Tangents on target

I have come back to this entry. It had been just a data dump that I only now begin to make sense of. I've known for some time that much of the discussion about obesity is moralistic. Questions of the right choice come up again and again.

Food Rules: An Eater's Manual by Michael Pollan is yet another book that lays out rules for eating. We no longer know how to eat, at least according to other books by Pollan I've read. We no longer know how to eat because of many of the changes wrought by modernity as described by Marchand. We also no longer know how to eat because advertising stepped into the role of nutritionist. Nutrition is a quagmire even for those well versed in the various scientific fields that contribute to its swampy fen of knowledge. Advertising, knowing next to nothing about nutrition, has promoted foods as healthy/good because that is a way to maximize profit.

A federal effort to push junk food out of schools, explores government efforts to get unhealthy food out of schools. Childhood obesity has become a major problem and with, though not necessarily directly caused by it, a disturbing increase in cases of what used to be called adult onset diabetes. So to "save the children" there is a move to get the products in vending machines changed to "good" food. Of course, no one is really questioning the value of having vending machines in school in the first place.

Obesity 'as bad as climate risk', a cheery little article outline how obesity may be as great a threat to health as the other major moral pain of the early 21st Century, climate change. (I do think climate change and obesity are having significant negative impacts, but I am chary of the moralization of the arguments).