Lay Off the Fatties

They're not hurting anybody -- maybe not even themselves.

Jacob Sullum from the November 2006 issue

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Anti-fat activists such as Yale psychologist Kelly Brownell agree with Campos and Oliver that substantial long-term weight loss is nearly impossible, which is why they emphasize social engineering to change the “food environment” (and the exercise environment), thereby preventing people from getting fat to begin with. Someone who believes fatness itself is not much of a health problem might nevertheless support such policies, most of which are aimed at getting people to eat better (as well as less) and exercise more, goals Campos and Oliver consider worthwhile. Yet Oliver, who agrees with Brownell that the ready availability of cheap, tasty food is the main reason for rising BMIs in the U.S. (because it led to an increase in snacking), is refreshingly skeptical about Brownell’s proposal for “junk food” taxes, which he correctly sees as fundamentally unworkable. He likewise dismisses other anti-fat nostrums, including advertising restrictions, bans on soda in schools, and beefed-up physical education, saying none is likely to work. “Getting Americans to really change their eating and exercise patterns would require a level of totalitarianism that would make even Kim Jong Il blush,” he writes. “The very rationale of a liberal system such as ours is that individuals are best left to decide for themselves which choices to limit, particularly as long as such decisions do not infringe on the safety or well-being of others.”

Unfortunately, that “well-being of others” exception is elastic enough to justify “a level of totalitarianism that would make even Kim Jong Il blush.” Every would-be regulator of every heretofore private matter argues that it affects the well-being of others. For example, anything that compromises people’s health, including poor diet and lack of exercise, has the potential to raise the cost of taxpayer-funded medical care—an argument that is frequently heard in the obesity debate but that Oliver and Campos leave curiously unaddressed. Similarly, Oliver notes that public health specialists in the U.S. “needed new problems to tackle in order to justify their existence” after their triumphs over communicable diseases in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He also criticizes an influential CDC PowerPoint presentation that made obesity look like a plague sweeping the nation. But he does not nail down the crucial distinction between true public health problems like tuberculosis and air pollution, which involve risks imposed on people against their will, and “public health” problems like smoking and overeating, which involve risks people voluntarily assume.

This omission may be due to Oliver’s discomfort with the language of choice. Both he and Campos blame the unjustified obsession with weight and the cruel vilification of fat people on capitalism, which, they say, prizes self-discipline and stigmatizes those seen as lacking it. To be fair, Campos more specifically blames a pro-capitalist Protestant asceticism that encourages the pursuit of wealth but frowns on those who enjoy it too much. There’s an element of truth to this analysis; a similar ambivalence regarding pleasure helps explain American attitudes toward sex, drugs, and gambling. But it does give you pause when you consider that the obesity obsessives also blame capitalism, for precipitating the current crisis by making food plentiful, inexpensive, appealing, and convenient. New York University nutritionist Marion Nestle, for example, blames America’s adiposity on “an overly abundant food supply,” “low food prices,” “a highly competitive market,” and “abundant food choices,” while Kelly Brownell claims restaurants exploit consumers when they give them more for less, since “people have biological vulnerabilities that promote overeating when large portions are available, a strong desire for value, and the capacity to be persuaded by advertising.”

Although they talk a lot about giving people more “options” (such as the option to eat a salad rather than a cheeseburger, or to walk rather than drive to the grocery store), what the anti-fat crusaders really want to do is limit people’s options (by taxing the cheeseburger or redesigning cities to discourage driving). While he rejects their prescriptions as impractical, Oliver seems comfortable with the idea of enhancing freedom by restricting it. “Our increasing affluence and consumerism seem to have trapped us,” he writes. “As the obesity epidemic shows, maximizing our choices does not necessarily maximize our freedom or power.…The expansion of choices is no longer making our lives any easier; in fact it may be making them harder.”

Despite their anti-market instincts, Oliver and Campos do an important public service by dissecting what Campos correctly identifies as another in a long line of “moral panics,” revealing the value judgments, aesthetic reactions, prejudices, and emotions beneath the veneer of objective science. But in case you have any illusions that putting the health risks of extra pounds in perspective is all it will take to call off the War on Fat, you might want to have a look at the CDC’s list of “Frequently Asked Questions About Calculating Obesity-Related Risk.” The CDC explains that “many chronic diseases are affected by obesity,” and mortality “is an important indicator of the severity of a public health problem.” So does the recent dramatic reduction in the estimate of deaths caused by excessive weight “mean that obesity is less important than CDC once thought?” the FAQ sheet asks. “Not at all,” says the CDC.

In short, obesity-related deaths are an important measure of how serious the problem is, but reducing the number by three-quarters does not make the problem any less serious. That’s because the purpose of government-generated “public health” statistics is to alarm the public and expand the government. On no account should the numbers be considered reassuring. To the guardians of our health, nothing could be more alarming.