Never mind the obesity epidemic—Canada is (31) with an epidemic of bad ideas on how to fight obesity. The latest is to treat fast-food restaurants as if they were (32) to porn shops, and (33) them from—or at least limit their numbers in—neighbourhoods with schools or hospitals.
That idea is one of many (34) by a group of medical doctors in an article published this week in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. The doctors, (35) by the cardiologist Mark Eisenberg of McGill University, seem to view a bag of potato chips as the moral (36) of a package of cigarettes. They (37) propose the use of graphic warnings for junk food, similar to (38) on cigarette packages," which now have pictures of a dying cancer (39) on them. They would discuss a (40) on junk foods. Salt they suggest removing from processed foods not (41) , so that no one notices, but fast enough to destroy the enticing taste.
There is a logical end to this kind of thinking: men skulking on street corners (42) hamburgers under their trench coats, even as a massive bureaucracy decides how to separate junk foods from (43) ones, for the purposes of launching a fusillade of taxes. (The authors even envision a utopia in which people snack on "trail mix, apple slices and granola bars. ")
Canada does not need a dietitian-in-chief. It doesn’t need healthy-food enforcement officers. People in a democracy should be (44) to make bad choices, even ones as reprehensible as scarfing chips or swilling sugary pop. These choices are different from cigarette smoking, which creates (45) effects on others.
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A new report on children’s inactivity suffers from a similar flaw. Active Healthy Kids Canada complains that 72 percent of youth from the age of 5 to 19 do not have (46) to after-school programs. But why should 19-year-olds, or even the bulk of 14-year-olds, need such regimentation The attitude seems to be that only the government can (47) children from bad habits. How the state is supposed to program the pounds off today’s children is not explained.
Demonizing smoking is very different from demonizing obesity, (48) is a condition, not a behaviour. It is influenced by (49) factors. Shaming and blaming, taxing and banning, will not work. We need to promote greater (50) , at all ages, and all weights, and keep in mind that the heavy hand of the state is not the answer to every ill.
