Yanique
Anderson
Professor
C..J .Smith
ENG
101
May
28,20014
Politics and Obesity
The concern of eating healthy in our society, has become a
serious matter that its reaches the Department of Health and Human Service. In New York the government is trying to stop this problem by putting
calories on menus of chain restaurants, however this doesn't seems like its working. The problem is not what we eat is how
much we eat. How can the government control our food intake? They put more tax fast food than healthy food, try cutting out the big cups out of most fast food restaurants, but people seems to buy more. We have more people who are obese now than 20 years ago, says a study done by Dane Sally." In the past two decades, the number of obese adults has almost doubled, from 13.2 per cent among men in 1993, to 24.4 per cent now, while among woman it has risen from 16.4 to 25.1 per cent."
The concern of eating healthy
continue to grow in the United States. Despite myths about individualism and
self-reliance, the U.S. government has a long tradition of regulating
ostensibly private behavior. We draw on the historical experience in four other
private realms (alcohol, illegal drugs, tobacco, and sexuality) to identify just a few that prompt the government to intervene in citizens
private habits. We suggest that these things has
played a great roll in the case of obesity, and food consumption. We now know what the
government now does in this field and what it might do in the future.
Despite the saying about
Americans' self-reliance, the U.S. government has a long tradition in private
behavior. Surgeon General David Satcher's 2001 "Call to Action" on
obesity have reached extreme proportions. Academics, medical experts, federal
officials, journalists, and public interest groups have become the voice behind
this problem. Unlike most health problems, obesity arises in large part of the
way we behave in our private space. Parents should train their children from an
early age to control there eating habit, so that when they become an adult
eating healthy will become a norm. The government should spend more time to
educate parents about making healthy choices for their children from early
instead of putting more tax on fast food, the problem is not what we eat is how
much. As professor Russell Roberts at the Washington University writes. "The
government should stay out of personal choices I make," If the government
had tried from early to target parents to make better choices, then it would be
much easier to control today.
Public officials have not yet
responded forcefully to the growing concern about obesity "epidemic."
however, the issue about "Big chocolate " has moved onto the U.S.
political agenda in such a fast time unexpected. Congress, the White House, and
bureaucratic agencies have begun responding. What will the government do? will
he regulate fat in food we eat? In this article we suggest that it might very
well do so. Because the government has a tradition of intervening in what seems
to be purely private behavior. From tobacco wars of recent years to alcohol
restrictions in the early Republic, personal behavior has become regularity in
governmental intervention, regulation, and prohibition.
Social disapproval generally begins in
society. Observes back to Alexis de Tocqueville have commented on the power of
social norms and public opinion in United States. Before the government stirs,
early-nineteenth-century mill owners and urban elites starts worrying about the
damages that alcohol could cause. In the late nineteenth century men believed
that sexual continence was dangerous to their health; large red-light districts
flourished in every major city. Victorian feminists go rebelled, organized a
purity campaign, and close the brothels and change expectations about male
behavior. In this case as well as those of illegal drugs and tobacco use, the
first step to solve is social groups' attacking widely accepted practices.
Sometimes the blaming of one another wins a large vote. At other times the
criticism is a harsh contest across class, race, gender, or geographic lines.
But challenges to personal behavior are difficult to deal with.
Obesity has been the subject of public disapproval for more than a century. The
criticism developed, at the end of the nineteenth century. What had long been a
mark of prosperity became, as one popular magazine 'Living Age' in 1914 Sander L Gilman wrote "an
indiscretion, and almost a crime. "That view of obesity grew over the
years. The rise of the diet industry for which total spending is estimated at
more than $36 billion annually is one testament to Americans' concern with
their weight. A report that is widespread towards overweight people,
affecting everything from personal esteem to college admissions and hiring
decisions. The first trigger for political regulation of private behavior,
social disapproval has long been tripped in the case of obesity.
Public health are built on
scientific base. Medical knowledge can rapidly transform society by challenging
long accepted social activities. In the early eighteenth century Americans, for
example preferred rum and fermented cider to water, which was widely thought to
be healthy .As doctors began to issue warnings about alcohol use in the 1830s,
Americans' consumption of rum dropped 73 percent in three decades. This was founded in the article 'Politics and Obesity' The finding
is in some case reliable. Tobacco is very harmful; it can cause illness that
cannot be cured example liver damage, and heart problem just to name a few.
This may be true that liquor is part of health problems, but it is not poison,
as prohibitionists insisted. Or science can be a myth, as when Victorian
physicians warn men that self-abuse or too much sex could blind, or kill them.
In any event medical knowledge itself is not always enough to stimulate a
political response. The key to is source lies in the policy businessmen and
women who spread the medical findings. A set of U.S. doctors general
played an important role in publicizing tobacco risk. The nation early
industrialists took the lead in spreading the view of drinking and sobriety,
fearing the effects of workers' heavy drinking in the mills.
Even though social disapproval of
obesity become popular in the 1890s, sustained medical concern did not develop
for another five years. This time the government action did not get started
till the 1950s. Even so, it took more than two decades for government actors to
respond to the health warnings. Public officials did not begin to devote
federal resources to publicizing obesity's danger until the 1970s. Although
overweight Americans have faced cognizable prejudice for more than a century,
critiques have not translated into demonetization. Anti-obesity specialist
do not portray overweight people as dangerous to society, like drugs addicts or
smokers polluting the air with secondhand toxins. This maybe so, because more
than half of the Americans adult are over weight, and almost one in five is
obese. Still each of the other cases challenged a commonplace activity or condition.
In 1995, for example, it is estimated that 43 percent of American adults were
addicted smokers,this was founded in page 6 in the article 'Quitting Smoking' a figure that has plummeted with changes in social mores, and
disapproval bordering on the addictive smokers.
In all four of our
similar cases, activists attack the producers or suppliers. They charge
corporate villains with seeking profits by peddling poison. More so, the greedy
industry lures children into destructive habits. The contemporary tobacco case
is typical; a careless industry unleashes Joe Camel to America’s youth.
Similarly, Prohibition gathered force by attacking the liquor trust. To gain
advantage amid fierce competition, nineteenth century breweries opened saloons
and cut price of beer. Opponents including the Anti-Saloon League effectively
promoted Prohibition by demonizing the saloon as dangerous to American
industry and morals.
For unhealthy foods and
obesity, this trigger emerged into political play in, 1999. The fast food
industry has become the most visible target. Eric Schlosser's surprise bestseller,
Fast Food Nation, featured some familiar arguments. A industry target children,
reshape their eating habits "its hugely profitable to increase the size
and the fat content of their portions" and literally sponsors an epidemic
"no other nation in history has gotten so fat so fast". Schlosser
further blames the industry for a long list of harms. He has trashed the
American countryside, reconstructed the entire meat packing industry, his
working conditions are as horrifying as anything in Upton Sinclair's The Jungle,
and fed an obesity epidemic. The result is" emotional pain,"
"low self esteem," and different kind of illness and death. Until
Schlosser's book achieved best selling status, critic of any segment of the
food industry had not find a wide audience, either in the general public or
among policymakers. But a growing literature slams the fast foods, junk foods,
and soft drinks. One maker of the change is the Wall Street Journal's resent front-page
story, "Food Makers Gets Defensive about Gains in U.S. Obesity."
With this trigger in
cultural play, obesity begins to shift from being a private health matter to
being a political issue. Scientific findings never carry the same political weight,
as does a villain threatening American youth. If critics successfully cast portions of
the industry in this way, far-reaching political interventions are possible,
even likely. When an industry becomes demonized, plausible counterarguments
(privacy, civil liberties, property rights, and observation that "everyone
does it") begin to totter.
If American history is any help,
medical knowledge, and further criticism of industry, maybe alongside attacks
on obese individuals including litigation, and result in far more government
regulation of fatty foods. Such thing would
become a shock for libertarians and food industry. To many public health
advocates, they constitute necessary protection against what one writer terms "North
American's sedentary suicide." For now political battle has been joined.
