War on Obesity…but not Really
Posted by PhilifeMar 10
You'll never see the claim "eat less"
—————————————————————————————
Apparently Michelle Obama plans to have a war on obesity (why is everyone in the whitehouse always declaring war on things?!?!) and stamp out childhood obesity. Although it sounds like a nobel cause it will go the square root of nowhere once she tries to actually implement any strategies.
The reason this is such a futile effort is because drastic changes require drastic action, and when it comes to weight loss claims and recommendations drastic action is NOT what any industry wants.
Of course the answer for weight loss is to simply eat less. But less of what? Beef? The cattlemans beef association will never let that pass as a policy recommendation. Dairy? The dairy council won’t let that happen. Grains? You know the gran producers will never go for that.
Nope, this initiative will just fade away into meaningless recommendations like “eat more healthy food”…the key word being MORE. The food industry will NEVER allow a national recommendation of eat LESS.
In this podcast we’ll discuss why this will never change and what the message of eat LESS for weight loss, always turns into eat MORE healthy food.
John
3 comments
Comment by shea on March 10, 2010 at 3:59 pm
really interesting stuff – and amazingly coincidental with a couple of observations/questions about the effectiveness or desirability of government intervention in personal health choices that i posted yesterday on johnbarban.com before i listened to this podcast.
for me perhaps the most important point you raised was how, despite the good-hearted intentions of Mrs. Obama to use her role to take on the very real problem of childhood obesity, because of her position in the government her ultimate recommendations will be inevitably watered down to something like “make more healthy food choices” as the very well-organized food industry lobbies will not (and, for all practical purposes, should not) allow the government to mandate anything that will adversely affect their material interests.
as part of this, you also made a really good point about the dilution of ideas that occurs whenever they are made by committee, which is why the dilution of effective dietary and fitness recommendation coming out of government agencies does not even require a food industry conspiracy theory. just getting enough well-intentioned but different-opinioned people together to produce a comprehensive policy is usually enough in and of itself to produce ineffective recommendations. on top of that throw in industry lobbies just trying to protect their interests – which they should, right? – and the outcomes are easily explained.
what this all boils down to for me is the necessity of a) becoming our own fitness and health experiments of one, and b) starting from the simplest and most basic principles first, and only then adding complexity as it is needed.
for the reasons you discuss, looking to outside groups – and maybe particularly the government with all its competing interests and responsibilities – to define what is best for us is likely to be ineffective (at best), especially when we can find out what works best for ourselves through trial and error. at the same time, for these experiments of one to be effective we need to start as simply as possible so as to be able to more clearly see what is working and what isn’t (the fewer moving parts, the easier the mechanisms are to see). in other words, for diet: calories in vs. calories out, for training: progressive weight resistance…combine and then stir.
Pingback by Eat Less For Weight Loss? – Nah, that’s impossible | JohnBarban.com on March 10, 2010 at 4:43 pm
[...] This message of more vs less is the topic of todays philife podcast. Check it out here: Eating More vs Eating Less [...]
Pingback by Walk and Listen #7 « purePrimal – Food and Fitness on March 17, 2010 at 9:53 pm
[...] via War on Obesity…but not Really | The Phi Life. [...]