One Crisis After Another

 Posted by on 9 April 2002 at 12:18 pm  Uncategorized
Apr 092002
 

Thomas Bray urges us to keep some perspective on the problem of obesity:

First, something has to rank first among the causes of “preventable death.” That obesity is now No. 1 may tell us more about the progress we are making against other problems than about the apparently sudden collapse of willpower in a population inundated by burgers, french fries and chocolate malts. After all, longevity keeps going up even as each new health crisis is discovered.

Of course, the government-must-do-something crisis culture is also quite adept at sounding the alarm at one issue for a few years, then raising hell about precisely the opposite problem in a few years.

It may also be no accident that the presumed surge in obesity claimed by CDC occurred during a period of sustained prosperity and low unemployment. If it had been a period of economic misery, we might still be talking about malnutrition and starvation. Remember the campaign a few years back about all those children going to bed hungry at night–a campaign brought to you by some of the same people now obsessed with fatness?

Were we ever eating just right for even a few moments between the crisis of hunger and the crisis obesity? Oh, of course not, silly me!

   
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