Saturday, June 05, 2010
A contrived crisis
Long before Emmanual Rahm, politicians of all stripes were making sure crises were not wasted. He simply made it explicit what they were doing. However, in the past few years crises have been manufactured to achieve various agendas. The most notible is global warming, but we have another one with roots as deep. It simply flies under the radar most of the time until Michelle Obama wants a bit of press.
From time to time we hear of an obesity epidemic or crisis, that this nation is too fat and we have to do something about it. I have spent the entire Memorial Day weekend and last night watching large crowds of people who represent a fair cross-section of this country. The idea of an obesity epidemic is pure, unadulterated BS. Less than 10% of the people I saw were overweight by a reasonable standard.
So where does this come from? For at least thirty years we hear from time to time from wannabe food cops that certain foods are unhealthy--"Spaghetti Alfredo is heart-attack on a plate." We have the FDA issuing guidelines for vitamin intake, and some government agency issues guidelines for healthy height and weight combinations. What I have noticed is that the height and weight guidelines have been becoming harder to meet over the years. At this point one has to be a version of Twiggy (You do remember her don't you?), or Kate Moss for the younger crowd, to meet them. By using these changing standards, more people can be considered overweight, and therefore one manufactures a crisis and thereby an excuse to regulate one more aspect of our daily lives.
At the same time guidelines for diabetic blood-sugar and for normal blood pressure are also dropping. This plays right into the hands of pharmaceutical companies. Pharmaceuticals are the treatment of choice for both Type II diabetes and hypertension. After all it takes more and more treatment to get that next little bit of improvement. In fact, there are now starting to appear articles indicating that one can too tightly control sugar and blood pressure in Type II diabetics and thereby increase their risk of stroke and heart attack. Gasp! Heresy! It also plays into the hands of the regulators, because the more stringent requirements for diagnosing Type II diabetes creates still another crisis that is co-existent with the obesity crisis--a two-fer.
What we need is something for these idiots to regulate that doesn't get in our road. We need some great, never-to-be-solved but always-to-be-attacked crisis
that will occupy them while we go about living our lives and being productive. Just for the record, I am obese. I will continue to be obese as long as I don't take it seriously and do something about it--ON MY OWN. I have been thin before, so I know what it takes. When I want to do it I will get there, and as long as I don't really care or want to, all the coercion in the world won't help. That is something that do-gooders and wannabe regulators never consider.
From time to time we hear of an obesity epidemic or crisis, that this nation is too fat and we have to do something about it. I have spent the entire Memorial Day weekend and last night watching large crowds of people who represent a fair cross-section of this country. The idea of an obesity epidemic is pure, unadulterated BS. Less than 10% of the people I saw were overweight by a reasonable standard.
So where does this come from? For at least thirty years we hear from time to time from wannabe food cops that certain foods are unhealthy--"Spaghetti Alfredo is heart-attack on a plate." We have the FDA issuing guidelines for vitamin intake, and some government agency issues guidelines for healthy height and weight combinations. What I have noticed is that the height and weight guidelines have been becoming harder to meet over the years. At this point one has to be a version of Twiggy (You do remember her don't you?), or Kate Moss for the younger crowd, to meet them. By using these changing standards, more people can be considered overweight, and therefore one manufactures a crisis and thereby an excuse to regulate one more aspect of our daily lives.
At the same time guidelines for diabetic blood-sugar and for normal blood pressure are also dropping. This plays right into the hands of pharmaceutical companies. Pharmaceuticals are the treatment of choice for both Type II diabetes and hypertension. After all it takes more and more treatment to get that next little bit of improvement. In fact, there are now starting to appear articles indicating that one can too tightly control sugar and blood pressure in Type II diabetics and thereby increase their risk of stroke and heart attack. Gasp! Heresy! It also plays into the hands of the regulators, because the more stringent requirements for diagnosing Type II diabetes creates still another crisis that is co-existent with the obesity crisis--a two-fer.
What we need is something for these idiots to regulate that doesn't get in our road. We need some great, never-to-be-solved but always-to-be-attacked crisis
that will occupy them while we go about living our lives and being productive. Just for the record, I am obese. I will continue to be obese as long as I don't take it seriously and do something about it--ON MY OWN. I have been thin before, so I know what it takes. When I want to do it I will get there, and as long as I don't really care or want to, all the coercion in the world won't help. That is something that do-gooders and wannabe regulators never consider.
// posted by Bill @ 1:04 PM 
