GrimTuesday
Just to defend myself, I wasn't talking about controlling what people eat directly (like, a cop denying people from entering McDonalds). I was referring to more subtle and indirect methods.
Give an example. It's impossible for anyone to consider your position if you don't explain what it is.
GoldShadow
This is a BMI calculator, so be careful with this. BMI can be a useful tool, but it has to be used in context. It doesn't take into account muscle mass, or the fact that some people can be very healthy at a higher BMI. People with either a lot or very little muscle mass are not accurately assessed by this scale, nor is BMI an absolute measure of determining if you're fat or obese.
That's my point. When they pull out statistics and start talking about how many fat Americans there are, they're going by the BMI calculator. They aren't taking into account the other factors that you mentioned, so how can they say there's a national obesity problem?
Goldshadow
On top of that, we have a very liberal on eating in the US. The US being the fattest (or second fattest now?) nation in the world shows a cultural emphasis on food and large portion sizes. So yes, that aspect is cultural.
I don't think it shows a cultural emphasis on food. It just shows that we live in a culture where food is more available to people. I'm sure people in other cultures would eat just as much as the average American, they just aren't able to.
Goldshadow
Please be very careful when trying to justify an argument with something like what you just posted. The article says that people with a slightly higher BMI lived longer, but in scientific research, you can never draw conclusions from simple correlation without doing more research. You have to ask: why did these people live longer? Can you come up with a number of hypotheses? Maybe it wasn't just because they had a few more pounds. Keep in mind that BMI was used. Perhaps these people had numbers higher on the BMI scale, but were very fit and muscular (since BMI doesn't account for that). Perhaps, as the article says:
"Because being overweight is a risk factor for a host of chronic diseases, including heart disease and diabetes, one theory is that their survival advantage is due to the fact that they receive more aggressive treatments to prevent these conditions."
In other words, it's interesting that people with a slightly higher BMI lived longer in this experiment, but it's not conclusive. Would these results hold in a different population/a different country? Is it linked to the specific types of foods they eat? Were these people really fat, or were they just more muscular or taller? Is the theory proposed by the article true? We don't know the answers to these, and cannot say anything with strong conviction until we do.
No, they aren't really fat. Again, my entire point is that most overweight/obese people aren't fat. They throw the words 'overweight' and 'obese' around without explaining what they actually mean, so that people end up thinking there are more fat people than there actually are. There is no actual obesity problem in America. Sure there are individual people who may have health problems related to their weight, but it's not a problem on a national level and it's not something everyone else should be worrying about.
It's just a bunch of propaganda spread by politicians and activists who hate corporations. The media helps spread it because there are ratings in national disasters.
Goldshadow
You can approach this a number of ways. Overweight and obesity cause us to spend billions of healthcare dollars in hospitals and ERs each year.
That sounds like a great argument to keep the government out of health care. National health care sounds great at first, but what people don't realize is that it gives the rest of society an excuse to tell you how to live your life.
Goldshadow
Overweight people eat up a lot of health spending, they tend to be less productive at jobs (often because of things like missed days due to illness). But then, so does smoking.
If someone isn't productive at their job then their boss can fire them. If they want to keep their job they'll have to find a way to be productive. If it's their weight that's keeping them from being productive, then they already have their own incentive to lose weight. There's no reason why anyone else needs to be involved.
Goldshadow
Why should we aim to curb any of these habits? It's not necessarily that we should ban these and try to control people. Trying to get people to stop doing these things is admirable and the right thing to do because it encourages a healthier population. So it is a good goal, to be sure, and we should try to push it with ad campaigns and by informing people of the dangers. We should not try to push it with outright bans, which would amount to controlling peoples' lives.
There are people trying to ban toys at fast food places. In certain parts of the country they've already succeeded. Obama's new health care bill is going to force restaurants to display the number of calories in each of their meals. That's not the same as "encouraging" people to eat healthier. That's using force.
And by "we", who are you referring to? I don't want a single dime of my tax money going towards telling people they should be eating healthier. It's not the governments' business to tell us how we should or shouldn't be eating. If someone wants to use their own money to advertise against fast food, then that's great. Don't use my money to do it.
El Nino
No smoker I have ever met has ever said that smoking is good for you. Whereas a lot of people don't seem to know that "enriched flour" is a misleading name. A lot of people also don't seem to know what trans fat is. Based on that, I can't say for sure that these people would still be eating that stuff if they knew what it was. At least with smokers I know that they know, and it's not a choice made out of ignorance.
You can explain what trans fats are to people without using tax money or putting government restrictions on fast food restaurants.
El Nino
You probably don't want to know the answer to that question. I'm no dietrician, but the number of people in America on cholesterol and blood pressure meds are making sure that my bosses live well.
You still haven't demonstrated that fast food is to blame for people being on those meds. Pointing out that people on meds exist contributes nothing to your argument.
It would be like me arguing that bath tubs are too dangerous by pointing out that a lot of people drown, even if most of those people didn't even drown in bath tubs.
What percentage of the population is on cholesterol and blood pressure medicines? Of that percentage, how many of them eat or ate at fast food places regularly? Of the percentage of people who are NOT on cholesterol and blood pressure medicines, how many of them eat at fast food places regularly? You can't use that argument until you can answer all of those questions.
El Nino
We can at least agree on this. Goverment regulation of private lifestyles is not something I'd want to encourage.
The government already regulates our private lifestyles. Tobacco companies aren't allowed to advertise their products at all. Most states have a higher tobacco tax to punish people for buying tobacco, and most drugs are banned all together. The more this anti-fast food movement continues, the sooner the government will step in and regulate the way people eat. It doesn't matter if that's what you want to happen or not. You're basically a pawn for the people who do want it to happen.
This isn't about educating people, it's about results. The people pushing this obesity BS want to control the way people eat. They want to punish corporations because they think that being successful means that you must be evil. They see poor people buying big macs from rich corporations and they automatically think that the poor people are being taken advantage of, because apparently poor people aren't smart enough to make their own decisions. You can educate people in about two seconds by running a commercial saying that fast food has a lot of calories. It's not hard to educate people. Everyone in the country knows that fast food isn't healthy, to the point that most people believe it's less healthy than it actually is. You'd have to be an idiot to think that there are still people who have never heard that fast food is bad for them.
Can you really picture the anti-fast food people ever saying "Well, we've finally gotten the word out that fast food is bad, but everyone is still eating it. I guess that's their choice, so we'll just leave them alone now."? Of course not. They're never going to stop until people start doing what they want. They're just like the anti-smoking *******. Everybody knows that smoking is bad for you already, and yet there are still anti-smoking ads all over the place. They aren't interested in playing fair and allowing people to reach their own conclusions. They're determined to force people to do what they say and they'll use government force if they have to.
The anti-obesity/fast food movement is an evil movement run by a bunch of fascists who want to control us because "they know what's best for us", and if you support that movement then you're contributing to a much greater evil than any form of obesity could ever be.
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