Girth of a Nation

Princeton economist Paul Krugman on the economics and politics of obesity. From the New York Times courtesy of WorkingForChange:

The Center for Consumer Freedom, an advocacy group financed by Coca-Cola, Wendy's and Tyson Foods, among others, has a Fourth of July message for you: worrying about the rapid rise in American obesity is unpatriotic.

"Far too few Americans," declares the center's Web site, "remember that the Founding Fathers, authors of modern liberty, greatly enjoyed their food and drink. ... Now it seems that food liberty - just one of the many important areas of personal choice fought for by the original American patriots - is constantly under attack."

It sounds like a parody, but don't laugh. These people are blocking efforts to help America's children.

I've been looking into the issues surrounding obesity because it plays an important role in health care costs. According to a study recently published in the journal Health Affairs, the extra costs associated with caring for the obese rose from 2 percent of total private insurance spending in 1987 to 11.6 percent in 2002. The study didn't cover Medicare and Medicaid, but it's a good bet that obesity-related expenses are an important factor in the rising costs of taxpayer-financed programs, too. Fat is a fiscal issue.

But it's also, alas, a partisan issue.

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Most of Krugman's essay deals with the economic costs of and current political battle over the ever increasing number overweight Americans. He only hints, however, at what got us into this wicked bowl of jello in the first place, food industry marketing. Indeed, Krugman points out that it wasn't until around 1980 or so that America's gain in girth really began to take off, which is why the epidemic cannot simply be attributed to national affluence, which had been around for thirty years at that point.

Certainly, individual choices play a role, which is why the various lawsuits against McDonald's blaming them for individual obesity will probably never succeed. Looking at the food industry as a whole, however, shows that numerous companies collectively share the majority of blame. That is, junk food availability and advertising are at an all time high, penetrating schools and children's television, really everybody's lives, like some foul venereal disease. Eric Schlosser's book Fast Food Nation and the recent documentary Supersize Me have shown in exhaustive detail how unhealthy foods have been literally crammed down America's collective throat. American expanding waistlines are the symbol of just how effective marketing can be as a social force.

There are, of course, more factors at play. I mentioned individual choice above, but the go-go lifestyles increasingly demanded by the go-go attitudes of businesses toward workers also makes junk food a much more appealing choice when there's just no time to cook something healthy. The worker time-bind also strongly contributes the rise of sedentary leisure time: when you get home late every day, odds are that you'll be happy just to slip a DVD in and and vege out on the couch. Or sit and play video games. Who the hell has time to exercise? The point is that the role of individual choice, which is traditionally assoicated with weight gain, is much more problematic than it appears on the surface. Sure, we make choices, but what influences us to make such choices?

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