Friday, March 09, 2007

Not Fit for Consumption

This country of ours, America, at one time held in high regard self sufficiency, independence, from state interference in our individual lives.

Today, though, the ever increasing reach of the state, nannying, is proclaimed as the be all and end all to America’s supposed ills.  Regulate this, regulate that, and if regulation doesn’t work, tax, tax, tax, the cat o’ nine tails of the professional jobholders, stripes our backs with ever increasing frequency for an ever increasing number of state imposed boondoggles, for our own good of course.

One of the more current “wars” for which the state desires to impose funding is the “obesity war,” and one of the latest clarion calls to be trumpeted in the so called obesity war has been issued by Deborah Cohen of the Rand Corporation.

Writing in the Washington Post, as part of the Post’s so called “Think Tank Town,” Ms. Cohen states the following as the supposed cause of too many fat people overgrazing at the food kiosks at the local mall and salivating uncontrollably at the local grocery:

The problem is the food industry, which provides us with the calories we consume but washes its hands of responsibility for causing the worldwide obesity epidemic. Food industry marketers say they are only offering people what they want and that individuals choose what they put in their mouths.

Those damned food marketers, sugar coating their offerings with magic incantations which cause us to mindlessly purchase and consume their wares, even if we’re not hungry, at least according to Ms. Cohen.

Food marketers test whether the color, the font size of words and the images used to market food will grab our attention by studies of eye movement. They conduct focus groups to come up with catchy names and symbols that recall positive memories and thoughts to condition a response that may lead us to purchase their products. And food marketers work to increase the frequency with which we see their products and their presence in stores, wanting to make their products always available.

Naturally, Ms. Cohen’s solution requires the state.

A wiser choice would be to demand that government bring more regulation to the food environment, making sure that what is available is healthy, and that the contents of foods are transparent and easily understandable, even to those who are illiterate. Such regulation could reduce the magnitude of flawed decision-making by individuals by presenting us with healthier choices. And such regulation is literally a matter of life and death.

Pay particular attention to Ms. Cohen’s assertion in bold type above.  Does not this assertion negate Ms. Cohen’s initial argument, the first quote noted above, that The problem is the food industry…?

Ms. Cohen’s assertions, in her piece titled A Desired Epidemic: Obesity and the Food Industry, are not fit for consumption.

Posted by John Venlet on 03/09 at 12:46 PM
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