A day after a news article appeared on how the food school kids eat is making them unfit for military service, Lesley Kinzel writes for Newsweek about how the culturally induced shame over her lifelong obesity made her less healthy, both emotionally and physically. I'm not too alarmed about the supposed threat to national security over the fact that we can't turn our kids into future killing machines, but it does highlight the kind of scare-tactics over our health that are often deployed. Michelle Obama's anti-obesity initiative is great, but only to the extent that we keep it about foods and not try to make it about the children who eat it.
In news articles, the military generals discussing the obesity problem -- which is now a big health reason potential recruits are turned away -- toss around the word fat. A lot. And as Kinzel notes in her essay, fatness and fitness are not always the same thing. We know broadly that the rise in obesity probably has something to do with how badly Americans eat, but when you get down to the individual level it makes no sense to engage in rhetoric that will end up punishing kids.
It's about too much food, what's in the food, and not enough exercise. Which is why another news story from today about a study that urges the FDA to make companies lower the salt in their food is encouraging. Salt itself might not have a direct correlation to obesity, but the amount of very salty foods we consume has a lot to do with our health problems. Salt is a cheap, fast way for foods to taste good, and we develop our taste for it over time. For now, the FDA wants companies to voluntarily lower salt in their foods over the next few years, but efforts at regulation like those in New York City might prove more successful. The authors of the study want the FDA to lower salt through new limits. But the biggest thing here is that it's important to go after food manufacturers who manipulate foods, not the kids who eat them.
-- Monica Potts
