On Feb. 26, First Lady Michelle Obama walked into the produce section of a Walmart in Springfield, Mo. to announce the three-year anniversary of her Healthy Food Financing Initiative, a program to bring stores that fresh fruits and vegetables to neighborhoods deemed "food deserts." Making it easier to buy produce will reduce obesity, Mrs. Obama claimed. Had you been there, you would have come away thinking that there was a scientific basis for this initiative and that it wasn't costing taxpayers a dime. Walmart and other companies, said Mrs. Obama "are showing us that what is good for kids and what is good for families' budgets can also be good for business." Mrs. Obama repeated the message in a Wall Street Journal op-ed last week.
In truth, the federal government is spending recklessly on anti-obesity programs based on sham science. Before the president whines again that shaving 2.4 percent off the federal budget will harm the neediest, he should cancel these programs. They fatten government and insult the public's intelligence.
Scientists writing in the New England Journal of Medicine (Jan. 31, 2013) listed the myths and unproven theories about weight control. There's a federal program erected on every one of them (except the fiction that sex burns calories). Eating fruits and vegetables does not help weight control unless you reduce consumption of other foods. Building parks does not reduce obesity because the number one activity in parks is sitting.
The Obama administration didn't invent such waste. The Bush administration's "Healthy People 2010" initiative was based on the same bogus science. After a decade of federal intervention, the obesity rate increased from 30 percent to 33 percent.
Mrs. Obama launched the Healthy Food Financing Initiative on Feb. 19, 2010 at a supermarket in northern Philadelphia. She said the Obama administration would put $400 million into bringing grocery stores to food "deserts," defined as neighborhoods lacking a supermarket within a mile.
Similar efforts, from Birmingham Alabama to Leeds, England, have utterly failed, according to obesity experts at RAND Corporation.
Living too far from a supermarket is not what makes people obese. Overeating is the problem. (Annals of Internal Medicine, July 2011) Only 5 percent of Americans live in a "food desert" but 67 percent are overweight or obese.
In Pennsylvania, where Mrs. Obama launched her crusade, the ridiculousness should have been obvious. Between 2004 and 2010, the state of Pennsylvania and two non-profit partners had already poured $100 million into building 80 grocery stores in areas that lacked them and yet the state's obesity rate went up.
More to the point, Melody Barnes, head of the White House domestic policy council, told reporters at the launch of the first lady's initiative: "We believe that tens of thousands of jobs will be created," underscoring the science of politics not weight loss.
It's also obvious what Walmart has to gain. Unions and community activists have
opposed Walmart building stores in inner cities. Partnering with the first lady is opening doors. Springfield, Mo. reversed its opposition and approved a Walmart in the city's historic district just days before Mrs. Obama's appearance last week. Walmart has pledged to build 275 to 300 stores in "food desert" neighborhoods.
Another myth identified in the New England Journal of Medicine is that dabs of exercise will reduce obesity. Even 45-minute physical education classes don't do it. Reducing caloric intake is the answer. Preposterously, the federal government is spending $20 million on "Instant Recess." The program will distribute DVDs and CDs to promote 10-minute breaks during paid time at work, at church and school, so people can break out into hip hop, line dancing, African dances and Latin Salsa.
Instant Recess" is one of dozens of boondoggle programs funded under Section 4201 of the Obama health law, which allows the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to hand out over $100 million a year in Community Transformation Grants, supposedly to improve emotional well being, eliminate racial health disparities and foster healthy living. Section 4201 is a license to waste money.
Betsy McCaughey is the author of "Beating Obamacare." She reads the law so you don't have to. Visit www.betsymccaughey.com. To find out more about Betsy McCaughey and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2013 CREATORS.COM
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4 Comments | Post Comment
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Michelle Obama needs to get out of Our White House and take her husband with her.
Comment: #1
Posted by: David Henricks
Tue Mar 5, 2013 4:31 PM
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Of course sex burns calories. Everything you do burns calories. They are a measurement of the fuel your body uses. Doing a task without using fuel is a PMM (perpetual motion machine), and those are impossible.
Comment: #2
Posted by: Chris McCoy
Thu Mar 7, 2013 6:19 AM
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Re: David Henricks;... Unless you have some sort of eviction order, I am sure they will move out in a little short of four years...The place will certainly never be the same, and never be the prize little boys feel entitled to by managing to be born white with the desire to excel at politics...Nothing ever changes except out of necessity, and then whether you like it or not, and for the future, I will not bother to wake you to ask; but will put you always in the agginst column...For future reference if the question should arise... Mr. Obama is an American; but he is no less white than myself, and I burn around a sunny disposition... His skin is dark; but the inside of him is just like yours... He has bought into the forms and formulas of this society: capitalism, religion, success, failure, law and government...
The fact that it does not work, and he wants to make it work says something of the man's stupidity, -that it is dogged in the face of reality... But that is hardly a mark against him considered from your angle...I didn't elect him because he was smart, but only less stupid than the other guy, and that is the nature of our political system that we don't have people who stand for us, who we can vote for, who can demand our support... We have become as a nation what the South always was: A place that votes its hate... Now; we vote against, having nothing and no one to vote for... It is pitiful...And we is living proof of the pitiful result of a pitiful darth of democracy because if we had ever had a choice in this society it would never have reached a point of no choice but a worse choice...
Thanks...Sweeney
Comment: #3
Posted by: James A, Sweeney
Thu Mar 7, 2013 8:23 AM
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Ma'am;... within moments of going from vertical to sitting, a person blood pressure and blood sugar change for the worse, and it really does help for people to get up and move... And one thing your article seem to miss is the fact that many who are obese are actually malnourished, eating all the wrong foods and not enough of the right foods which may leave people craving the right food, with that craving fed with the wrong food...
Rationally, it is clear that people in this nation are unsatisfied, and from an early age with their conditions of life... They suffer too much anxiety and know not enough comfort... In fact, children are unloved, shut up, pushed around out of necessity by people who have no power over them, but a little influence they must use judiciously if they care to, to push for mental improvement at all cost...
You point to a serious problem, but the problem behind the problem is worse than you will ever want to grasp... Food is a drug which people feed to their unhappiness that makes them less happy, and what do you think is behind that behavior... How insecure can people be over food??? What does food represent to a child before their age of reason??? We are a sick society, but there is no danger of that sickness getting too far without a break for a soda...
Consider; if you could really kick kids out of the house and say go to the park if there were a park, and if in that park there were not perverts, or if there were cops, as if we can afford cops, and if there were not gangs, and crimes, and worse drugs than food... What sort of society would we have if we could trust each other, trust those we have around our children, and did not always have to be on top of them and our day jobs too...You want to point the finger at the government... Conceded... The government does not work, and why should it when the rest of the society does not work, and everyone everywhere is simply looking for money to make out of the failure of society, or the weakness of humanity...What is your cure???...
Judging by your picture you are obsessively thin...Maybe you binge and puke... Maybe you diet obsessively...Maybe you smoke your way to thinness... Why should I care beyond the extent that I and we bear the cost of it... But; are the churches helping??? Who is there who can step up, and ask for better health and nutrition, better habits and safe activities... The cost of ill health from inactivity and poor nutrition demands something be done, and you have to risk a little failed effort, and wasted money in the process...
Thanks...Sweeney
Comment: #4
Posted by: James A, Sweeney
Thu Mar 7, 2013 8:46 AM
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