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Who benefits in the fight against national obesity?

Who benefits in the fight against national obesity?

Maybe it’s because Christmas is coming and the goose is getting fat, I recently called to mind a conversation I overheard many years ago between three elderly, distinguished, and decidedly rotund bishops. They were discussing the nature of sin. Ultimately they decided that gluttony was their favorite.

Gluttony, of course, is listed as one of the Seven Deadly Sins. However when reflecting on the three prelates’ conclusions, it’s important to remember that sins of the flesh are, generally speaking, rather less serious than sins of the spirit.

I raise the issue because, for most people, the sin of gluttony is virtually unavoidable at this time of the year. After all, it is asking just a bit too much of our fallen nature to resist that extra helping of turkey, goose, duck, beef, or ham you’ve been looking forward to all year.

That said, Christmas is also the time when the killjoys of world—led more often than not by former Mayor Bloomberg of New York—smugly ramp up their campaigns against … wait for it … obesity.

(I don’t mean to point fingers, but doesn’t demonizing obesity seem a tad odd when Mayor Bloomberg does not exactly appear undernourished. But I digress …)

Even so, trumpeting a decade-old study of the subject by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the anti-gluttony brigade claims that obesity has taken over where tobacco left off as America’s “top underlying preventable cause of death.”

Granted one supposed vice or other had to assume tobacco’s role as ritual demon for the enrichment of the members of America’s tort bar. After all, they and the state governments have squeezed as much cash as they can reasonably expect—in the short term at least—from the nation’s smokers.

But, frankly, the protestations of the nation’s health police would be just a tad more convincing if they had singled out rather more politically correct bad habits for demonization.

Why on earth, for example, did they pick on obesity when they could with no less justification point out the very considerable health risks entailed in promiscuous sex? After all, evidence suggests that sexually transmitted infections, such as HIV and the various ghastly strains of venereal disease, disable and kill people a darned sight faster than overeating. Recreational drug use might also have been a rewarding field of battle. After all, we have been fighting the drug war for best part of 50 years; and cocaine, opioids, meth, and the like are still a good deal more damaging to the health of the nation than hot dogs and hamburgers.

I am not trying to suggest that smoking and over-eating are without risk. Far from it! They are certainly unhealthy habits. But they are not the only widespread unhealthy habits in the country, nor are they by any means the most unhealthy. Indeed, the long drawn crescendo of allegations by food faddists and the tort bar about the fast food industry’s responsibility for the “national epidemic of obesity” is more than a little disquieting. I might feel a bit more comfortable with it were it easier to serve writs on the advocates of unbridled promiscuity and recreational drug use than it is to serve them on folks in the nation’s multi-billion dollar fast food industry.

Before endorsing the anti-obesity cause, we’d be wise to ask cui bono—who benefits? Otherwise aficionados of cheese burgers and foot long cold-cut subs might soon find themselves shivering on the sidewalk, disconsolately indulging their vice alongside the smokers.

So have a very merry Christmas, and don’t feel in the slightest bit guilty about it. GPH✠

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