December 02, 2010
It’s obvious why Big Beef, along with Big Corn and Big Sugar, might be opposed to Ms. Obama’s plan. But there’s comic irony in the fact that a recent study concluded Big Beef’s evil, child-killing fast-food joints are much more rigorous with quality control than those benevolent public-school cafeterias.
Ms. Obama’s plan, despite its veneer of grass-roots activism and DIY urban gardening, also has its share of heavy hitters. Her Let’s Move! initiative is backed by the inordinately powerful SEIU, members of whom beat a black conservative into the concrete earlier this year. She’s garnered support from the National Fruit and Vegetable Alliance, the Food Family Farming (F3) Foundation, the United Fresh Produce Association, and even Disney, the world’s largest media company. She has been working with the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation, whose website proudly sports logos from such street-level, stick-it-to-the-man outfits as ConAgra, Del Monte, General Mills, IGA, Kellogg’s, Kraft, Safeway, and Coca-Cola.
An estimated one in three American children is obese, and healthcare for obesity-related illness costs Americans an estimated $150 billion yearly. We are warned that if we don”t buy the kids some salads now, we”ll be forced to pay for their angioplasties later.
Why?
Yes, the kids are too fat.
But no, it’s not my fault. Nor is it my responsibility. But as Obama and her minions are framing the debate, America’s oceans of blubbery preteens can lay the blame for their condition at the feet of everyone except themselves and their likely-to-be-fat progenitors. In particular, black and Mexican obesity is blamed on everyone except obese blacks and Mexicans.
We are endlessly chided that poor folk don”t have the money to properly feed themselves”even when they have free food stamps”but the voices grow silent when it’s noted that so many of them can still shell out the ducats for tobacco, alcohol, and lottery tickets. Consider also that in the “hood, things such as FDA requirements and salads may be deemed “too white” to merit consideration. I know that if there’s one thing that excites inner-city kids, it’s eating organic vegetables. A 2007 Associated Press study of 57 government nutritional programs found they had little to no effect in altering children’s eating habits.
I see it as akin to cigarettes, alcohol, and unprotected sex: You can only provide so much “education,” and then people are going to make their own decisions. If they”re aware of the risks they”re taking, they should bear the consequences alone. For adults, this includes having more children than you”re aware you can afford. And if you aren”t aware you can”t afford them, or that they’ll get fat if you cram nothing in their mouths besides potato chips and Faygo, you”re truly too stupid to be having children.
I’ve been through plenty of lean times”leaner than either Michelle Obama or Sarah Palin could ever hope to grasp. When I was about 20, I read Adele Davis’s classic tome on basic nutrition, Let’s Eat Right to Keep Fit. The lessons I learned have stayed with me all my life. One can meet all their basic nutritional requirements”vitamins, minerals, fibers, proteins, carbs, everything”on about $40 a week. You can do it with beans, brown rice, eggs, tuna, apples, peanut butter, skim milk, wheat pasta”it can be done. Nobody knows this better than me. You simply need discipline, something that was tossed from the public-school curriculum long ago.
When I was only 12, I realized I”d grown a mite chubby. I compared my height and weight to some charts at school and realized that I weighed 110 pounds”a dozen pounds over my ideal weight. So for six weeks I cut out all sweets, ate smaller portions, and exercised. Six weeks later, I was in tiptop shape. And it never occurred to me that the government should somehow be involved.
