One of the alarming side effects of obesity is that it apparently causes brain damage. The federal government, which ran up an $83 billion deficit just in April, the one month it normally counts on a surplus thanks to Tax Day, is obese. So maybe it’s time to check its brain function.
“Not a single expert that we’ve consulted has said that having the federal government tell people what to do is the way to solve” the obesity problem, Michelle Obama told reporters on Tuesday — the same day she thunkingly delivered a 124-page White House Task Force report which gloats that “Twelve Federal agencies participated actively,” cites “recommendations . . for federal action” and promises that “leaders in the public and private sectors. . . are ready and waiting to put this plan into action.”
The catchall is this: “The Federal government . . . should provide clear, actionable guidance to states, providers and families on how to increase physical activity, improve nutrition, and reduce screen time.”
How is that not telling people what to do?
Also not telling people what to do is Mayor Bloomberg, who this spring ordered food manufacturers to reduce the sodium content or else, threatening, “You can see already there are people in government urging regulation of sodium. I think we’d be much better off letting the marketplace do that.” By “marketplace,” he apparently meant “Mayor’s office.” This week, Heinz reformulated its signature ketchup with 15% less sodium.
Meanwhile, Gov. Paterson continues to push a tax on drinks and powdered beverages that would add 67 cents to the price of a two-liter bottle of soda and virtually double the price of a can of lemonade mix. Pretty soon Kool-Aid Man is going to find himself exiled to the same Gitmo as the Marlboro Man.
Obesity generates big fat headlines, which the state, the city and Washington love. It’s a crisis, and it won’t go to waste.
The political class is hungrily loading its plates with more government employees, whose salaries and pensions you’ll be paying forever, engorging itself on your taxes and nibbling away at business and its ability to sell legal products.
What the Fatty Poppins crew isn’t doing is much of anything that is likely to trim America’s waistline.
The federal task force paper, the one with the fantasy title, “Solving the Problem of Childhood Obesity within a Generation,” basically shakes out into the following categories:
(a) Vague, toothless suggestions — the phrase “should be encouraged” is used more than 60 times — about changes that might be nice but that we don’t really need to read in a report. Example: “Young children should be encouraged to spend less time using digital media.” OK. How? Why, “the AAP [American Academy of Pediatrics] guidelines should be made more available.” Great! Tell Susie about the AAP guidelines when she’s screaming for “Dora the Explorer.” Tell Susie’s mom about the AAP guidelines when she would gladly pay Dora a week’s wages to get her kid to sit down and be quiet for half an hour.
(b) Plans to beef up the Nanny Squad — more professional hectoring. Breast-feeding your child, for instance, seems to give him a better shot at not being obese. So let’s have more federal spending on breast-feeding peer-counseling groups and on home visits to encourage mothers to breast-feed. This after a 20-year nationwide push to get more women to breast-feed has simply been ignored by lots of women, either because they can’t or they find it incredibly irritating.
(c) More measuring. We know obesity is a problem, but just to be sure we need to spend more resources to study it. We must “prioritize routine surveillance” of, for example, the weight of mothers before and just after they give birth. (How the government, or any other force on earth, is going to talk such women into letting them look over their shoulders as they step on the scale is not revealed.) Right on cue, a Wisconsin congressman introduced a bill requiring states to report to Washington the body-mass index of all children aged two to 18.
(d) Useless programs that nobody can seriously expect will do much good. According to the geniuses in the White House, expectant mothers who gain either too much or too little weight during pregnancy (both factors have been linked to obesity of the resulting infant) will change their habits because of “Text4baby,” a service that sends three messages per week until your baby is a year old.
Text4baby may sound like a program that could be run by a 22-year-old out of his apartment in Fort Greene, but the government doesn’t do small. Its website says it’s “made possible through a broad, public-private partnership that includes government, corporations, academic institutions, professional associations, tribal agencies and non-profit organizations.” Even MTV is on board, providing a blatant plug for Text4Baby on an obviously scripted segment on its “16 and Pregnant” series in which a young mother praised the service for reminding her to take her baby to the doctor. If you’re the kind of mom who can’t remember to take your baby to the doctor, is a government text message really going to change your character?
(e) Threats of more regulations and taxes. Of course, the paper all but promises a fat tax: “A tax strategy to discourage consumption of foods and beverages that have minimal nutritional value . . . could generate considerable revenue to fund obesity-fighting programs.”
That’s true. Such a tax could indeed generate considerable cash to hire more functionaries tasked with telling us we’re too fat, to weigh us, to text us and to publish more press releases about the effects of exercise, TV and fast food.
But would such taxes make us thinner?
A 2005 study led by Hayley Chouinard of Washington State University concluded, “A fat tax may be an effective means to raise revenue, but will not result in a significant reduction in fat consumption . . . These fat taxes are regressive in nature, as the elderly and poor suffer greater welfare losses.”
A 2006 paper co-authored by USDA economics researcher William Levedahl said, “Empirical estimates . . . suggest that a fat tax designed to raise revenues to finance nutritional education efforts may increase the total consumption of fat.” For instance, if beef were made more expensive, people would shift down to cheaper, fattier cuts.
Even better: since people tend to eat less fat as they climb the socioeconomic ladder, the study says, “perhaps a more effective strategy for reducing the consumption of fat from meat would be to pursue policies that increased income.” (One proven way to increase income: cut taxes instead of raising them.)
A study published in the Journal of Health Economics in 2008 said, “Although it is intuitive that raising the price of high-calorie food will decrease consumption of such goods, it is not clear that such an outcome will actually reduce weight. Our empirical analysis demonstrates a case where a tax on food away from home, a food intake category blamed for much of the rise in obesity, could lead to an increase in body weight.”
The White House study seems vaguely aware that a fat tax wouldn’t work. It says, “current state-level tax rates on soda purchases have had a relatively small impact on adolescent and adult weights.”
You know there’s a “but” coming, right? Here it is: “But a higher tax rate would likely have a greater impact on consumption, as evidenced by the effects of the substantial rise in tobacco taxes.”
Eep.
Federal, state and city taxes total $5.26 per pack of smokes sold in New York City. But tobacco is a special case, the single most toxic substance Americans commonly consume. No amount of smoking isn’t dangerous, a lot of smoking is really dangerous and nicotine is highly addictive. How did Coca-Cola get lumped in with Camels?
If government wants a culprit for the national scourge, it might start with a glance in the mirror. Americans are fat because Uncle Sam is forever holding out the ladle and saying, “One more bite, dear.” Enduring federal subsidies keep going to agribusiness to make corn, sugar cane and soy cheap. The continent is positively sticky with federally-subsidized high fructose corn syrup. Meat and dairy production get massive handouts.
So do the kings of the burgers. Fast-food joints have pocketed hundreds of millions in federal checks for “job training” — programs with names like “The Work Opportunity Tax Credit” that pay them to hire people they would have hired anyway. (A 1996 study found that 92% of these shake shack serfs would have gotten the job even without a subsidy.)
Less than 1% of federal food subsidies go to fruit and vegetable production. How about we get rid of the other 99?
That might help with the Whole Foods/McDonald’s problem — the “access” issue. Blacks and Hispanics, the reasoning goes, are especially liable to be obese because they’re surrounded by junk food.
You want a Whole Foods in Harlem? Stop subsidizing junk food and maybe pony up a nice tax abatement instead of hiring an army of federal text-messagers and postpartum mother-weighers. I’m sure John Mackey would be happy to discuss a superstore. (Which would immediately be opposed by neighborhood pols yammering on about the collateral damage to “mom and pop” businesses — even the moms and pops who sell Funyuns.)
The White House report says local governments “should be encouraged” to do exactly this kind of thing but doesn’t offer to do it in D.C. So the feds are telling local governments: Feel free to decrease your tax revenue when fighting against obesity. In Washington, we’re not so into that.
Harlem might not take to Whole Foods, a k a Whole Paycheck, anyway — because of the prices. Subsidize that arugula! Then we could talk about the absurdity of the government lavishing funding on the lifestyle choices of the slick and slender. It’s not like that hasn’t happened before (electric cars, the mortgage interest deduction, all those tutus and British accents on PBS).
Still, what’s the difference between giving to the rich and taking from the poor? Either scheme is regressive. Yet one way increases government revenue, expands its payrolls, and satisfies its members’ urge to control. You could almost call it a . . . craving.
Kyle.smith@nypost.com