Back when the only op-eds I read were the ones published in my local newspaper, Kathleen Parker’s conservatism, especially her anti-abortion rhetoric, used to get under my skin. I’m still not a fan, but now at least I realize how mild she is compared to more vitriolic right-wingers like Mark Steyn and George Will. But she takes a tour into wacko-ville with her Tuesday column about the obesity epidemic. Most of it is pretty benign — Parker lists some weight loss tips better suited to “Dr. Phil” than a major newspaper — but she latches onto a phrase from a recent study calling for a “major public health intervention.” Never mind that this study, from the Duke University Global Health Institute, is not coming out of the Obama administration; Parker nevertheless concludes that “it isn’t far-fetched to infer that a government-mandated health-care system eventually would necessitate a government-mandated diet to control costs.”
It’s not? This argument is as specious as Antonin Scalia suggesting that upholding the Affordable Care Act could lead to the government forcing every American to buy broccoli. What planet is Parker living on? I guess I missed the part where Obama started dictating calorie counts and servings of carrots to every man, woman and child in the country. When she writes that people will ultimately “rely on federal food marshals to tell you what to eat,” her imagination is running amok. Federal food marshals exist only in Parker’s own dystopian future. I doubt she’s even considered how a government-mandated diet would work. Would we install North Korea-style speakers in every household to call families to the table for their daily dose of Vitamin B? Would the IRS refuse tax refunds to people whose BMI put them in the “obese” range? Maybe we’d all have to track our daily intake on an iGov app with an uplink to the National Institute of Health.
Policies to promote health by educating people about food choices are about as far as the government goes. In fact, the massive subsidies doled out to grain farmers and dairies have basically turned the government into the anti-food marshals; they’re effectively subsidizing donuts and lattes, but not fruits and vegetables. I know conservatives like to complain about the so-called nanny state, but in this case the nannies are straw men of Parker’s own creation.
In fact, the recommendations of another study, this one by an independent government advisory body, the Institute of Medicine, are laid out in the Wall Street Journal. The strongest advice? To look into “requiring at least 60 minutes of physical activity a day in schools and considering excise taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages.” Neither measure has anything to do with a government-mandated diet, and both actually track with points Parker makes in her own column:
In a word, it’s about sugar, including hidden sugars such as high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), a liquid sweetener that seems to be in nearly everything.
“Everything” — including the sodas that the IOM panel recommends taxing. The government taxes cigarettes, but it’s hard to make the case that high cigarette prices are infringing on any basic American freedom to get cancer cost-free. As for physical activity and better nutrition standards in schools, aren’t conservatives like Parker usually in favor of school reform? She writes that imposing a healthy diet may mean “your children will hate you,” but too often adults take the easy way out:
Out of sheer exhaustion, we fool ourselves into thinking that children should have a say in what they eat.
Apparently Parker favors parental food marshals, but fears (non-existent) federal food marshals. This might square with the conservative preference for small government if not for the small fact that the IOM study recommends a “government-mandated diet” for children in public schools, not adults buying groceries in the free market. In addition, the push to get junk food out of elementary schools has succeeded less as a project of the Big Brother feds than as an effort by individual states — the level of government at which conservatives would outsource everything from Medicaid to abortion rights. The New York Times reports that California, which has banned soda machines in schools and limits the sugar and fat content of cafeteria foods, has had some success in changing students’ eating habits:
The study found that California high school students consumed on average nearly 160 calories fewer per day than students in other states, the equivalent of cutting out a small bag of potato chips. That difference came largely from reduced calorie consumption at school, and there was no evidence that students were compensating for their limited access to junk food at school by eating more at home.
I tend to be critical of healthy-eating initiatives by the government; it seems ludicrous to blame the obesity epidemic on “confusing” nutrition labels or to claim that big corporations like McDonalds brainwash us into craving Happy Meals. The whole idea of spreading “awareness” of the need to exercise is similarly silly, as the problem is less about Americans not knowing what to do and more about opting not to do it. But Kathleen Parker sees conspiracies behind every soda machine. With a Muslim supposedly in the White House and the president ostensibly planning to outsource U.S. foreign policy to Russia in a second term, I’d say the right has enough conspiracy theories on its hands already.
. . . So Well Read. . . 