Super Size Me
Obesity is a creeping problem emerging in most developed nations. However it seems to have reached epidemic proportions in the USA. Tonight for the first time I watched the movie “Super Size Me”. Contrary to what I expected it was not just peddling an excuse for fat people to dodge responsibility for what they eat and to blame big business for personal weight problems, although it certainly explores that side of the debate. If there was a central message in the movie it was that if you want the world to change you first need to change yourself. Whilst there was plenty of corporate bashing I think it was really just saying that this company (McDonalds) sells a product that is crap for your health and will make you depressed and sick if you decide to depend on it. And according to the movie a huge proportion of McDonalds customers in the USA (over 70%) are regulars who come at least once per week and a large slice of the customer base eats there several times a week. People really should face facts; most fast food is junk food.
As an advocate of libertarian philosophy I am not generally of the view that governments should intervene to solve social problems such as this issue of obesity. However there are a couple of key things that governments could and really should do that are consistent with my philosophical outlook and move us in the right direction on the health question.
Governments, particularly the US government, should stop subsidising sugar and beef (and several other things like corn starch etc). The Australian government could assist by ceasing to prop up the sugar and beef industry through industry adjustment funds and drought assistance. On health grounds alone it is insane that governments subsidise products that much of the population consumes in excess, whilst things such as fruit and vegetables generally have to stand on their own feet in the market place. If you increase sugar production and beef production through artificial incentives then one way or another it will find it’s way into the food supply and somebody (generally the poor or the ignorant) will end up eating extra sugar and extra beef. In a real sense extra supply will create extra demand just as Baptise Say# postulated all those years ago.
Governments that make it mandatory that we hand over our children for compulsory schooling should ensure that where public schools exist they include a consistent dose of physical education and have sufficient real estate devoted to play grounds with room to run and jump and roll and wrestle. And that food promoted and sold in such schools is consistent with the highest health and nutrition aspirations of parents rather than the lowest common denominator.
And whilst I don’t think governments should regulate to ban advertising or mandate menus I do think that as a society (i.e. via non-government civil society), it can do a lot of good if we occasionally scream at corporations like McDonalds for making crappy products and advise their customers that they are buying into a bad deal. For instance apparently just a few months after the movie “Super Size Me” was released McDonalds stopped selling “Super Size”.
I thought that it was a movie worth watching, especially if you are responsible for raising kids.
# Actually “Says Law” is essentially a macroeconomics postulation not a microeconomic one. However this artistic licence does not alter my point.
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