Poll: Obesity is a crisis, but we want our junk food
Americans blame too much screen time and cheap fast food for fueling the nation’s fat epidemic, a poll finds, but they’re split on how much the government should do to help.
Most draw the line at policies that would try to force healthier eating by limiting food choices, according to the poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
A third of people say the government should be deeply involved in finding ways to curb obesity, while a similar proportion want it to play little or no role. The rest are somewhere in the middle.
Require more physical activity in school, or provide nutritional guidelines to help people make better choices? Sure, 8 in 10 support those steps. Make restaurants post calorie counts on their menus, as the Food and Drug Administration is poised to do? Some 70 percent think it’s a good idea.
Blowback
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Another phony “epidemic” on which to waste taxpayer dollars. Why do politicians and government workers want to tell everyone else what they can and can’t do, what they can and can’t eat, or what they can and can’t drink?
Their ideal: “Whatever is not mandatory is forbidden.”
RoadRunner on January 5, 2013 at 7:06 PM
The guy who invents kale that tastes like doritos, or carrots that taste like spareribs, will become the richest man in the world.
Rebar on January 5, 2013 at 7:12 PM
People want the government to force them to do something they should do for themselves for their own good? What could go wrong?
HotAirian on January 5, 2013 at 7:15 PM
Fake crisis.
astonerii on January 5, 2013 at 7:16 PM
I doubt it. It might work for a few days or weeks, but once the body realizes that it did not get what it thought it ate, it will be coming back begging for more.
astonerii on January 5, 2013 at 7:17 PM
ObesityThe nation’s debt is a crisis, but we want ourjunk foodfree stuff.VibrioCocci on January 5, 2013 at 7:25 PM
“We don’t want someone the fans can shout ‘fat-fat-the-water-rat’…at.”
~Cheerleader rejection in ‘The Girl Most Likely To’
Ladysmith CulchaVulcha on January 5, 2013 at 7:32 PM
Since NBC doesn’t do a poll that isn’t in service to the regime, it looks like they’re going after the food supply – you know, for the good of the nation, and to keep those Obamacare costs down. Take the guns. Control the food. You’ve got your slaves.
Rational Thought on January 5, 2013 at 7:34 PM
Wait, whose crisis is it? Another one of Rahmbo’s? Gloomturd’s? Christie’s?
stukinIL4now on January 5, 2013 at 7:47 PM
Too much government is a crisis.
Every argument government makes for regulating some food or product can be turned back on government as a reason to limit it’s growth.
Why more people don’t freaking don’t do this is beyond me.
Food killing people. So do corrupt expansive governments. Unsafe cars killing people? More have died at the hands of abusive big governments.
JellyToast on January 5, 2013 at 7:56 PM
In other news: we want goods schools, but we don’t want to pay for them.
I know, lets do what we always resort to: expand government’s role in providing “services” some desire but won’t pay for…employ forced taxation on everyone (whether they want/benefit from the “service” or not) to diffuse the cost to those who want but won’t pay. Let government overreach beyond its duty and its competence while failing to even minimally execute what it’s paid to do…and give them MORE money to fill the very gap it created.
It’s that “having it both ways” mentality among the people in “the middle”, that’s created the government monster. The real obesity crisis is in government.
fitzfong on January 5, 2013 at 8:01 PM