The Girth of Affluence

IDEA #1: Kill all wheat, corn and dairy subsidies. I know it sounds un-American, since cheap food is a kind of birthright in this country, but the truth is that because of artificially cheap wheat, we all eat way more carbs than we need to. Because of cheap milk, we have a surplus of cheese and a Dairy Council that is hellbent on telling us that cow’s milk does a body good, even though as a species, we did just fine without it up to the point where we started drinking it a few thousand years ago. (Ask anybody who is lactose-intolerant, and they’ll tell you that the human body just isn’t designed to digest the stuff. We’re better off without it.) And as for cheap corn, that’s created a corn surplus so gigantic that our corn farmers turned to making high-fructose corn syrup out of it just so it wouldn’t all go bad, and as that stuff has infiltrated our food industry, right in the mid-eighties, our national obesity rate began to skyrocket. We have been living in an era of incredibly cheap food, and while that’s good in a way, our surplus has begun to kill us and frankly, it wouldn’t hurt if food were a bit more expensive. My personal food bill is easily twice as high as it could be simply because I choose to eat organic and healthy food. And while the point of this argument isn’t to make sure the rest of the country feels the wallet pinch that I do at the supermarket, it’s worth noting that in countries like Japan, where there is no agricultural subsidy, things like beef is at a market-appropriate $36 a pound or so. Japan also has one of the best obesity rates in the industrialized world while the rest of us are starting to resemble those balloon-like scooter people from WALL-E. Chew on that.

IDEA #2: Address the market. A big reason why portion sizes are so out of control, besides the fact that we simply have the food with which to make them, is because there is a market demand for it. That’s all well and good, my free-market friends (and don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of the free market), but there is also a market demand for crack cocaine, pornography and Justin Bieber albums, so let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that just because there is a demand that it should be filled. Obviously, we can’t frogmarch food manufacturers and restauranteurs into some big re-education camp in order to start producing responsible foodstuffs. Nor can we really expect Congress to seriously disincentivize these group from their current course because their lobbies are so powerful they simply buy off any dissent. There needs to be a grass roots effort on the part of people everywhere to wake up and stop killing themselves at mealtime. I dunno…maybe it’ll take Al Roker barfing up a Big Mac on live television to finally get people to realize just how bad most of their food really is for them. But until there is that mass wake-up, people will continue to quietly sidestep the issue. Restaurants such as McDonald’s deserve credit for trying to roll out healthy alternatives to the crap they normally serve, but you know what would be even better? Stop serving the crap in the first place. I can hear it now, though. “But…but…we have shareholders to satisfy.” Indeed. But the CEO of every major food and restaurant company ought to spend a week treating diabetic ulcers and then try to tell the public with a straight face that there really isn’t a problem with the food they make. Yes, indeed, people are not forced to eat it, and I question the true addictive nature of fatty, salty and sugary foods. (Deeply compelling, yes. Truly addictive? I think not.) But at the same time, when you know people are hurting themselves with your product, when you know you’re clearly not producing good food, then you owe it to yourself to do the moral thing and do something about it.

IDEA #3: Shame. As a nation, we have somehow turned this corner where it is no longer proper to make fun of fat people. Now, I cannot advocate wanton cruelty, but for a very long time, it was considered shameful, or at least embarrassing, to let oneself go to the point where it became visually obvious. I remember fat jokes were flung with abandon when I was in grade school, but at some point (I think it was in the 1990s, the era of political correctness), it became verboten to harsh on overweight people. Granted, there are some who are huge because of glandular or other medical problems. That’s not their fault. And I am sure there are some who are genetically predisposed to being large. Again, what are you going to do? But come on…when half the country is overweight or obese, it’s not a huge sweep of unforeseen circumstance that is doing it. It’s our lack of will to be healthy. And as the rate of obesity has increased, so has our social acceptance of it. Even to the point where it is starting to skew with food science itself. That has to end. Shame alone could be the single greatest motivator for people to kick their terminal food habits and get well. Government mandate will not (and should not) do it. Market forces probably wouldn’t do it, either. But shame? That gnawing feeling in your heart that you are not doing what you ought to be? That force can move mountains. And it’ll have to. We are becoming as big as them.

LAST IDEA: Call in the cavalry. No, not the real cavalry. They’re already too fat to help out. I’m talking about you people. The life & health industry. The industry collectively spent close to $7 million dollars just to support the health care repeal vote, and understandably so. It had interests to protect. But for as much as I hear it said that L/H agents really, deeply, truly care about their clients, where is the stake in their healthiness? Premium incentives for being healthy are fine, but even better would be premium disincentives for not being fine. Why not add a premium surcharge for every point one’s BMI is over 25? And when the inevitable discrimination lawsuits come around, simply have the industry band together and fight the legal battle collectively. Surely the industry has the means do fight a dozen such challenges. And before somebody hits me with a “nice way to spend somebody else’s money, Bill,” comment, consider this: Were the industry to set a precendent for weight-based underwriting that penalized the overweight rather than rewarding the fit, it would set a standard by which companies could choose to scale their pricing upward to offset the increased health risks already being posed by obese policyholders. Indeed, underwriting is supposed to offset that already, but if it is one thing the industry can always do better on, it’s underwriting. And frankly, how better to shock people to the reality of needing to get fit than by getting hit with a bigger premium payment? Sure, they’ll hate you for it, but honestly, this is the insurance industry we’re talking about. People will find a reason to hate you for something anyway. John Strangfeld himself could walk into the Justice Department with Osama bin Laden over his shoulder and people would still gripe over how long it took Prudential to find the guy.

That’s about all for now. Leave your comments in the box below. I know I said some things that are bound to offend, but I’d rather hurt people’s feelings and get some conversation going among people who can make a difference than to politely stay quiet while the rest of us bloat ourselves into oblivion.