obesity

Obama Policies Fuel Global Food Crisis Through Ethanol Mandates, While Fostering Obesity in America

by Hans Bader on January 22, 2011

in Agriculture, Energy, Environment, Ethanol, International

Food prices are soaring all over the world. The global food chain is reportedly stretched to the limit, fueled by the fact “that more than a third of the corn produced in the U.S is now used to make ethanol.” As a result of such “bio-fuels” subsidies, one of the world’s largest food producers predicts a “global food crisis.”

Unfortunately, the Obama administration has long pushed ethanol subsidies, even though such subsidies have a history of spawning famines and food riots overseas. For example, the costly climate-change legislation backed by the administration contained massive ethanol subsidies.

The administration is now forcing up the ethanol content of gasoline through EPA regulations, heedless of the fact that ethanol makes gasoline costlier and dirtier, increases ozone pollution, and increases the death toll from smog and air pollution. Ethanol production also results in deforestation, soil erosion, and water pollution.

Back in 2008, leading environmentalists lamented the devastating impact of ethanol subsidies on the global environment and the world’s poor. They noted that thanks to ethanol, “deadly food riots” had already “broken out in dozens of nations,” such as “Haiti and Egypt.” And they pointed out that “food-to-fuel mandates are leading to increased environmental damage. First, producing ethanol requires huge amounts of energy — most of which comes from coal. Second, the production process creates a number of hazardous byproducts, and some production facilities are reportedly dumping these in local water sources. . .Most troubling, though, is that the higher food prices caused in large part by food-to-fuel mandates create incentives for global deforestation, including in the Amazon basin. . . huge swaths of forest are being cleared for agricultural development. The result is devastating: We lose an ecological treasure and critical habitat for endangered species, as well as the world’s largest ‘carbon sink.’ . . .the net impact of the food-to-fuel push will be an increase in global carbon emissions.”

By increasing world food prices, ethanol subsidies also fostered Islamic extremism in poor countries like Afghanistan that import much of their food.

Ethanol subsidies are not the only way that the Obama administration is harming poor people. The administration is also discouraging poor Americans from purchasing cheap, nutritious food. For example, it has also disparaged the consumption of potatoes, banning white potatoes from the federal WIC program, while allowing WIC money to be spent on far less nutritious things that are starchy, fatty or sugary (such as apple sauce, which has no nutrition unless vitamin C is artificially added to it).

The potato is superior to most foods in nutrients per dollar (and per acre of farmland), so much so that “in 2008, the United Nations declared it to be the ‘Year of the Potato.’” (Thank you again to the ancients of the Andes for this marvelous little food.)

“This was done to bring attention to the fact that the potato is one of the most efficient crops for developing nations to grow, as a way of delivering a high level of nutrition to growing populations, with fewer needed resources than other traditional crops. In the summer of 2010, China approved new government policies that positioned the potato as the key crop to feed its growing population.” Potatoes provided much of the agricultural surplus that made the Industrial Revolution possible.

Potatoes are more nutritious than other starchy foods like rice and bread, and “are a good source of vitamins.” They have a lot of vitamin C (much more than a banana or an apple), and potassium levels slightly higher than potassium-rich bananas). Potatoes also have all 8 essential amino acids, unlike most other staple foods like corn and beans.

The Obama administration is also using federal funds to subsidize the opening of an International House of Pancakes in Washington, D.C., despite its sugary and fattening entrees, and the development of high-calorie foods that benefit politically connected agribusinesses.

Nanny-Statist CSPI Sues to Ban Happy Meals at McDonald’s

by Hans Bader on December 17, 2010 · 9 comments

in Health and Illness, Legal, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Regulation, Sanctimony

An ill-informed left-wing group, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, is suing McDonald’s in California to ban toys from Happy Meals. It is bringing a class-action lawsuit on behalf of “an activist employed by the California government to advocate the ingestion of vegetables, though some pains seem to have been taken to obscure this connection,” abetted by the gullible liberal media, which continue to depict her as just a “random” California mom.

San Francisco earlier banned Happy Meals, even though the meals in San Francisco’s own public schools are less healthy than at McDonald’s.

Why is the plaintiff in the suit against McDonald’s suing? She claims that “[b]ecause of McDonald’s marketing, her daughter has frequently pestered her into purchasing Happy Meals, thereby spending money on a product she would not otherwise have purchased,” and that “when she said no, her kids became disagreeable” and “pouted.”  If that’s a basis for suing, then, as Walter Olson notes, “McDonald’s isn’t the only company that should worry. Other kids pout because parents won’t get them 800-piece Lego sets, Madame Alexander dolls and Disney World vacations. Are those companies going to be liable too?”

The Center for Science in the Public Interest is the left-wing group that has ignorantly disparaged “normal food items such as baked potatoes, hamburgers, pizza, pork chops, and bacon as unhealthy. Never mind that a baked potato has only 100 calories, gives you 30 percent of your day’s supply of vitamin C (more than a banana), some protein, and many important minerals.”

People claim that McDonald’s makes poor people fat by selling them cheap greasy food, but its customers aren’t that poor (even so-called “poor” people in America have significant disposable income, which is why they often pay $3.69 for a Big Mac, when they could easily buy a McDonald’s double-cheeseburger that’s almost as big and has as much meat for a mere $1.19, even in “poor” places like the inner city).  And its food isn’t particularly fatty: a Big Mac or a Quarter Pounder is a lot leaner and healthier than many dishes people cook at home like Quiche Lorraine.  I am not poor, and I periodically feed my 3-year old daughter cheeseburgers or double-cheeseburgers without being nagged to do so (although she certainly enjoys them).

New fast food restaurants were recently banned in South Los Angeles, based on a kooky “food apartheid” claim by the Los Angeles City Council.  Never mind that baked goods are a bigger source of calories for kids than fast-food items like pizza, and that some people lose weight eating at McDonald’s, like me, Soso Whaley, and a Richmond man who lost 86 pounds.  A court recently blocked a class-action lawsuit against McDonald’s over obesity.

While liberal busybodies are suing McDonald’s, they are using federal funds to subsidize the opening of an International House of Pancakes in Washington, D.C., and the development of high-calorie foods to benefit agribusinesses.

Court Rejects Obesity Class-Action Against McDonald’s

by Hans Bader on December 9, 2010

in Health and Illness, Legal, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Precaution & Risk, Regulation, Sanctimony

A New York court has refused to certify a class-action lawsuit against McDonald’s by people claiming it made them obese. As Ted Frank notes, the whole case should have been dismissed as baseless long ago, without even getting to the issue of class-certification. Earlier, a Brazilian judge ordered McDonald’s to pay a fat employee $17,500, in a truly moronic ruling. Never mind that eating at McDonald’s doesn’t make skinny people fat (I lost 10 pounts while working at McDonald’s).

The Obama administration is now barring poor mothers from using taxpayer (WIC) money to buy white potatoes, even though baked potatoes are more nutritious than apples or bananas. But they can still use the money to buy all kinds of things with little nutrition.  Meanwhile, the Obama administration used $766,000 of your tax money to subsidize the opening of an International House of Pancakes (IHOP) in Washington, D.C., even though IHOP food is no healthier than McDonald’s. The money was a discretionary grant from the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). Another branch of HHS foolishly encouraged mothers to stock their refrigerators with apple sauce (which has no nutritional value at all unless vitamin C is added to it, since an apple’s natural vitamin C is lost when it is processed into apple sauce).

The New York Times earlier reported that the Agriculture Department is subsidizing the development of fatty foods to benefit large restaurant chains.

Liberal municipal officials want to ban the opening of new McDonald’s restaurants under the theory that they are racist for making minorities fat, and that McDonald’s is guilty of “food apartheid.” (Yet when fast-food restaurants refuse to deliver to poor sections of town, liberal trial lawyers claim that that, too, is racist. No matter what they do, fast-food restaurants get accused of racism.)

Federal Government Subsidizes Obesity and Wealthy Urbanites

by Hans Bader on November 24, 2010 · 1 comment

in Health and Illness, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Precaution & Risk, Regulation, Sanctimony, Zeitgeist

In the Washington Examiner, David Freddoso explains how the federal Department of Health and Human Services spent $766,000 of your tax dollars to help open an International House of Pancakes in a prosperous section of Washington, D.C. That’s ironic, given that government food nannies depict IHOP’s sugary entrees as a cause of obesity (and even though IHOP serves two of Men’s Health Magazine‘s 20 most unhealthy restaurant dishes). The IHOP is opening in a wealthy yuppie area where even  a tiny one-bedroom apartment rents for at least $1800 per month.

While HHS is busy subsidizing IHOP, another branch of HHS, the FDA, is trying to restrict the salt content of food, which could lead to increased obesity rates, more heart attacks, and “higher death rates among some individuals,” and make it harder to market low-fat foods. Ironically, if salt levels are curbed, people will compensate by eating fattier food, since there seems to be a trade-off between salt and fat.

A recent study funded by NIH (another branch of HHS) encouraged parents to stock their fridges with apple sauce (even though apple sauce has basically no nutrition unless vitamins are artificially added to it, since the natural vitamin C in an apple is largely destroyed when it is processed into apple sauce), while disparaging potatoes, which are rich in vitamin C, potassium, and various minerals.  (Disclosure: I participated in that study for $100).   (Baked potatoes are healthy, although some of potatoes’ vitamin C is lost when you process them into french fries.  Potatoes have much more vitamin C than bananas or apples.  And they have more potassium than supposedly potassium-rich bananas).

The federal government is now banning the use of WIC money by low-income mothers to buy white potatoes, while allowing the money to be used for a host of less nutritious foods.

Photo Credit: Ankur Gulati’s Flickr Photostream

Obesity Letters Assume Parents Can’t See Their Children

by Brian McGraw on November 22, 2010

in Global Warming, Health and Illness, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Regulation, Zeitgeist

A school district in Arizona is implementing a controversial program that has the world talking: they will be weighing students and sending notes home to parents — too big, too small, and just right. The editorial board at the Arizona Daily Star is in support. The Daily Caller is not.

According to this link, Arizona is right in the middle of the obesity chart, with 25-29 percent of its members qualifying with a BMI of over 30. BMI is simply a measure of your height and weight, where “appropriate” weights are established for each heights. For a large population, the BMI measurement is reasonable, but it has a number of shortcoming — as many NFL athlete’s who are in remarkable shape would be labeled as obese due to their muscle mass.

Shaming parents and children is unlikely to solve whatever problem the school board believes is its responsibility to solve. If they want to help, they could start with calling attention to the removal of food subsidies, many of which go directly to the same foods that are publicly demonized and attributed to obesity.

See: Why a Big Mac Costs Less Than a Salad

Image credit: knezovjb’s flickr photostream.

Ignorant Food Snobbery: Judge Orders McDonald’s to Pay Obese Employee $17,500

by Hans Bader on October 29, 2010

in Health and Illness, Legal, Nanny State, Personal Liberty

From The New York Times:

A Brazilian court ruled this week that McDonald’s must pay a former franchise manager $17,500 because he gained 65 pounds (30 kilograms) while working there for a dozen years.  The 32-year-old man said he felt forced to sample the food each day to ensure quality standards remained high . . .The man also said the company offered free lunches to employees, adding to his caloric intake while on the job.

This is sheer idiocy. McDonald’s does not make people fat. I lost 10 pounds while working at McDonalds for a summer. McDonald’s food is not any fattier than the food served by many other restaurants. The foie gras served in fancy restaurants is much fattier than hamburgers.  Quiche Lorraine is also fattier than a hamburger.  Food snobs may not like proletarian food like hamburgers, but then, I am indifferent to foie gras, which tastes a lot like canned dog food to me. Should I be able to keep food snobs from eating foie gras, just because it’s very fatty? (Ironically enough, my wife is French, so I’ve been exposed to foie gras a lot.)

There is now a big movement afoot to tax fast food in the pursuit of mythical public health benefits. The government is also moving to restrict the salt content of food, which could lead to increased obesity rates, more heart attacks, and “higher death rates among some individuals,” and make it harder to market low-fat foods.

Restricting What People Eat, Based on the Ignorance of Food Snobs

by Hans Bader on October 17, 2010 · 2 comments

in Health and Illness, Healthcare, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Precaution & Risk, Regulation, Zeitgeist

There are increasing calls for the government to restrict salty food and fast-food restaurants, and tax fast food, to curb obesity.  This is especially true in the aftermath of the passage of Obamacare, which will shift more health care costs to taxpayers, creating the appearance of a public-health rationale for restricting what people eat.  One city even imposed a moratorium on new fast food restaurants.

But there is little evidence that fast food causes obesity. Eating a hamburger won’t make you fat — as I noted earlier, hamburgers are healthier and less fatty than other foods not hated by food snobs, like Quiche Lorraine. (I had four quarter-pound cheeseburgers last night, with fries — the usual number when I have hamburgers for dinner – and I am not fat;  although admittedly, the burgers were home-made, and thus made of leaner ground beef than that used in many restaurant burgers.)

Even if people who eat at fast-food restaurants are fatter than the public at large, there is little reason to believe that the fast food made them fat. It is more likely a manifestation of the socioeconomic class of people who comprise most of their customers. Less affluent people tend to be fatter in America than more affluent people, even in areas with fewer fast-food restaurants – and people who eat out frequently may well be fatter than those who don’t, regardless of whether they eat at a fast-food restaurant or a more upscale restaurant.

And many people who eat at fast-food restaurants are not fat at all. For example, when I ate mostly at McDonald’s (because I worked there at the time), I lost 10 pounds over the course of a summer. Since such people are not overweight, taxing the fast food they eat will do nothing to reduce obesity. It simply imposes a regressive tax on people of modest means.

The FDA is now seeking to cut the amount of salt on our food, even though prevailing salt levels do no harm to most people, and cutting salt consumption will actually harm some people. Ironically, if salt levels are curbed, people will compensate by eating fattier food. There seems to be a trade-off between salt and fat. Low-fat foods sometimes contain added salt to make them palatable to dieters. When I lived in Irvine, California, where the shelves of the grocery store seemed full of low-fat foods, I checked the sodium levels. I found that the sodium levels of low-fat foods were slightly higher than the regular or full-fat versions. If the high sodium levels of such low-fat foods are forced down by FDA regulations, people may react by returning to consumption of the fattier foods, resulting in rising obesity levels. The government’s anti-salt crusade may thus result in its anti-fat crusade backfiring.

A Moment on the Lips; A Lifetime on Pay Slips

by Kathryn Ciano on October 13, 2010

in Culture, Economy, Labor, Zeitgeist

New studies suggest that very thin women earn proportionately more money than do average-sized women. Comprising only women within 25lbs of doctor-recommended weight, the latter study strictly compares the rail-thin to her average-sized female colleagues.

The Wall Street Journal reports today that employers “seem to treat women…the way the fashion industry does”; thin women get much higher paychecks than do average-weight women, while thin men tend to earn less than their average-weight colleagues:

The study is the first look at the effects of being very thin on men vs. women. Separate studies of 11,253 Germans and 12,686 U.S. residents led by Timothy A. Judge of the University of Florida found very thin women, weighing 25 pounds less than the group norm, earned an average $15,572 a year more than women of normal weight. Women continued to experience a pay penalty as their weight increased above average levels, although a smaller one — presumably because they had already violated social norms for the ideal female appearance. A woman who gained 25 pounds above the average weight earned an average $13,847 less than an average-weight female.

Men were also penalized for violating stereotypes about ideal male appearance, but in a different way. Thin guys earned $8,437 less than average-weight men. But they were consistently rewarded for getting heavier, a trend that tapered off only when their weight hit the obese level. In one study, the highest pay point, on average, was reached for guys who weighed a strapping 207 pounds.

Plenty of logical explanations account for the disparity and have nothing to do with “sizeism.” Perhaps folks who conform to social image ideals produce better results because they can better influence others. Perhaps people who work hard to attain an unnatural weight — very thin for women, overtly muscular for men — apply the same work ethic to their jobs. Perhaps women who care enough about body image to forego dessert are more attuned to their bosses’ opinion of their performance in other areas. Or perhaps the body types prevalent in the study sites — Germany and Florida — tend towards thin, and 25lbs becomes a highly variable range.

Even more poignant is the idea that a great deal of weight control is competitiveness. Weight plays into office politics. Office politics affect confidence. Confidence in turn changes the way people perceive themselves — and changes the way people negotiate for employer perception or pay.

WSJ goes on to cite a September George Washington University study comparing obesity costs across genders:

Meanwhile, in separate research, economists at George Washington University tabulated the cost of obesity and found that it’s more expensive for a woman to be obese than for a man, according to the New York Times. (Their calculations included direct costs, like medical expenses, and indirect expenses, like lost wages and reduced work productivity.)  While a man racks up $2,646 annually in extra expenses if he is obese, a woman’s obesity costs her $4,879, almost twice as much[.]

The weight-gender-pay spectrum reeks of sexist scandal, but there’s another side to this story.

Women have fared much better in the recession than have men. Women’s paychecks may be more elastic to social pressures, but this flexibility provides a measure of job security that men’s inelastic, less-sensitive paychecks seem to lack.

When considering drastic measures like the Equal Pay Act 2010 that will subject women’s salaries to the inelastic measures men enjoy, recall that pay flexibility has allowed women to retain jobs at a much higher rate during the recession. Women have also bounced back into the workforce in droves, while male-dominated sectors continue to fall and men continue their weak showing in gender-neutral industries.

Price always conveys information.

Paycheck disparity may sound like scandal, but as a measure of personality cues, workplace signaling, willingness to negotiate, and hours actually worked, this is merely one more factor in the employee informational bundle.

Employers pay workers who product more than they cost. If weight plays into this formula, hopeful employees take note. If we erect a price floor by attempting to thwart the market information available here (or by passing yet more “equal pay” legislation), the next round of layoffs will hurt much worse.

Obamacare May Force McDonald’s to Drop Health Coverage for Employees

by Hans Bader on October 1, 2010

in Economy, Health and Illness, Healthcare, Insurance, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Regulation, Sanctimony, Zeitgeist

Michelle Malkin points out that “McDonald’s has notified the feds that it may be forced to drop health insurance for some 30,000 workers due to the Obamacare mandate.”

A large number of employers may eventually eliminate health coverage due to Obamacare. As The Wall Street Journal notes:

Trade groups representing restaurants and retailers say low-wage employers might halt their coverage if the government doesn’t loosen a requirement for ‘mini-med’ plans, which offer limited benefits to some 1.4 million Americans. The requirement concerns the percentage of premiums that must be spent on benefits. . .McDonald’s and trade groups say the percentage, called a medical loss ratio, is unrealistic for mini-med plans because of high administrative costs owing to frequent worker turnover, combined with relatively low spending on claims.

It’s not just limited-benefit plans that are disappearing. Excellent health plans that patients prize most are disappearing too.  Earlier, 22,000 seniors lost their health care plan due to Obamacare. Meanwhile, state regulators are approving premium increases due to the increased costs resulting from Obamacare.

By the way, I’m tired of mindless McDonald’s bashing. The food at McDonald’s is no more fattening than at many restaurants which charge much higher prices.  (A Big Mac is healthier than quiche lorraine.)  I lost 10 pounds while working at McDonald’s and eating mostly McDonald’s food (a man in Richmond lost 86 pounds). Yet left-wing busybodies are now using discriminatory zoning rules to block the opening of new McDonald’s franchises in places like Los Angeles, and are calling for taxes on fast food to control what people eat, as part of “healthcare reform.”

LibertyWeek 96: Donut Day Disobedience

by Richard Morrison on June 8, 2010

in CEI Projects, Features, Podcast, Zeitgeist

Richard Morrison and Marc Scribner welcome Chris Horner, Sam Kazman, and Ryan Radia to Episode 96 of the LibertyWeek podcast. We cover Chicago’s dishonorable gun restrictions, a special interview with bestselling author Christopher C. Horner, civil disobedience on National Donut Day, a shout out to CEI’s annual dinner gala and the FTC’s proposed “Drudge Report Tax”.

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