Kathleen Parker wrote in the Washington Post on May 20th, Health reform and obesity: Eat, drink and watch out. This is the funniest thing I've heard since keep your government hands off my Medicare.
"Fat kids (can we say that?) have always been among us, but obesity was not the plague it is today. Nor was it necessary for the federal government to instruct families about how and what to eat. We all knew the pyramid scheme of nutrition. I seem to remember it tacked to school bulletin boards, just beneath the portrait of George Washington."
Right, because the government had nothing to do with creating the food pyramid or the school you were sitting in.
"The same strategy that created pariahs out of smokers now is being aimed at people who eat unattractively. It isn’t only that you’re hurting yourself by eating too much of the wrong foods; you’re hurting the rest of us by willfully contributing to your own poor health and therefore to the cost of public health. Fat is the new nicotine."
I really can't tell if she's being sarcastic or not. She mentions Food Inc. but then says "Thus, it seems clear that the real solution to obesity isn’t more government regulation but more personal responsibility. I know, sheer genius." As if the Farm Bill and high fructose corn syrup have nothing to do with our obesity.
Parker won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. Seriously.
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