Disclaimer: I am not obese, not by a long shot. Nor do I favor obseity. I favor fitness. I am not a shareholder in McDonald's. I have not been brainwashed by the American Fast Food industry. I am not their paid advocate. M'kay? But I am annoyed by the following...

There always has to be a "new" problem to report. And for what appears to be a good segment of the media, that problem needs a solution. A federal one. Which means more laws for people to obey, and more of your money being taken from you to spend on ... well, just about anything, as long as it passes through bureaucratic fingers.

Today's problem is ... obesity.

Here's my take, my "biases", right up front. I think:

• Unhealthy foods may be a factor, but inactivity is as important, if not more dangerous
• Another factor may be less smoking; let's not reverse that
• Make public schools serve healthy foods again
• Stop subsidizing sugar, corn crops
• Other than that, individuals must decide to be healthy

Basicly, the only thing I want the government to change yet is for it to stop taking any actions which make things worse.

So what is the media saying?

This reporter blames the epidemic on not-enough-government:

An obesity crisis now blamed for 400,000 deaths a year is growing worse because timid federal policies aren't giving Americans the right tools to eat better and exercise, critics charge.

Why are people fat? Because people don't the the right "tools"! Federal "tools"! Tools only the government can give them! Which are being held back by "timid", cowardly federal officials who have all the solutions, but won't stand up for them!

Uh huh. Does this sentence tell you anything about the mind that wrote it?

Obesity (we are told) is just like smoking.

And why is smoking down?

Dr. Stephanie Zaza, director of the Steps to a HealthierUS grant program, said meaningful change will occur when the culture shifts -- when consumers demand healthy foods, when kids think an apple is cooler than a candy bar. The task might be compared to the government's anti-smoking efforts, which have taken decades.

Imagine that: a federal official tells us (surprise surprise) that smoking was solved by federal efforts, as (apparently) will obesity problems. Nothing personal, but that's like asking a psychic about their effective hit rate.

Let's not forget about regulating food advertisements:

Some countries, such as Sweden, have curbed marketing, said Dan Jaffe, executive vice president of the advertisers association. "But their obesity rates are not lower," he said. "In some cases, they're higher."

Proponents say the debate would be different this time around.

Kelly Brownell, director of Yale University's Center for Eating and Weight Disorders, said kids see 10,000 food advertisements a year on TV. "We sure curtailed tobacco and alcohol advertising," he said. "How many more deaths do we need to see before we protect out children from unhealthy foods?"

Yet another person being paid by federal funds tells us we need more government involvement. Again, imagine my surprise.

Of course we're never actually told how things will "be different this time around." (Apparently, this reporter inserts his own feelings in the form of vague one-sentence summary paragraphs.) Perhaps because this time it will be an ineffective US law, rather than it's ineffective Swedish equivalent?

And when it comes to those subsidies to grow unhealthy foods? Might we suggest, perhaps, repealing them?

No, the answer is invariably more government subsidies!

Subsidies to corn farmers, critics say, encourage production of high-fructose corn syrup, a high-calorie sweetener now common in foods. Between 1995 and 2002, more than $34 billion was used to subsidize corn growers, according to the Environmental Working Group, a consumer research organization.

"I'm a farmer, so I'm not going to criticize my profession," Thompson replied. "But you have a point; we subsidize the wrong things sometimes. We should be subsidizing the fruits and vegetables more."

More money! More money! Did we pay corn farmers too much? Oh dear, we must pay some other farmers even more to correct the problem! Did we pay tobacco farmers too much, making cigarettes cheaper? Let's then add more taxes onto the final product to get the prices up!

Always propose solutions which result in more money in federal hands.

Common sense? Forget that!

And this reporter is certainly not alone:

• Obesity epidemic continues unabated, Forbes
• Childhood Obesity Epidemic, KSFY, South Dakota
• Child obesity epidemic report is grim, Detriot News
• Obesity epidemic destined to swell, Financial Times

... not to mention the coverage from ABC News and Time Magazine which I mentioned previously.

Wanna know a secret?

Obesity has leveled off, according to this Fox affiliate report.

Oh, those right-wingers! You'd listen to them? They're sold out to the fast food industry and the Bush administration!

Okay, don't believe that then? Check out what the Journal of the American Medical Association has to say:

Between 1999-2000 and 2001-2002, there were no significant changes among adults in the prevalence of overweight or obesity (64.5% vs 65.7%), obesity (30.5% vs 30.6%), or extreme obesity (4.7% vs 5.1%), or among children aged 6 through 19 years in the prevalence of at risk for overweight or overweight (29.9% vs 31.5%) or overweight (15.0% vs 16.5%).

And there's also this:

According to Friedman, statistics show most people today are just six or seven pounds heavier than they were in 1991. But Friedman notes the massively obese have gained 25 to 30 pounds. He says the lopsided statistics throw off the curve for population as a whole.

I'm not saying things are great: They're not. We're definitely fat. But it's nothing new, except among the hyper-obese.

But my point is: this data refutes the leftist and media-driven drumbeat that the only solution to "rising" (translation: "flat") levels of obesity is a set of massive, vaguely-defined, tax-fueled government interventions and restrictions on our collective behavior.

If those were the answer, then why have obesity rates now slowed, or even leveled off, when the government has done precious little to intervene?

I think we need to understand the source of this obesity much better before taking extensive, expensive, hard-to-reverse actions.

Thus, I remain unconvinced that advertisements for fresh fruit and long walks will do much; that giving fruit growers more money will make people suddenly consume more, and that we need a new bureau to decide which foods are "healthy" and which are "unhealthy" and then regulate things accordingly...

Most people think of 100% fruit juices as healthy for kids. But they're not -- they're nearly as high in carbs (much too high, from what I've read, for kids) as their "less natural" counterparts, or even soda. Would these banned or allowed?

And how we would stop these bureaucrats from being bribed by industry, like every other group of them? And how would we stop industry from just stepping through loopholes, as they're so adept at doing? (If there's a loophole, someone will use it.)

California tried to use a tax system to reform it's diet. The tax actually cost more to set up and administer than it collected! And when it was done, you had such bizarre decisions as "loose granola: healthy; granola in a bar shape: unhealthy".

Who needs to ponder costs, benefits, and chance of success? It's a crisis and we don't have time to find the right solution -- we just need to take actions (large, expensive, federal actions!) now!