{"id":6395,"date":"2014-03-04T08:59:41","date_gmt":"2014-03-04T14:59:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/?p=6395"},"modified":"2014-03-04T13:31:00","modified_gmt":"2014-03-04T19:31:00","slug":"character-vs-chemistry-part-six","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/2014\/03\/04\/character-vs-chemistry-part-six\/","title":{"rendered":"Character vs. Chemistry, Part Six"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many moons ago I got into an online debate with a bodybuilder I nicknamed \u201cCliffy\u201d because his know-it-all attitude reminded me of the mailman from Cheers<\/em>.\u00a0 As someone who\u2019d never been fat, Cliffy was convinced fat people are simply weak-willed — unlike, say, Cliffy.\u00a0 In other words, they\u2019re fat because of a character flaw.<\/p>\n

I pointed out that there\u2019s been a sharp rise in the number of kids and even babies who are obese and asked Cliffy if it\u2019s because kids these days lack the discipline of kids from previous generations.<\/p>\n

Blame the kids?\u00a0 Gosh no, Cliffy wouldn\u2019t do that.\u00a0 After explaining that I\u2019m a fat, lazy old man, Cliffy insisted that kids these days are obese because their parents are feeding them too much.\u00a0 It\u2019s the parents<\/em> who have the character flaw.<\/p>\n

I pointed out that my girls are both lean and healthy, thus proving that my wife and I are good parents of fine character.\u00a0 We obviously don\u2019t feed the girls too much, and that\u2019s why they\u2019re lean.\u00a0 So how do we accomplish this feat of parental responsibility?\u00a0 Do we calculate how many calories they burn per day and feed them accordingly?\u00a0 Nope.\u00a0 I have no idea how many calories they burn in a day.\u00a0 I have no idea how many calories they consume in a day.\u00a0 We keep our girls lean and healthy by feeding them as much as they want to eat every time they tell us they\u2019re hungry<\/em>.\u00a0 Every. Single. Time.<\/p>\n

When Alana was having growth spurts, she\u2019d sometimes get out of bed after midnight and tell me (because I\u2019m the family night owl) that she was hungry.\u00a0 So I\u2019d feed her.\u00a0 If she was still hungry, I\u2019d feed her more.\u00a0 But most of the time, the girls don\u2019t eat all that much.\u00a0 They usually walk away from the dinner table with food still on their plates.<\/p>\n

While out grocery shopping a couple of years ago, Chareva and I ran into a mom whose son was in Sara\u2019s class.\u00a0 The mom, who struck me as a nice lady, told us she was going to push her son to play more outdoors during summer vacation because he was getting fat.\u00a0 So of course I sneaked a peek in her grocery cart.\u00a0 You can guess what I saw:\u00a0 skim milk, jugs of apple and orange juice, bread, noodles, Cheerios, fat-free yogurt cups and plenty of other food-like products with \u201cLOW-FAT!\u201d stamped on the label.<\/p>\n

This wasn\u2019t a careless mom.\u00a0 This was a mom trying to do the right thing, buying products she\u2019d been told were good for her son\u2019s weight and health.\u00a0 But he was getting fat.\u00a0 That\u2019s chemistry, not character.\u00a0 The boy was living on foods that made him hungrier than he needed to be.<\/p>\n

Our girls were (and are) living on meats, eggs, seafood, fruits, green vegetables, nuts, olives, full-fat dairy foods, eggplant, sweet potatoes, squash and some rice now and then.\u00a0 Their appetites are naturally controlled by a diet rich in nutrients and low in refined carbohydrates.\u00a0 They\u2019re only as hungry as they need to be.\u00a0 Once again, it\u2019s a matter of chemistry, not character.\u00a0 There\u2019s no discipline involved.\u00a0 They don\u2019t restrict their calories to stay lean, and we don\u2019t have to push them to play outside.\u00a0 Sara decided to talk a walk today and carry fresh water to the chickens even though it was only 20 degrees outside and school was canceled because of an ice storm.\u00a0 When I asked why she volunteered for the duty, she replied, \u201cI just felt like it.\u201d<\/p>\n

(The same ice storm knocked out our internet service, which is why this post is late.)<\/p>\n

When I started this series in January, I wrote that most of the weight-loss plans we impose on ourselves and others try to impose on us are doomed to fail because they\u2019re based on the notion that losing weight is a matter of character.\u00a0 By impose on us<\/em>, I\u2019m of course talking about the brilliant ideas that come from various governments.\u00a0 Setting aside my libertarian belief that (as libertarian writer Jacob Sullum puts it) the size of your butt is none of the government\u2019s business<\/em>, would those brilliant ideas work?<\/p>\n

I hardly think so.\u00a0 Let\u2019s look at a few of them.<\/p>\n

This official from the U.K. health system<\/a> floated the idea that doctors need to stop pussyfooting around with the language and just tell fat patients that they\u2019re too fat.\u00a0 A professor of ethics in the U.S. stepped it up a notch<\/a> and insisted we need to start shaming fat people.<\/p>\n

Riiiiiiiight.\u00a0 Because fat people don\u2019t know they\u2019re fat and aren\u2019t properly ashamed of themselves.\u00a0 If we just shame them enough, they\u2019ll develop some character and stop eating too much.\u00a0 It\u2019s not as if appetite and energy balance at the cellular level figure into this or anything.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve got news for both of these dunces:\u00a0 fat people know they\u2019re fat, and most of them hate it.\u00a0 Most of them have tried over and over to lose weight, but failed because they were given bad advice on how to do it.\u00a0 To put it in terms of my last post, they expended plenty of effort, but the effort wasn\u2019t effective.<\/p>\n

If we start shaming them, we won\u2019t end up with fewer fat people \u2026 but we will end up with more fat people who are depressed or neurotic.\u00a0 Fewer of them will visit doctors for checkups or to find out what that funny-looking lump is.\u00a0 They\u2019ll avoid doctors to avoid the lectures and the shaming.\u00a0 That already happens, in fact.\u00a0 And by the way, raising their cortisol levels by shaming them won\u2019t help the weight-loss efforts one bit.<\/p>\n

Okay, so let\u2019s skip outright shaming in favor of the kinder, gentler form of government meddling favored by CSPI and plenty of other do-gooders:\u00a0 calorie-count menu boards and can\u2019t-miss calorie labels on food packages.\u00a0 In that case, we\u2019re not assuming fat people are remorseless gluttons who need to feel ashamed.\u00a0 Nope, now we\u2019re just assuming they\u2019re stupid.<\/p>\n

The belief here is that fat people go to fast-food restaurants and order a double cheeseburger, large fries and large soda because it\u2019s never occurred to them that the calorie count might be too high for one meal.\u00a0 So let\u2019s pass a law mandating a calorie count right there on the menu board where they can\u2019t miss it.\u00a0\u00a0 The menu board will then serve as a nagging parent, almost yelling \u201cHey, dummy!\u00a0 Look at all the calories in that meal!\u00a0 Order the chicken salad instead!\u201d<\/p>\n

During a talking-head-show debate about the calorie-count menu boards I saw awhile back, a skinny news anchor opined, \u201cWell, if I see that the double cheeseburger meal is 1,000 calories and the chicken salad is 300 calories, I\u2019m going for the chicken salad.\u201d\u00a0 Yes, of course you would, Miss Skinniness.\u00a0 That would be a satisfying meal for you because that\u2019s how your body chemistry works.\u00a0 But if an obese person ordered that meal because the menu board shamed him into it, the end result would be that he\u2019d eat more later to make up the difference.\u00a0 That\u2019s what the research shows.<\/p>\n

Real-world studies have already demonstrated that confronting people with calorie counts doesn\u2019t work<\/a>, and it\u2019s a wonder anyone believes otherwise.\u00a0 Jacob Sullum (who appeared in Fat Head<\/em>) once angered Yale professor Kelly Brownell during a debate by pointing out that Brownell is very fat.\u00a0 Sullum\u2019s a nice guy, and as he told me off-camera when I interviewed him, he wouldn\u2019t normally make a point of someone\u2019s girth.\u00a0 But Brownell (a CSPI board member) is all in favor of mandatory calorie counts on menus, which means he thinks people are fat because they don\u2019t have enough information to make smart choices.<\/p>\n

And yet Brownell is morbidly obese.\u00a0 Are we supposed to believe that a Yale professor doesn\u2019t have enough information to make smart choices?\u00a0 Are we supposed to believe that a guy who wants to use the power of government to (ahem<\/em>) help obese people lose weight doesn\u2019t care that he\u2019s obese himself?\u00a0 Are we supposed to believe that a Yale professor who wrote a book about obesity isn\u2019t aware that even people who go out of their way to count calories rarely lose weight and keep it off as a result?\u00a0 If calorie-counting doesn\u2019t work for them, why the hell would it work for people who are merely confronted with calorie counts?\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure which bugs me more: the hypocrisy or the ridiculousness of believing in a theory that clearly hasn\u2019t worked for Brownell himself.<\/p>\n

When standardized food labels were mandated by the FDA in the 1990s, the media were full of rah-rah articles about how Americans would make smarter food choices as a result.\u00a0 That was millions of new cases of obesity and type 2 diabetes ago.\u00a0 So now the FDA is doing exactly what Thomas Sowell described in The Vision of the Anointed<\/em>:\u00a0 holding up failure as evidence that we need to do the same thing again, only bigger.\u00a0 Look at these quotes from an article about the FDA\u2019s newest labels<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The Food and Drug Administration for the first time in two decades will propose major changes to nutrition labels on food packages, putting calorie counts in large type and adjusting portion sizes to reflect how much Americans actually eat.<\/span><\/p>\n

Millions of Americans pay attention to food labels, and the changes are meant to make them easier to understand \u2014 a critical step in an era when more than one-third of adults are obese, public health experts say. The epidemic has caused rates of diabetes to soar, and has increased risks for cancer, heart disease and stroke.<\/span><\/p>\n

On Thursday, the Obama administration promoted the proposed labeling changes at an event at the White House. At an anniversary ceremony for her “Let\u2019s Move\u201d campaign aimed at reducing obesity, Michelle Obama talked about how hard it is to understand what is in packaged food, and how the changes were a way to demystify that.<\/span><\/p>\n

Well, there you have it:\u00a0 people are stupid.\u00a0 They’re confused by the serving sizes, so they willy-nilly eat too much.\u00a0 Oh, and they have bad eyesight, too — that’s why we need to put the calorie counts IN LARGER TYPE<\/strong>.\u00a0 Appetite and biochemistry have nothing to do with it.\u00a0 Clear up the confusion over serving sizes and list those calorie counts IN LARGER TYPE<\/strong>, and the dummies will finally eat less and lose weight, thanks to better information \u2013 the kind of information that helped Kelly Brownell look good in a swimsuit.<\/p>\n

Offering de-confusing information AND LARGER TYPE <\/strong>is about all the government can do (for now) in the case of adults who are fat because they\u2019re stupid and have poor eyesight.\u00a0 But if we\u2019re talking about kids \u2026 hey, now we\u2019ve got a captive audience, at least for school lunches.\u00a0 We can by-gosh impose some discipline on the little tykes by forcing them to put the magical fruits-and-vegetables-and-whole-grains<\/em> on their plates and limiting their fat and calorie intake.<\/p>\n

If you don\u2019t believe the new-and-improved school lunches are an attempt by do-gooders to impose discipline on parents and kids who lack character, take a gander at some quotes from an editorial in the Springfield, Illinois newspaper my mom clipped and sent me:<\/p>\n

We hope this is not the first step in an effort to significantly weaken or do away with existing school lunch nutritional guidelines \u2013 something some Republicans are hoping for on the grounds that the rules amount to government \u201coverreach.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Goodness, no.\u00a0 Let\u2019s not weaken guidelines that have done such wonders for kids\u2019 waistlines and overall health in the past 30 years.<\/p>\n

The healthy school lunch rules stem from the Obama administration\u2019s 2012 initiative to reduce childhood obesity throughout the country.<\/span><\/p>\n

And as we know, government programs always achieve their stated goals.\u00a0 The Dietary Goals for Americans<\/em>, to name just one example.<\/p>\n

Adults who grew up in the \u201970s, \u201860s and earlier most likely were subjected by their parents to such homemade dinnertime delights as liver and onions, tuna casserole, beef stroganoff, meat loaf, lima beans, broccoli and Brussels sprouts.\u00a0 And what happened if children declined the dinner put before them?\u00a0 Usually they remained at the table until they ate it, cold or not, under their parents\u2019 careful watch.\u00a0 No way were parents allowing finicky children to leave without eating what they considered a reasonable and nutritious meal.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet here we are in 2014, grappling with a troubling childhood obesity epidemic but allowing children to reject nutritionally balanced fruit-and-vegetable laden lunches that are designed to be filling and healthy.\u00a0 No only are children rejecting the food outright, parents and schools are actually complaining to elected officials about the guidelines.<\/span><\/p>\n

Oh, no!\u00a0 You mean those stupid parents have the unmitigated gall to complain to their betters in government?!<\/em> Heaven forbid.<\/p>\n

The editorial goes on to wonder why kids and parents would complain about the fabulous fare being offered in the local schools.\u00a0 Here are some lunch items they offer as evidence:\u00a0 baked tater tots, chilled applesauce, whole-grain spaghetti, garlic bread, bananas, chilled pears, turkey corn dogs, soft-baked cookies.<\/p>\n

And students can always get seconds on fruits and vegetables to help fill them up.\u00a0 Sounds good, right?\u00a0 Most adults would welcome such varied and nutritious lunches each day.<\/span><\/p>\n

Fat adults who want to try yet another diet that won’t work no doubt would welcome those foods, yes.<\/p>\n

As Dr. Mike Eades would put it, the dumbth is astounding.\u00a0 Painful as it will be, let\u2019s examine just those brief bits of a long-winded editorial written by nutritional ignoramuses.<\/p>\n

The lunches are designed to be filling and healthy<\/em>.\u00a0 Yes, and a jackass is a racehorse designed by a government committee.\u00a0 Newsflash, ignoramuses:\u00a0 one of the biggest complaints kids have about those lunches is they\u2019re still hungry after eating.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t matter that the lunches were designed <\/em>to be filling.\u00a0 They\u2019re not filling.<\/p>\n

But we mustn\u2019t let the kids decide if they’re satisfied \u2026 and we mustn\u2019t let their parents (who have the gall to complain to elected officials<\/em>) make that decision either, according to the ignoramuses who wrote the editorial.\u00a0 Parents in the 1970s and earlier were responsible, you see.\u00a0 They made their kids eat that nutritious food, broccoli and all, as the editorial writers reminded us.\u00a0 They didn\u2019t complain to their elected officials, either.\u00a0 That\u2019s why kids weren\u2019t fat back then.<\/p>\n

But today\u2019s parents, unlike yesteryear\u2019s parents, obviously can\u2019t be trusted to decide what their kids should eat.\u00a0 We know that because too many kids are fat.\u00a0 So we need the wise folks at the USDA to step in and replace today\u2019s parents as the responsible decision-maker.\u00a0 In other words, we need government to impose discipline because today\u2019s kids and parents lack character.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what different about today\u2019s parents vs. parents from the 1960s:\u00a0 parents in the 1960s hadn\u2019t been told by government officials that fat and cholesterol are killers.\u00a0 Parents in the 1960s didn\u2019t believe chocolate-flavored skim milk is a healthier choice than whole milk \u2013 and neither did school officials.\u00a0 More parents in the 1960s believed that sugar and refined starches make people fat, not dietary fat.\u00a0 No parents concerned that their daughters were screaming themselves silly over the Beatles were also trying to limit saturated fat in their kids’ diets to 7% of total calories.<\/p>\n

In other words, the \u201cgood\u201d parents who served liver and onions, tuna casserole, beef stroganoff, meat loaf, lima beans, broccoli and Brussels sprouts didn\u2019t have the same dietary beliefs as government officials who order schools to serve baked tater tots, chilled applesauce, whole-grain spaghetti, garlic bread, bananas, chilled pears, turkey corn dogs and soft-baked cookies. (With unlimited seconds on fat-free vegetables!)\u00a0 Send a USDA official back to the family dinner table in 1960, and he\u2019d chide the parents for serving too much beef and other high-fat food.\u00a0 How the editorial writers failed to notice the contradiction is beyond me.<\/p>\n

If they did notice the contradiction \u2013 or better yet, if officials at the USDA noticed the contradiction \u2013 then perhaps we\u2019d get somewhere.\u00a0 Perhaps the do-gooders would wonder why parents in the 1960s didn\u2019t have to put their kids on calorie-restricted diets and push them to play outside to keep them from getting fat.\u00a0 Perhaps they\u2019d ask themselves if the types of foods parents served to their kids back then had something to do with it.\u00a0 Perhaps they\u2019d notice that in that old episode of The Andy Griffith Show<\/em> I mentioned in my latest speech, Andy said he\u2019d fill in the chinks with another bite of meatloaf while Barney told Aunt Bea he was being careful not to overdo the glucose and carbohydrates.<\/p>\n

In other words, perhaps the idiots running the show would finally begin to realize that we have a problem with childhood obesity and diabetes because of chemistry, not character.<\/p>\n

——————————————————–<\/p>\n

I think I’m done with this series.\u00a0 Here are links to the other posts for those who asked:<\/em><\/p>\n

Part One<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Part Two<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Part Three<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Part Four<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Part Five<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many moons ago I got into an online debate with a bodybuilder I nicknamed \u201cCliffy\u201d because his know-it-all attitude reminded me of the mailman from Cheers.\u00a0 As someone who\u2019d never… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random-musings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6395"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6398,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6395\/revisions\/6398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}