the people under 200% of the poverty level is still a minority compared to the greatest concentration of the population. You cannot deny people the freedom.of choice in America. You do and you will see armed revolt and I will be at the front of that revolt. You may take away my life, but you will never take away my freedom!

So I scanned the article and looked at the charts (on my phone) and I see that for men there is less than a 5 percent difference between the highest income and the lowest and that the true poverty were lower tham the working class, counter to the claims presented. I also didn't see where they eliminated other factors at all (like known glandular conditions involving the thyroid or pituitary glands) although it is late and ot was just a skim. I will read it closer tomorrow but it still doesn't negate the fact that the total population under 200% of poverty is less than 50 million people out of over 300 million. We are not a socialost nanny state and we will never be one, thank God.

Yeah we let kids starve in this country fucking Obama food stamp president trying to feed our starving population thank god we're no nanny state. Love my country.

Thucy,

"Everyone, semck83 defends a society's right to be obese even if it means destruction of the entire civilization."

First of all, I would hope that before a society "destroyed" itself through obesity -- due (by hypothesis) to voluntary intake of unhealthy foods -- enough people would care about the society and themselves to exert self-control and keep that from happening. If that didn't happen, I really doubt there was much to the society in question in the first place.

Second -- yes, once the government is dictating what people can eat, then it has already started on the path of destroying itself as a society that deserves to exist, which is to say, a free society. I don't see the point of destroying in order to save, and particularly of destroying via a known evil to save from a conjectural one. I'm not aware of any societies that have actually disintegrated due to to over-prevalance of fat. Many have come to a bad end due to despotism.

I am not sure that British food is intrinsically healthier than that in the USA. The big supermarkets in the UK hold an abusive monoply/oligopoly position every bit as much as they do in the US. Capitalism, after all, is more about the elimination of competition than ''healthy competition''. This is ultimately the fault of us - the compliant consumers - but that is another discussion

I do, however, feel that this particular discussion is not factoring the other side of the equation and that is calorie expenditure or exercise. Certainly transport in the US is centred on the automobile, while in the UK the normal commute to work, at least, is still done on public transport. I feel that money spent on public transport, perhaps raised by a levy on fuel, or increased and targeted road pricing, would be money very well spent. This would be both from an environmental and, on the issue of this discussion, public health point of view.
He says this quickly while getting ready to duck!

Anecdotally, it's my impression that British people walk more than people in the US, on a very broad average.

Every single British person I know who has ever visited the US has commented on the same thing - the lack of pavements (sidewalks) in many areas where the UK would have them, with US neighbourhoods designed on the assumption that people will use their cars even for short journeys. If the local shop / grocery store is, say, a quarter of a mile from your house, in the UK most people would walk there and back if they only needed a couple of bags of shopping. I get the impression that in the US most people would drive.

Once again, ful, at best you're punishing everybody (via greater inconvenience or higher costs) for some people's problems. People use cars for a reason: they're faster, more convenient, and they just prefer them. Everybody who chooses not to drive because of your increased taxes will be somebody who is choosing something other than what they want, just because of your artificial strictures. It's a pretty crude hammer, it seems to me, and the positive effect would have to be huge on the few to make up for the many. (Of course, I'm opposed to this kind of thing in any case -- it's "soft" regulation, it's true, and thus not as horrible, but it still amounts to somebody upstairs telling people what's best for them, and it would disproportionately affect the poor, making their lives more relatively inconvenient than they already are.).

Smeck you put forward a good libertarian case with a cursory nod towards utilitarianism as usual. If you push your argument to its logical conclusion you would arrive at anarchy, albeit of the right rather than the left. To give you just one hypothetical: should we, as a society, support a police force when some of our wealthy members are able/can afford to, provide for their own security?

That's a disanalogy, ful. A police force protects people from others, not from themselves.

Also, as you point out, getting rid of the police would arguably hurt the poor disproportionately. The same is true of your suggested policies.

So semck just to be clear you are a full blown advocate of Mill's harm principle, that is to say: ''an individual may do whatever he or she wants, so long as such actions do not harm any other individual?''

@fulhamish - a lot of foods are better in Britain. I could go into lots of examples, but Kraft Mac & Cheese has less artificial dyes in it due to restrictions b the British government, making it safer than American Kraft Mac & Cheese.

semck, please speak with some reason here. The government has to be able to reward and punish certain behaviors for society to move forward. In Brazil they were having a problem with public urination. So much that during Carnivale they had urinary patrols who would go around and fine people for public urination. The average Brazilian didn't care, but its a pretty disgusting habit to have thousands of people pissing on houses and such.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/06/brazil-pee-patrols-carnival-public-urination_n_2631945.html

And do you think people would switch to solar tech without government subsidies? Do you think any of our renewable energy would be at the level of development its at now without public investment? No. The private sector does not optimally allocate public goods.

@ semck: "Waa, waa, waa, I can't always have everything I want."

Tough.

"The government has to be able to reward and punish certain behaviors for society to move forward"

Says who? The only punishment for behavior should be for behavior deemed tot eh direct detriment of others. Someone peeing on my house or in my yeard is a detriment to me. They are violating my rights as a property owner. There fore it is against the law (has been for many years in the US) to urinate on public or private property in populated areas. But there is no direct harm to anyone other than myslef should I choose to have a Super Size Coke, Super Size Fries, and two Quarter Pounder w/ Cheeses from McDonalds for lunch (they don't do super size around here any more, but that was their call to make, not the government's). Over time, that diet would be bad for me. But, as a person who does watch what he eats, I can say without concern, that all food products can be consumed in moderation. To have super sized Coke, fries and double QPC once a month is not going to cause you significant harm. To eat it three or four times a month (once a week?) - not so healthy for you and you will find it hard to maintain a healthy weight and feel good. To eat it three or four times a week/every day, probably gonna kill you before you reach retirement age.

So all things in moderation. If the government wants ot enforce anything realting to food stuffs, require full labeling on packages (better than they currently have) and require restaurants to have "mini" health charts on menus (basic caolires, fats, carbs, and sugars) and have a full one like they require on prepackaged food readily available to give to customers that want to see it.

That way government is requiring producers to inform consumers, but not restricting choice.

@goldfinger - Government subsidies are not analogous to government restrictions. Encouraging alternative energy sources is not the same as banning other energy sources. And even the energy discussion in general is not analogous because non-renewable energy is, well, non-renewable. It is a limited resource in theory. If you use more than the Earth can make over time, we will run out. Sugars and fats are in abundance. We will not be running out of them. If anything, the argument could be made that we are running out of clean water so we should ban pure spring water sales for drinking purposes and everyone should have to drink products made from tap water (iced tea, kool-aid, etc.) Not saying I agree with the stance (God knows I love my San Pelligrino), but the argument *could* be made.

"The government has to be able to reward and punish certain behaviors for society to move forward"

Yikes. I don't believe treating yourself to a soda should be a "punishable behavior".

+1 Draug

Draug - a lot of that tangent I went on was related to semck's comments on what a government has the right to do and not do.

In response to what you said specifically though, you said you take the position that the government cannot intervene, unless it is for the public good, correct? Someone else has to be suffering from another's actions. That's why Bloomberg's new smoking ban in public parks went through pretty easily. Secondhand smoke is a legitimate detriment to other people's health.

But following your rule, why should the government step in and ban heroin, or any controlled substance of the sort. By taking it, people are only harming themselves. And if it were decriminalized, many of the spillover effects of the drug trade such as gang violence would subsist, so you can't really count that as a detriment to others. Its more a symptom of illegality than the substance itself.

The reason why the government can and should intervene in personal choice such as drug usage is to make society as a whole safer and healthier. A net improvement for civilization, of sorts. I understand what you're saying about better information, Draug. That's certainly a step that should be taken, maybe before this proposed ban, but I don't think its enough. How many times do we not follow strictly what the doctor tells us? He says rest for 3 days but we feel great after 2. Take all the pills in the bottle, but we think we're better after half of it is finished. Its just that I personally don't trust the majority of the population to act upon that information and make informed, rational decisions. 30%? Yes 40%? Maybe, but definitely no where near the majority.

And Tom, its only very large sodas. If you wanted to drink that high quantity, you could buy two smaller sizes