Sunday, June 29, 2003 12:00AM EDT

Are weigh-ins next?

Freedom is at stake

By RICHARD WAGNER, Special to the News & Observer

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Watching newscasts back in the days of Mao Tse-Tung's Red China, Americans chuckled at the images of thousands of workers, lined up military-style, grinding through calisthenics while a government official presided. Strong bodies were needed to feed the Communist machine.

Surely, we told ourselves, oppression would never come to the good old land of the free. Nah, we cherished our personal freedom too much to allow that to happen.

But, of course, those images on the TV screen, and our interpretation of them, were from a different time, a different place -- far removed from the onset of the know-it-all '90s. It was early in that decade when a small, vocal group of anti-fat-food fanatics began to influence public policy, persuading the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to add weight loss to the national public health agenda.

Armed with pseudo-statistics cooked up by junk scientists, the health nuts chirped long and hard enough until the media joined the anti-obesity chorus. Americans refused to listen, so the know-it-alls persuaded government bureaucrats to shout the message. A few years later, the Centers for Disease Control and the surgeon general joined the campaign and began trumpeting obesity as a "public health epidemic" that was driving up the cost of health care.

Come on. Reasonable people might understand the CDC concerning itself with a communicable disease such as smallpox, but corpulent people don't infect others with "fat pox."

By the 21st century, the anti-fat fanatics began bombarding Americans with a subliminal message: An individual, irresponsible slob that he is, no longer can be trusted to care for his own body. No, sir. It belongs to society, or the state, to mold according to the know-it-alls' one-size-fits-all pattern.

"Fat taxes" on consumers of soft drinks and fast food have been proposed ostensibly to force compliance where propaganda and persuasion have failed. Although not labeled a fat tax, North Carolina's General Assembly is considering in its budget a higher sales tax on soft drinks and candy. A California legislator filed such a measure last year, and a New York assemblyman proposed a bill this year that would tax not only junk food but also video games and television commercials. Once the door is open, farther-reaching legislation is sure to follow.

Next enter the lawyers. Where fat taxes fall short, lawsuits, or merely the threat of litigation, will extort compliance by restaurants and other purveyors of foods deemed unhealthy by the know-it-alls.

Using the same "costs to society" argument a few years ago in the states' lawsuit against the tobacco industry, antismoking fanatics drew the blueprint for the anti-fat know-it-alls. Rather than paying for health-care costs, however, states piddled away on boondoggles the billions of dollars won in tobacco settlements. Born in blackmail, Golden LEAF today serves as North Carolina's monument to government waste.

If taxes and litigation fail, where next? Should government enforce its dictates by herding people into stalls like cattle to be prodded and inoculated? Should bureaucrats establish templates for body stature? Should the state enforce periodic weigh-ins of all citizens? Or should Big Brother test cholesterol levels in every citizen's blood?

The argument that food by itself causes obesity is intrinsically flawed. A recent study by Lisa Sutherland, a researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, demonstrates my point. Sutherland analyzed federal data on the diet, weight and physical activity of teenagers, ages 12 to 19. She found that from 1980 to 2000, calories the teenagers consumed increased by only 1 percent, while obesity increased by 10 percent. Significant, though, was that physical activity dropped by 13 percent.

Contradicting long-held scientific thought, recent evidence uncovered by numerous respected researchers indicates that diets rich in fats and low in carbohydrates, such as the Atkins Diet, are healthy and perhaps preferred. So, fat taxes would be, in effect, the worst prescription that policy-makers could write.

But, of course, improving public health isn't the real goal. The real payoff is more money for government slush funds and greater control over citizens' lives.

Today, China marches toward capitalism -- while, as we approach Independence Day, a shrill faction in the United States wants us to surrender more of our personal freedom.

Sunday, July 6, 2003 7:57AM EDT

Final word

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A cultural problem
Pushing for legislation that affects snack food, soft drink and fast food industries will not solve our nation's epidemic, and these industries should not be demonized for providing goods and services demanded by society.
We are not going to change Americans' behavior by adding 5 cents to the cost of a cheeseburger, and we cannot expect lawmakers to rescue our country from our growing obesity epidemic. We must learn to make the right choices on our own and take personal responsibility for our health.

As a clinical psychologist who has been dealing with the obese for more than 30 years, I have never witnessed one of my patients walk up to a soda machine, purchase a drink and walk away obese. Nor have they become obese from eating one fast food meal. Negative lifestyle choices cause obesity, not a trip to a fast-food restaurant or a cookie high in trans-fat.

Our culture embraces "simple" diet regimens and weight-loss breakthroughs, offering overweight America the hope that it is looking for and encouraging people to believe that losing weight is simple.

Maintaining a healthy weight and a healthy lifestyle is not easy. We need to stop pretending that it is and look to deeper psychological, behavioral, social and cultural issues to make real change.

Dr. Gerard Musante

Durham

Fat that's good for you

Research indicates that some types of fat are good for you. Polyunsaturated and monounsaturated are good for you.

Eating fat helps the brain. Vegetarians, their kids and babies, are found to have problems because they don't eat fat.

Other fats, such as Omega 3s and 6s, are also good for you. Saturated fat actually contains polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats. The Eskimos and Mediterraneans eat diets very high in fat -- and they have much fewer problems.

Have you heard fish is good for you? It is because of the fat in fish.

If you eat a high-fat diet, you lose weight and your cholesterol and triglycerides decrease. The funniest part is the fat they invented to help everyone's health -- hydrogenated oils and fats used in margarine, vegetable oil, most cookies and crackers -- are now considered the worst fat there is.

So a fat tax would make the problem worse. It is time to stop giving people bad advice that will literally cripple and kill them and look at the facts.

Read the studies. Educate yourself. Stop listening to liberals and vegetarians and look at the facts. You need look no further than the recent study at the Duke diet center. Its study indicated that low- carbohydrate diets are much better for your health than high-carbohydrate diets.

However, any diet that cuts high glycemic foods is better than no diet. Foods with fat and cholesterol are not the problem. Foods with a high glycemic index are the problem.

Keith Baldwin

Cary

Where the blame lies

Dear Mr. Lawyer: Been told I'm fat, which means I am more likely to have a heart attack, stroke and diabetes. Mama always told me 'dat I was big-boned and should stay away from second helpings or I would balloon up into a porker. Meanwhile, my only friend tells me I'm obese since I'm a lazy/television-video game junkie/fast food addict who sits behind a desk all day long with no active lifestyle.

Your late-night television infomercial on fatty food class-action lawsuits that focused on sad, overweight, poor people being exploited by wealthy manufacturers and fast food chains hit home. It's nice to see lawyers like yourself providing no upfront-fee consumer legal protection from unscrupulous marketers who have caused my unhealthy cravings for ice cream leading to obesity.

I would like to sue the manufacturer whose deceptive consumer-based advertising tempts me to buy this fat-sugar-based substance . We'll also need to sue the local grocery store for peddling this stuff at tempting sub-market prices .

Because of my excessive weight, I'm now depressed, can't work and will require disability pay . With time off from work, as an inspired advocate, I plan to write legislators asking them to ban or heavily tax this contraband, thereby protecting susceptible children and fixed-income addicts.

Well, I need to get back to eating my ice cream before it melts.

Darryl Black

Cary

Absence of choice

Your readers might say that what we eat is a matter of personal choice, but that is not the whole story.

If our food companies offered us healthy food to eat that might be the case, but has anyone ever been out looking for healthy food? It's nearly impossible to find.

I quit eating hydrogenated oil a couple of years ago, yet if I stop for a snack while I'm out somewhere, at a drug store or a convenience store, nearly everything contains hydrogenated oil.

So it often becomes a choice between eating unhealthy food or nothing at all. When you're hungry, what kind of choice is that? Maybe a tax on fat would induce our food companies to offer us healthy food for a change.

Ed Bremson

Raleigh

Parents, lead the way

The obesity problem is out of control in North Carolina. A recent study of Wake County Public Schools and Wake County Human Services found that almost 50 percent of the children studied were overweight or at risk of being overweight.

As parents, we lead by example. If we are among the 82 percent of North Carolinians who are not exercising regularly, we are doing an injustice to ourselves and to our children. Their education does them no good without the body to support the knowledge.

Many parents provide relentlessly for their children's academic lives. Now, we have to realize that as parents, we are responsible for the epidemic of childhood obesity that has hit our county, our state, our nation. Children are showing early symptoms of cardiovascular disease and a type of diabetes that is usually seen only in older adults.

I don't think a fat tax will cure the problem. It is a matter of education and changing habits. Food choices are important, and so is physical activity.

We can all make immediate changes to our lives and that of our children by choosing to be more active. We can make it fun and spend more time with our children.

How about a plan this summer to do some activities with the kids that we did when we were children? Remember hopscotch? It can be a simple plan: Calories in, energy out. Jump, dance, walk, play for 30 minutes a day.

Kathy Olevsky

Chairwoman, Wake County Council on Fitness and Health

Raleigh

More change is needed

OK. Let's take a good look.

Order a meal in a restaurant, and you are served enough for two to three people.

There are lots of food ads for cereals. Seen any for apples?

Tour a school cafeteria and count the carb grams. Then count the time allotted to burn them off in recess. Air-conditioned comfort beats outdoor heat and allergies. What's there to do? Ah, play video games.

Compare this to days of less comforts, which equals less obesity.

This will take a lifestyle change greater than any can imagine.

E. Barbee

Durham

'Junk' arguments

Having this public debate is very important to the health and happiness of all Americans. But after reading the opinions of Richard Wagner in his article "Are Weigh-Ins Next?: Freedom Is At Stake," I simply have to respond.

Wagner purports that the government debate and actions concerning the obesity problem in America are a conspiracy of "anti-fat-food fanatics." Is there such a group? What do they do, hang out at airports and malls handing out three-bean salads and preaching conversion to iceberg lettuce?

Wagner makes them sound as menacing and well-funded as al-Qaeda . He states that this supposed group was so vocal it pushed the FDA to make "junk science" into government policy.

But like most arguments spewing from hard-core conservatives, Wagner finds it far easier to imply than to prove, so imply he does with little worry about using the facts. I am thinking especially of the bizarre allusions to the Red Menace that open his piece.

I can say if a fat tax went to educate the public on the dangers of obesity, to provide children with the knowledge about how to eat healthier then, yes, I could see a strong argument for that tax. I'd pay an extra 5 cents for my next Zagnut bar to help America be a healthier country.

Wagner is correct in saying Americans should always protect their individual freedoms, just as they did during the conservative McCarthy era (my implied allusion duly noted). But we also have to remember that we are not a country of a single individual, but a country of a people. And that being so, we have to balance the individual needs of persons with the well-being of the people.

John Huntley

Hillsborough

Where to draw the line

They should not tax fatty food. We already pay taxes on food. Where do you draw the line? Who is to say what is fatty? Who is to say what's not? Where is the government going to stop?

Angie Thompson

Pine Level