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STRAIGHTENING UP EATERS
Health before liberty - The escalation of food demonization in 2001

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December 10, 2001 -

December 7, 2001 - Eating Ourselves to Death - "Studies have shown that being overweight causes 300,000 deaths a year, second only to smoking as a killer lifestyle. Thanks to the newest RAND study, we now know being overweight is even more dangerous than smoking in terms of the chronic health conditions it imposes. So where is the concern and moral outrage that was long ago attached to cigarettes?" … "showed that post-menopausal women 44 pounds or more overweight at least doubled their chance of getting breast cancer" … " But it may also have something to do with the fact that while going after cigarette makers offers prestige and potentially huge cash awards, going after Hostess cupcakes and McDonald's somehow just isn't the same." 

In the interesting lines of this not-so-new article (June 14, 2001) is enclosed most of the new, diseased perception of "public health," and its dangerous, Nazi equations between "bad physical health" and immorality. There is nothing immoral about smoking or being fat; but today's healthists think of themselves as the meters of moral values, indicating (and demonstrating) that they have none themselves. Junk science is, of course, omnipresent: doubling the changes of something whose origin is unknown (breast cancer) means, in fact, absolutely nothing (let alone that it is impossible to phase out the hundreds of co-factors), but it sure has an effect on the unskilled reader. To close, we have the usual display of moral inversion: while it is true that going after the cigarette makers offers huge cash awards, prestige is a relative term: during Al Capone's times, a prestigious "pal" was he who killed and looted the most. Amongst today's health cartel gangsters, those who lie and steal the most from smokers, eaters, and legal enterprises are those with the greater "prestige." Smoke and be fat, if that gives you satisfaction. That is much better for your health than the inverted morality and the junk science statistics of those sorry people.

November 30, 2001 - Pacific islanders are world's fattest - The lifestyle control gangs are now running with fat, calling for more state control everywhere in the world. After the US, Canada, England, China, and Australia, now it’s the turn of South Pacific, New Zealand included. Let us look at the health Nazi’s S.A.F. (Standard Alarmist Format), so familiar to those who are following the Tobacco Wars.

"Pacific islanders, especially women, are the fattest people in the world, according to latest figures published by the International Obesity Taskforce. … The levels of obesity and chronic weight-related diseases in the Pacific have grown at an alarming rate .. This is placing a tremendous burden on the health and well-being of individuals and communities and upon health care workers, the report said. … Obesity rates in New Zealand were also rising at an alarming rate. … New Zealand hasn't been spared the obesity epidemic."

More of the same for the solutions: "The prevention and treatment of obesity in the Pacific is also made difficult by the traditional cultural notion that 'bigness' is a sign of wealth and power," the report said. … "Various strategies were proposed for dealing with obesity. One was using taxes to encourage people to buy low-fat foods. Others were making children walk or cycle to school and limiting the size of portions served at take-away restaurants. " There you have it, simple and fascist: change the cultures and impose new taxes – and punish (oops… sorry: encourage) the behaviour of those who don’t fall for hysteria, or who do not get easily scared by alarmist propaganda, while they’ll "take care" of their children for them, too. As it happened for tobacco, taxation will be used to finance the persecution of those who do not comply. Here is the new conception of "public health:" the use of force for your own good. How long are you willing to fall for it?

November 27, 2001 - FAT CHANCE - There is, and must be, a right to choose one's diet. My choice has been to eat and drink as much and as well as I like and can afford.  If you want to starve yourself, or live on nuts and lettuce, go ahead. You will certainly feel as if you've lived longer."

Pulling itself away from the tobacco issue for a diversion into fat land, the World Health Organization is hectoring Australians to shape up and change their diet.  WHO points to Finland as proof that social engineering policies geared to force-feeding the population lots of vegetables is paying big health dividends.  Padraic McGuinness points out that the high tobacco and liquor taxes in Finland haven't cut down consumption of those sinful substances and expresses doubt that a "fat tax" will have any effect other than making the poor even poorer.

Having failed to adequately address real health problems such as malaria in underdeveloped countries, the WHO has settled into the First World where its policies of social engineering find an enthusiastic reception among elite control freaks.

October 20, 2001 - WORSE THAN SMOKING, EATERS BETTER WATCH OUT - It's an oldie but goodie and in years to come will be known as the beginning of the pharmaceutical companies' war on the overweight.  Funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a front for Johnson & Johnson, this Rand study study puts obesity exactly where the special interests want it; a focal point of public policy.

Being fat is already on the road to being considered an addiction of some sort.  The activists are already suggesting that fast food and big portion restaurants are seducing people into gluttony.  Trial balloons have been floated proposing various taxes on fast food and junk food.  Grant junkies are slavering and social engineers are preparing blueprints based upon the successful shakedown of the tobacco industry and its customers.

The hate campaigns against the obese will be uglier than those against smokers and more relentless since so many more people are overweight than smoke.  It doesn't have to happen and the growing disgust with health fascism finally bring an end to the tyranny of the white-coated nazis.

October 20, 2001 - BRITAIN HAS 'LOST THE BATTLE AGAINST OBESITY'. THERE IS ONLY ONE SOLUTION: MORE DRUGS -"Britons have lost the battle to control their weight and the nation is facing a public health disaster, according to the country's first dedicated 'professor of obesity'. Paul Trayhurn, the newly appointed professor of obesity biology at Liverpool University, told The Telegraph that he believes only new drugs will combat the problem. He is establishing a laboratory that he hopes will help to develop the world's first effective anti-fat pill." … " The new chair in obesity biology is partly funded by a grant from AstraZeneca, the pharmaceutical company. The industry is making big investments in the field, the professor said, in anticipation of rich rewards." - While firming the market on the smoking cessation fraud, Big Pharma certainly looks ahead to other big, profitable markets at the expenses of its next victims: the fatsos. The World Health Organisation, international moppet of Big Pharma has been already activated, of course, to launch the "alarm" for the world-wide "epidemic".

October 15, 2001 - OBESE EPIDEMIC IN CHINA - [Press release 079909 01/10/01 Tuesday] - "Within ten years there could be over 200 million obese in China - a problem that has become the greatest public health policy challenge in China. The figure, that is the equivalent of the population of Germany, Great Britain, and France, could even be higher. Last June the World Health Organisation has stated that one third of the Chinese population is obese, and that the average weight of the people grows faster than in other area of the world." Now, put it together with the information above, and the picture is clear.

IS OBESITY A DISABILITY? - Fat people have a major disadvantage when it comes to travelling. If they can't fit into the standard airline seat, they're obliged to pay a lot more for their flight. In Canada, a court challenge by an overweight lawyer could change this if it is determined that obesity is an official disability. Meanwhile, as we have documented, the bureaucrats of the health gestapo refine plans for taxing people by the pound to punish them for physical attributes or to help "reimburse" that handy entity known as "society" for the "costs" imposed on "all of us".

Are the fat victims, villians or both?

People who figure they are likely to spend a lifetime being overweight had better think carefully about their political position on what should be a private matter. There are two basic futures to choose from: 

1.       You can be categorized as an irresponsible victim-villian in need of both therapy and public discipline. Choose this option and you might eventually get a break on airfares if enough people whine to the government and launch lawsuits. The downside: eventual mandatory electronic monitoring of your refrigerator by the physicians of your company's HMO. Don't laugh too loud.

2.       Insist on being a free individual who refuses to step on the scales for the health nazis for pain OR gain. 

You decide.

STATINS, AT THE HEART OF A NEW CHOLESTEROL CAMPAIGN - "...as many as one in six Americans could be advised to take the drug." [...] "Like diamonds, statins are forever. Once your doctor determines you need medication to lower your cholesterol, you will likely be filling a prescription for the rest of your life." Is the new push to increase the use of statin anti-cholesterol drugs one of the best breakthroughs for patient care in years? Or is it more marketing than magic? In these years of junk science and health hysteria, pushed by special interests and shepherded by corporate control, the public has especially good reason to be confused and wary. Put bluntly, we can no longer rely on the independence of our health care professionals and they can no longer rely on the integrity of the information they are getting about treatments. That's what's happenining as the pharmaceuticals effectively take control of medicine, and it's a shame.

FAT POLICE NO MATCH FOR KRISPY KREME - Oh, brave new world that has such plain speakers in it! In this column from a Canadian newspaper, the federal health minister is quoted as saying, "Just as we convinced Canadians to buckle up in their automobiles, we now need to help them unbuckle themselves from the confines of their couches." Trouble is, Canadians were not "convinced" over seatbelts -- they were subject to new laws and fines. Presumably, that's the kind of "help" they can expect from the therapeutic government when it comes to the obesity health alarm. Know what we need from government? Much less "help," in the name of preserving whatever scraps might be left of a free society.

As for columnist Wente's take on the fat wars -- "In the fight between our fast-food nation and the fat police, my money's on McDonald's" -- she misses the point. Anybody who bet on booze as the ultimate victor in the Prohibition battle would have been vindicated, but so what? The indignity and misery visited on the "ones who need help" is what is outrageous in these patronizing campaigns. We wish that media columnists like Wente would start to go a little deeper -- and consider how fully their own language has become saturated with the verbiage of the health cartel ("fat-delivery systems", "fat merchants", "a mountain of evidence"). Maybe then we'll finally get columns that actually challenge government innovations like the "fat police" -- instead of indulgently endorsing them.

WARNING TO THE OVERWEIGHT: RUN TO THE HILLS  - "The study showed the obese tend to have slightly more health problems than people living in poverty and far more than daily smokers or heavy drinkers."  

Move over smokers, the behavior control crowd has bigger fish to fry.  The overweight have more health problems than almost everyone else, including smokers.  It must be true.  A study says so.  More Americans, 59 percent, are overweight than smokers, heavy drinkers or the poor combined.  Such a population provides an ample target for the shakedown artists who have fleeced smokers for years and need new piggy banks to raid.

It's true that obesity has exploded during the past 20 years.  The behavior modification campaigns that successfully conned people to quit smoking have produced the current plethora of overweight people.  Actions have consequences and that this study tacitly acknowledges that the aggregate health of the country would be better had people continued to smoke, should prod citizens into demanding an end to the "health crisis" management that has so disrupted the country and enriched the dishonest.

FAT POLICE HAVE A CONFAB  - "Last week a restaurant greeted Toronto's new smoking ban with a sign saying: "Bad for democracy, but good for your health." I'm not so sure if anything that's bad for democracy is good for anyone's health in the long run, but in any event, smokers are yesterday's news. Big Brother has shifted its baleful eyes to snackers."

Something called the European Congress on Obesity held their eleventh meeting in Vienna, famous for delectable desserts, where attendees cleaned out all vestiges of non-fat milk, rice cakes and tofu tacos.  In addition to maddening local restaurateurs with demands for low-cal entrées, non-alcoholic, sugar-free beverages, topped off with rounds of decaffeinated coffee all in a "smoke-free" environment, the congress fulminated over the growing global pandemic of obesity.

The Obesity Congress issued a manifesto labeling obesity, a  "major global health problem with substantial economic costs" that justifies securing "the commitment of policy makers to action."  Further, according to the chairman, actions must be taken "to convince governments to act swiftly and effectively to arrest the dramatic increases in obesity we are seeing everywhere in the world today."

YOU MUST LOOSE WEIGHT, YOU WILL COMPLY  - New rules to fight heart disease: Aggressive treatment of 'bad' cholesterol shriek above-the-fold, front page headlines of the San Francisco Chronicle.  Within, the highly alarmist copy hammers the reader with the "national epidemic of obesity".  Interspersed are warnings against "silent killers" and "death-dealing symptoms" that must be addressed with an "aggressive approach".

Although the turgid prose seems more appropriate to an announcement of World War III, the enormous financial stakes for the medical and pharmaceutical industries that have manufactured these "new rules" require media-generated hysteria to whip up the population and spur the politicians into action.

A calm reading of the story, however, reveals the primary motive for this agitated press-release masquerading as a news story; money, control and more money.

The rules are new only in the sense that the last guidelines were issued in 1993 and the standards promulgated then have been ratcheted up to emulate the past decade's example of highly lucrative health hysteria over smoking.  That there is big money to be made off a paranoid populace is a given and Big Health, Big Drugs and the ancillary media have a blueprint that guarantees financial success.

The recommended level of so-called bad cholesterol is dropped from 240 milligrams per deciliter of blood to 160.  Those between 130 and 159 are to be classified as borderline high and those above 190 will be very high.  Stroke of the pen and now millions of Americans, who for the past 10 years have had acceptable levels of bad cholesterol, are now miraculously members of the "high risk" community.

There is more.  Doctors will be urged to use a comprehensive scoring system for heart attack risks that factor age, total cholesterol, blood pressure and, of course, smoking.  Combine that with Lipoprotein profiles given every five years beginning at age 20 and we have testing and write up procedures that will fatten the bank accounts of the medical industry considerably.

There is more.  The natural slowing down and physical discomforts associated with middle-age are now viewed as potential "death-dealing" disease symptoms.  The middle-age spread, known as a potbelly or beer belly has a new medical term of "metabolic syndrome" to show just how dangerous this normal sign of aging has become.

And finally the bottom line:

"Those judged to be at a 20 percent risk or more of having a heart attack within the next 10 years -- even if free of current symptoms -- would be treated identically to those with classic evidence of heart disease. The vast majority would be prescribed fat-lowering drugs."

Following the new rules, prescriptions for lipid-lowering drugs would triple.  People targeted for dietary management regimens would increase from 52 million people to 65 million.

The richest corporations on earth are about to become even richer.  The next stage will address population control issues, or as a director of cardiology research says, "It's all very well to put these guidelines out there, but they're not worth the paper they're printed on if patients aren't following them."

COMING SOON: THE WAR AGAINST FAT - THE OBESITY 'EPIDEMIC' IS A PUBLIC HEALTH ISSUE OF GROWING CONCERN - May 17, 2001 - Of course, the pharmaceutically-driven healthist cancer is affecting first it Northern neighbour: Canada. Here is an article from the National Post on the same theme. Nowhere in these articles words like "choice" and "freedom" to be who and what one wants to be is even remotely mentioned. The infatuation with coercion and with the "duty" to be "healthy" (and the indifference of those who are affected) is the appalling proof that the Nazi State is back - intact. The only difference is, in fact, the replacement of those with the "wrong" nose with those with the "wrong" lifestyle.

THE SODA POP CRISIS - Politicians waste their constituents time and money over cans of soda pop.

"Now, I don't know about you, but I don't vote for candidates in the hope that they are going to tackle the challenging issues like Big Pop." 

Here's a nice essay of where the nannies are moving off to. Seems like the "evil" beverage companies are targeting the kids with their soda pop and the kids are in need of their savior "super legislator".

We now need to protect the kids from this new beast so that they do not suffer from bad teeth and obesity.
 

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