Remi Cornwall wrote:
So more regulation, right? A paternalistic state must step in here? I dunno.
No, that will not be necessary. The problem can be fixed with several
steps, mainly by reducing regulations and reducing government
spending. Fewer but better regulations are called for. Changes such
as the following are called for:
1. Remove price supports for unhealthy food. This means less
regulation, not more. It will cost the government and taxpayers less,
especially if we stop paying wealthy farmers.
2. Modest price supports for healthy food might be in order, to
offset decades of encouraging bad food habits. At present, there are
huge price supports for corn, meat and milk and no supports for
vegetables and fruit.
3. Locally grown food.
4. Better health education in public schools.
5. Improved sidewalks and transportation, to allow more people to
walk. The obesity rate in urban areas such as New York, Boston and
Tokyo where people walk a lot is much lower than in suburban areas.
For details, see the book T. Farley, D. Cohen, "Prescription for a
Healthy Nation," Beacon Press, 2005.
It seems unlikely to me that oil production will decline enough to
affect obesity in the U.S. in the next 20 to 40 years. That will
happen only if ethanol production from corn continues, and I doubt
that will happen. Ethanol production decreases the supply of food and
oil, and increases global warming, because ethanol is an energy sink:
it takes more fossil fuel energy to produce ethanol than the ethanol
itself generates. As I noted here before, when you fill up a 25
gallon SUV tank with ethanol, you consume as much food as an adult
eats in one year. If there can be such a thing as an obscene
statistic, this would be it.
- Jed
