Report: Americans Are Fat Because They Aren’t Taxed And Regulated Enough

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Written By:
Rob Port

May 8, 2012
9:55am

According to a new study, Americans aren’t fat because they choose unhealthy diets and avoid exercise. They’re fat because they live in an “obesity promoting environment.”

An environment that needs to be fixed with more taxes and regulation.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – America’s obesity epidemic is so deeply rooted that it will take dramatic and systemic measures – from overhauling farm policies and zoning laws to, possibly, introducing a soda tax – to fix it, the influential Institute of Medicine said on Tuesday.
In an ambitious 478-page report, the IOM refutes the idea that obesity is largely the result of a lack of willpower on the part of individuals. Instead, it embraces policy proposals that have met with stiff resistance from the food industry and lawmakers, arguing that multiple strategies will be needed to make the U.S. environment less “obesogenic.” …

“People have heard the advice to eat less and move more for years, and during that time a large number of Americans have become obese,” committee member Shiriki Kumanyika of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine told Reuters. “That advice will never be out of date. But when you see the increase in obesity you ask, what changed? And the answer is, the environment. The average person cannot maintain a healthy weight in this obesity-promoting environment.”

In other words, we’re all victims. It’s not our fault we’re fat. It’s our environment.

Except, that’s all backward. McDonald’s and Pizza Hut didn’t spring into existence to make us fat. McDonald’s and Pizza Hut sprang into existence because we, as a society, like cheeseburgers and pizza and we like them to be served up to us quickly. The fast food/junk food industry was created to serve the choices we, as Americans, have made. They didn’t make us fat. We made them on the way to making ourselves fat.

If we are to have freedom to make choices for ourselves, we’re going to have to accept the fact that we sometimes make bad choices. Because the alternative is what this report is calling for, which is for the government to exercise control over our choices.