The fat police

National Review, Jan 26, 2004 by Andrew Stuttaford

Food Fight: The Inside Story of the Food Industry, America's Obesity Crisis, and What We Can Do About It

by Kelly D. Brownell and Katherine Battle Horgen

(Contemporary Books, 352 pp., $24.95)

It is difficult to single out what is most objectionable about this hectoring, lecturing, and altogether dejecting piece of work, but perhaps it's the moment when its authors credit the rest of us with the IQs of greedy rodents. Quoting a study that shows that, presented with a cornucopia of carbohydrates and wicked fatty treats, laboratory rats will abandon a balanced, healthy diet in favor of dangerous excess, they draw a rather insulting conclusion: Civilization's success in creating so much abundance has come at a terrible price, a "toxic environment" so overflowing with temptation that, like those Rabelaisian rats, humanity will be unable to resist. We will eat ourselves if not to death, then to diabetes, decrepitude, and stretch pants.

The "obesity epidemic" is becoming a tiresome refrain and Yale professor Kelly Brownell is one of its most tireless advocates. Nevertheless, for those with the stomach for more on the fat threat, Food Fight is worth a look for what it reveals about the motives and objectives of the busybodies pining to police your plate.

But let's start with the "epidemic" itself. With a relish they are unlikely to show at the dinner table, the authors pepper their readers with data purporting to show that roughly two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese, products of a feeding frenzy that is dangerous medically and drives up health-care costs by tens of billions of dollars. Some of the numbers may need to be taken with a pinch of low-sodium salt, but the trends they represent are a matter of concern. In this at least, Food Fight is right.

Over the past couple of decades, Americans have indeed put on some pounds. All too often, heavy isn't healthy. The mere fact of being too fat (calculating what is "too" fat takes more, however, than a wistful glance at the pages of Vogue) can cause problems such as arthritis and a range of other, sometimes serious, diseases. Despite this, corpulence should be seen as a symptom of ill health as much as a cause: Being fat won't necessarily kill you, but the sloth and the gluttony that got you there just might.

To their credit, the authors do cite research showing that fit fatties are at lower risk than unfit string beans. Still, they tend to concentrate on obesity as a problem in its own right--and, ironically, that's something that may be counterproductive. Befuddled by standardized notions of an ideal weight, Americans spend an estimated $40 billion a year in the generally unsuccessful pursuit of one miracle diet or another. The result is yo-yoing weight--something often less healthful than having a few too many pounds--and unjustified self-congratulation for a population that likes to tell itself that it is "doing something" about its health, when, in fact, it is doing anything but.

Highlighting fatness, that soft, billowing symbol of self-indulgence, reflects an agenda that has expanded beyond legitimate health concerns to embrace asceticism for its own sake. There's a hint of this in the way the authors respond to the idea that all foods can find a place in a properly balanced diet. While conceding that such an approach has "some utility" in individual cases, they see the argument that flows from it (that no food is intrinsically "bad") as a distraction. They are wrong. An emphasis on balance is the best chance of persuading this country to eat more healthily--and, importantly, to stick with this decision. To Brownell and Horgen, more comfortable with proscription and self-denial than compromise and cheeseburgers, this is, doubtless, dismayingly lax.

Their language too is a giveaway. There is tut-tutting over the "glorification of candy" and anguish over restaurants "notorious" for their large portions. Under the circumstances, it's no shock that the reliably alarmist "Center for Science in the Public Interest," an organization famous for its efforts to drain away our pleasures, rates frequent and favorable mention.

Asceticism often brings with it a sense of moral superiority and the urge to spread the joys of deprivation amongst the less enlightened masses--by persuasion if possible, by compulsion if necessary, and sometimes by something that falls in between. So Brownell and Horgen lament the lack of "incentive" for recipients of food stamps to purchase "healthy foods." Common sense, apparently, is not enough. Worse, these wretches might even be tempted into "overbuying." Who knew the food-stamp program was so generous?

With tobacco a useful precedent, it's not difficult to see where all this is going. Brimming with tales of carnage, soaring health-care costs, and the threat to "the children," Food Fight follows a familiar script. That's not to say its writers don't make some telling points. The ways, for instance, in which junk food is marketed to America's no-longer-so-tiny tots are troubling, but at its core this book rests on the unpalatable belief that even adults cannot be trusted with a menu. The authors' solutions include regulation, censorship, subsidies, propaganda, public-spending boondoggles, and a faintly totalitarian-sounding "national strategic plan to increase physical activity." Oh, did I mention the "small" taxes on the sale of "unhealthy" food?