Political Differences via an article on Obesity-Eating

I saw this article pop up on my facebook feed (via NPR I believe). While reading the article, I felt it almost perfectly illustrated one of the biggest political argumentative points (which certainly has been ramping up lately).

For the sake of this discussion, i'm going to use the following terms in this manner:

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"Liberal" means a person who prefers government to regulate personal behavior through state-based regulation in order to prevent a person from making choices that may be bad for that person.

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"Conservative" means a person who prefers the freedom of personal choice, even if that choice is bad for the person making the decision to act in that manner.

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The Distrust Diet

This article, in my mind, basically summarizes the liberal mindset.

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Given human nature — particularly all the ways we’re hard-wired to perceive and eat food — the current food environment (or “food swamp,” as she puts it) pushes most of us willy nilly into extra weight, and we cannot realistically expect most people to have the superhuman self-control needed to resist it.

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Given that obesity has become a major public health problem, it is time for the government to step in, as it has in past public health crises — including, most classically, bringing in better sewage systems in the 19th century to stem water-borne diseases like cholera. Government measures could range from restricting displays of junk food to rating restaurants on how healthy their menus are.

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from the outset you notice the major theme that people are not capable of making their own choices, so their choices must be limited by government. however, since this is just the initial stages of this discussion, the author doesn't say these items should be banned (which they have been in areas), because that would be perceived as "socialist" or as like to say, "progressing faster than people prefer."

so what does the author suggest? minor regulations that disseminate information. this preferred course actually completely reinforces the point made in the first paragraph, by suggesting that we only make these choices due to ignorance and laziness.

the author quotes a doctor, who further reinforces this ignorance-weakness paradigm:

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If we start viewing the worst offenders in the food and beverage industries with disdain, their efforts will fail to persuade us to buy their products. We will have inoculated ourselves against companies that sell us junk foods and that advertise and market those foods relentlessly.

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when the article REALLY gets into the plan to fix the issue, you get a point of clarity about how they view humans:

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First, I want to say that I actually think that trying to have each person solve this problem on their own is doomed to failure, because the environment is so powerful and it affects us in ways that we can’t always recognize.

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ah but if we're so powerless, how could they ever even identify the problem? how will we ever know how to regulate the choices to be made? oh a select class of elites who get to tell everyone else how to live through their version of choice-making regulation? yup

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Unless we can control the environment, we’re not going to be able to control ourselves very well. That’s for most people. Yet there will be some people who can take this advice and put it to good use to lose weight, but that’s not going to be everybody.

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if you read the middle of the article, it's actually not that liberal and explains how individuals need to view food rationally and realize that bad foods are bad for you. the biggest issue is identifying which foods are "bad" and realizing the tricks of our perception

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The easiest things to give up are junk food items like candy, sugar-sweetened beverages, chips. Let’s start there, because those are generally very recognizable, and they’re placed in our faces everywhere you go. If we can look at those items and think, ‘Those are being made to trick me, to dupe me and to take my money’ it will be easier to resist them

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So if we think that junk food is ripping us off, maybe we’re going to be less likely to buy it. We’re being ripped off financially, we’re being tricked because this food will increase our risk for chronic disease, and they’re exploiting our human nature to want something quick, convenient and tasty. So be suspicious.

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We can use the money in better ways, but we’re being tricked into spending our limited resources on food that will lead to chronic disease. That makes me angry.

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Say you come into the restaurant and there’s a free basket of chips or bread in the middle of the table. You can think, ‘They’re putting that there so we’ll fill up and not notice how bad the food is — or how unbalanced or bad for us it is.’ So maybe we could immediately think: ‘They’re putting all these chips and bread and sort of garbage food in front of us and we should say, ‘You know what, they’re tricking us, they’re going to make us eat too much. We’re going to immediately tell them to take it off the table.’

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For example, if you go to the yoghurt section, there are all these different flavors, or the soup, all these different styles. When there’s so much variety or they have a special, say 10 for $10, it actually encourages you to buy greater quantities, and then eat more, than you would have otherwise. Variety makes us buy more, as does the suggestion that you’re getting a bargain because you’re buying in bulk.

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Going to a market with a list, and being very careful to stick to the list, can protect you from buying too much. And even better is if you can order online and have your food delivered or just pick it up instead of having to shop yourself. You’re not going to be exposed to all of those temptations.

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For one thing, when we look at food, it can make us feel hungry. So if might help if we have a rule of thumb to leave a gap of three to five hours between any eating. We don’t need to eat constantly but yet if we see food or something that suggests it’s time to eat, we can still feel hungry even though there is plenty of food in our stomachs still being digested. Maybe if we check our watches more and pace out how often we’re eating, that could help some of us reduce the frequency and quantity of what we’re eating. It might help people on diets.

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these are all really good rational solutions to the issues. disseminating information from a private person with the intent of educating other private persons is a glorious thing. it's the backbone of the internet, and to steal from stefan mollyneaux, perfectly shows how the modern person cannot claim ignorance. there is far too much information out in the public sphere (FOR FREE) about food to allows the claims of ignorance to become part of the rational consciousness. we know this shite is bad for us, but we make the choice to partake in consumption regardless. end of story.