Thursday, January 03, 2013
Government at its worst: ignorance and punitive public policy
So a government council in Britain is thinking of tracking and punishing obese and other “unhealthy people” who fail to exercise enough and take other steps to reduce their weight.
So a government council in Britain is thinking of tracking and punishing obese and other “unhealthy people” who fail to exercise enough and take other steps to reduce their weight.
It’s
government at its worst: Ignorance and arrogance driven by the lust for money,
in this case government agencies scrambling to maintain their public funding
levels, and not an ounce of humility accompanying the policies.
Maybe
the good health-care nannies of the UK (coming soon to the US) might pause to
consider that we really don’t have a firm handle yet on what causes obesity and
that many experts believe that exercise in combating obesity simply doesn’t
work. Maybe they ought to pause and read Good Calories, Bad Calories, a book
that helps demolish many of the conventional wisdoms that unfortunately drive
these punitive and ultimately mean-spirited public policies.*
But,
of course, this isn’t entirely about health care. It’s also about, as I said,
money. And they call capitalists greedy. Yikes.
*
Hub Blog read Good Calories, Bad Calories at the start of 2012 – and proceeded
to lose 30 pounds over the course of the year following its general findings.
No massive exercise program. No starvation diet. No vegan transformation. Just
knowing roughly what’s good and not good for the human body -- and applying a little common-sense discipline to that knowledge.
Next
up: Twenty more pounds in 2013. All without truly obnoxious and misguided government
hectoring.
P.S.
– Here’s some more cold water on the nannies’ views on obesity and health care.
