What if you passed a regulation, and nobody cared? Obesity is quickly emerging as a major policy issue, with related health costs consuming 10 cents on every health dollar – and rising. Policymakers, then, are eager for ideas. Top of the list: regulations to force chain restaurants to post calorie counts on their menus. This past Friday, the FDA released proposed regulations to force restaurants to do exactly that.New York ...
David Gratzer, MD
Why obesity should concern conservatives
Does it really matter how many ribs Michelle Obama ate on her vacation? For too many conservatives, the answer seems to be yes, with pundits poking fun at the anti-obesity guru's dinner choice. But conservatives need to give it a rest: many seem to prefer scoring easy points against the First Lady to arguing about the best way to attack the obesity epidemic -- and some even claim that ...
How obesity is a voluntary epidemic, and why we shouldn’t give up
As America comes to grips with the disastrous effects of a national obesity epidemic, there’s a new feeling in the air: defeatism.Former Carter Administration advisor Amitai Etzioni seemed to succumb to it when he wrote an article entitled “dieting gets you nowhere” for CNN recently.In it, the liberal sociologist citied a recent nutritional study ...
Our health is worsening at a time when medicine has never been better
With little notice, UnitedHealth released a major paper recently considering diabetes in America.First the bad news: a large portion of our population either has the disease or is pre-diabetic.Now, the really bad news: diabetes and pre-diabetes rates are going to soar in the coming decade, according to the analysis, in part driven by the obesity crisis.I’ll return back to the study in a moment, but it underscores a ...
Obesity patients are not victims
Call it the McVictim syndrome. Too many pundits, public health experts and politicians are working overtime to find scapegoats for America's obesity epidemic.In his latest book, former FDA Commissioner David A. Kessler argues that modern food is addictive. In it, he recounts how he was once helpless to stop himself from eating a cookie. In a paper in this month's Journal ...
