Mike Richardson, Champion of the Obese

Presidential candidate Mike Richardson spoke last week at the Obesity Society conference (it's a group to study obesity, not a group of obese people). He was the only candidate who attended, though all of them were invited. The hypocritical nature of his speech there was laughable.

Richardson stood up and announced that obesity is a disease, not a behavior. That's funny because Richardson decided he was too heavy and lost 110 pounds. Was it through medical treatment? No, he started exercising and eating right. He changed his behavior.

While there are people whose medical conditions cause them to gain weight, it's too often becoming an excuse. What happened to personal responsibility? Not every obese person has a glandular disorder. Most of them suffer from too many jelly doughnuts (which, despite having jelly in them, don't count as fruit). Take responsibility for your own health. It's not that there are too many fast food restaurants, it's that you aren't mustering up the willpower to walk past them. And it isn't that you don't better. Nobody goes into McDonald's thinking it's healthy.

The Taste Of A Brand

A recent study asked children to taste two items of food, and tell researchers which they liked the best. The only difference in the food was that one was in a McDonald's wrapper and one was in a plain white wrapper. The results clearly showed that children preferred the McDonald's branded item to the non-branded item (ironically the exception to this was the classic McDonald's hamburger). The big revelation of this study is that branding works.

Anti-corporate groups are using this study to try to limit the marketing that companies do. They say it unfairly targets our children.

I say get a life.

I have two young children. They like McDonald's. That doesn't mean they get it, though. It's the parents responsibility to say no. When did parents become so weak-willed that they can be out-argued by a two year old? It's not the company's responsibility to feed a child. It's not the government's responsibility; it's the parent's responsibility. Proponents of a nanny state argue that a parent can't possibly win in the face of billions of dollars in marketing. That's preposterous. Parents control the purse strings. All they have to do is not buy what they don't want their child to have.

These same organizations who whine about marketing causing obesity in children are the same organizations that forced schools to cut back on competitive games like dodgeball because it was harming kids' egos. Nurturing your child is wonderful. Coddling them is not. You can't have it both ways. Either they play competitive sports or they get fat. Marketing doesn't enter into it.

What Happened To Personal Responsibility?

Harvard Medical School has just given people another excuse to avoid responsibility. According to a recent study, your friends and family can make you fat. That's right, now aside from blaming fast food restaurants, soft drink companies, and bakeries, you can blame the people you hang out with.

While the study is so lacking in scientific data that even the people who conducted it are saying they won't be able to replicate it, the biggest flaw is that it assumes people cannot resist peer pressure. People have no free will apparently, because they can't say no to their friends and they can't resist a commercials.

Enough.

It's not your friends fault that you pig out when they come over. It's not McDonald's fault that you scarfed down a Big Mac for lunch instead of something healthy. It's not the bakers fault because there was trans-fat in the muffin you bought this morning. It's your fault. It's time we, as a country, took responsibility for our actions. We are overweight because we like to eat and we don't like to exercise. That's all there is to it. Obesity is not an epidemic, it's not contagious, it is, except for specific medical conditions, a choice.

I wonder if someone would give me a grant to do a study to prove that.