Feds to Monitor Obesity?
You read that right. The Federal Government is going to begin monitoring your weight. Read it here. Anyone find this disturbing besides me? Anyone who knows me knows I’m fat, but that’s not my problem with this. There are plenty of reasons that this should scare the bejesus out of everyone, even fit people.
First, what they hell are they gonna do with your, “…body mass index, or BMI, height and weight?” I’m sure our benevolent government just wants to know. They would never do anything with it, like say deny you health care due to your unhealthy state. Right? Or force you into some kind of treatment. No, that would never happen. Besides, its good for you right? The hell they wouldn’t do that. You theoretically cost the health system money by being fat (or smoking, drinking, bungee jumping, etc.) and they have a duty to society to prohibit you from being fat. Fucking scary.
England has already talked about auditing peoples pantries for unhealthy foods, New York and other cities are banning or limiting trans fats, salt, sugar, and our precious First Lady has spoken out about government involvement in nutrition and cutting a trillion calories out of our collective diet by having food manufactures secretly change recipes.
My second problem with this is the use of the body mass index (BMI) charts. They are horribly outdated, created in the 50′s for a nation fresh off of a Great Depression and the rationing of World War II. You think those folks were raised on enriched pasta and gummi vitamins. They were lucky to get three squares a day. Then they base these charts off of the average people then? We eat so much better than they did back then and our size shows it. 30 years ago an NFL lineman that weighed 205 lbs was huge, today that same guy would be a tight end and the linemen go 320.
Is Arnold Schwarzenegger fat? According to the BMI charts he’s obese. they only compare your weight with your height. Body type and muscle mass are not considered. Half the guys at your gym are technically overweight, though they are the models of health. There are better ways to measure health than the BMI, but maybe the zealots don’t care. Maybe they want us all to be 5-foot nothing and 175 lbs so we don’t consume as much.
Then there is the fact that being overweight does not equal unhealthy. Ideally, you should have a body fat percentage in the teens, but having 30 or even 40% body fat is not a death sentence. Many overweight people are healthy, normal blood pressure, low cholesterol, get regular exercise and will probably live into their 80′s and beyond. Many thin people are unhealthy, bad diets, no exercise, etc. And if the goal were to make us healthier, the government would be promoting healthy lifestyles, not just arbitrarily mandating we lose weight.
And that’s the problem, like with everything else (health care, cap and trade, etc.). The Federal Government and the statist/progressives that infest it don’t give a damn about you as an individual and what makes sense for you personally. They want to control us, all of us, and have us live as they see fit. They will promise you the moon and stars if only you submit to their plans, but if you don’t they will force you to submit through legislation, regulation and taxation. This is about power. Power to make everyone live like they think we should. That is not freedom and liberty. That is tyranny. We must resist the temptation to let them trade our liberty for a little security. It is a mirage.
