Government Agencies Want to Reshape the “Obesogenic Environment”

posted at 9:00 am on February 1, 2011 by John Sexton
[ Political Correctness ]   

Yesterday HHS and the Department of Agriculture teamed up to issue a new set of dietary guidelines for the country. There’s an entire section devoted to the increasing heft of Americans of all ages. Part of the explanation for why this is happening sounds like another invitation to open-ended government involvement in our everyday lives:

I’m not disputing that American habits have changed or that this had led to additional obesity. But anytime a government agency (two agencies in this case) start talking about the “environment” as if America were their own personal Habitrail, I get nervous about what’s coming next.

Sure enough part 6 of the document is titled Helping Americans Make Healthy Choices. A subsection headlined A Call to Action is full of worrisome language like this:

Although individual behavior change is critical, a truly effective and sustainable improvement in the Nation’s health will require a multi-sector approach that applies the Social-Ecological Model to improve the food and physical activity environment. This type of approach empha-sizes the development of coordinated partnerships, programs, and policies to support healthy eating and active living. Interventions should extend well beyond providing traditional education to individuals and families about healthy choices, and should help build skills, reshape the environment, and re-establish social norms to facilitate individuals’ healthy choices.

Again, when the government starts talking about reshaping “the environment” as if we’re all just rats in their maze, I get irritable. The thing is, if they’re so eager to change things, why can’t it be something like–I dunno–illegitimacy or abortion rates. There’s really no reason why you couldn’t make the same sort of interventionist argument about these issues. Can you imagine a government report that read:

Contributing to the Epidemic:
An Abortogenic Environment

This would be followed by a recommendation to place more ultrasound machines in inner-city locales to help “re-establish social norms.” Yeah, I can’t imagine that happening either and if it ever did, the hyper-sonic caterwauling from the left would reduce entire areas of Capitol Hill to rubble.

It’s only progressive causes (smoking, obesity, compact fluorescent light bulbs) that get this treatment, along with millions of tax dollars for more annoying PSA ads. But hey, I’ll play along. If you want to ensure people in every neighborhood have the chance to burn off calories after a big meal, just have Congress mandate these outside every fast food joint:

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