Obesity Epidemic is the New Climate Change

By this I mean, an extremely important issue that can only be discussed meaningfully with information gathered at a high level of scientific rigor and analyzed objectively but that people all along the political spectrum are behaving in quite silly fashion about.

And like climate change, obesity appears to pose such serious problems for the libertarian commentariat (as well as, in this case, strange bedfellows like radical left-wing fat acceptance types) that the approach appears to be this:

* If obesity is increasingly common among Americans, and fat poses serious health risks, this is an area which will receive increasing attention from government interventionists and the population at (ahem) large.

* Government interventionists will want to spend a lot of money determining how to reduce / prevent obesity and then executing plans to do so. Most people will be supportive of programs and policies that help, even on the margin.

* Since government intervention in the area of obesity is morally / philosophically / personally offensive and unacceptable to me, and because the empirical evidence that Americans are getting fatter is undeniable, it is important to fight this in the public arena by saying:

** There's nothing wrong with being fat. In fact, being fat may be healthier than being of normal weight!

** Even if fat is unhealthy, there is no way we can reduce obesity, so we shouldn't try. In fact, trying to reduce obesity may be unhealthier than letting people just get really fat!

You can see this stuff in action on these two recent blog posts on Megan McArdle's site. (I am quite happy to see her focusing on this issue, even if I think her views are rather whack and she's letting politics color her logic. I also wonder if "Thining Thin" is supposed to be "Thinking Thin.")

To pick an easy target:

"[W]e don't know how to lose weight. Some of the things Paul Campos is saying about obesity are controversial, but this isn't. Every single study which has attempted to make overweight people get thin without very risky surgery has failed completely and utterly. Fewer than 1% of patients ever keep the weight off."

One, her "proof" on this discusses people's lack of success in keeping weight off for whatever very long period of time, not losing it.

Two, one reason that it's so hard to maintain weight loss (and there are many) is that it is a challenge long-term to continue behavior patterns that are so different from that of other people and that run counter to one's environment, especially when one isn't getting the reward/feedback of seeing "improvement" in one's weight or body fat percentage. (One of my favorite weight-destructive comments is when a co-worker says to someone who is of a normal weight, "Oh, but you're so thin, you can have one measly donut!")

A lot of the suggested government interventions that she (apparently) opposes would involve making changes to the environment. It seems quite plausible to me that some of those environmental changes could have an impact on behavior, and that there may be a ... well, business people would say "synergy" and social scientists would say "interaction" such that several applied together work more effectively than the sum of their parts. It doesn't seem proof of much to say "People can't keep weight off now [in this obesity-promoting environment] so no intervention [including changing the environment to be less obesity-promoting] will make a different on people's weight." This is especially weird when you consider that people in the not-very-distant past have been able to maintain normal body weights.

And ultimately, it may easily be the case that once people get fat, it is hard (for physical reasons) for them to become thin again. This simply moves the policy discussion more seriously into the realm of obesity prevention, another area that MM and her ilk do not want to go.

I also think that she and Paul Campos, the author she fawningly interviews, are smoking crack to say that the only helpful weight loss is when a very heavy person loses enough weight to fall into the normal weight category. Everything else I have ever read - admittedly, from scientific researchers and doctors, who are clearly suspect in their understanding of health issues relative to a lawyer and an MBA-turned-blogger - suggests that as little as a 10% reduction in your weight can have a significant impact on health and longevity. OK, those digs at the source were kind of mean, and I am not saying that I blindly assume that every doctor knows what he's talking about, and every non-expert is a moron, but I would like to see the evidence for these claims that run counter to the bulk of scientific opinion.

Their arguments are clearly weaker when it comes to the welfare of children (always such a thorn in the libertarian side), so the rhetoric gets stronger: "The current stigmitization of fat kids is essentially child abuse as government policy, and the people behind it are, as far as I'm concerned, either incredibly stupid or very evil or in some cases both."

Ah, yes, doctors and public health experts are the bad guys here. I actually believe it could be stated, with greater accuracy, that letting children become obese is child abuse, but I don't see the need to invoke evil motives on the part of parents, schools, and society in general.

And what does he mean by "current stigmitization"? In comparison to some previous era in which that one fat kid in the class was not referred to as Fatty McFat or Lard Ass or picked last for the baseball team in gym or any of that? If anything, it seems to me that being a fat kid has become more acceptable through sheer numbers. Is it still terrible? Absolutely.

I also would like to ask, in response to a commenter's claim that junk food offers the greatest pleasure for your money: Is McDonald's really cheaper than sex or is he just doing it wrong?