Obesity

Late Monday, the food industrial complex won a big victory in the agriculture appropriations conference report, H.R.2112, with a provision that blocks the Agriculture Department from carrying out a rule to improve school lunches for the first time in 15 years.  This New York Times article covers it well.  The House is voting in favor of this right now at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, and the Senate will pass it late tonight or tomorrow.  We have an obesity epidemic in this country that grows directly from eating too much processed food, too much salt, too much sugar, and way too many calories.  Many times, I begged a 180 pound 4th grader I tutored a few years ago to forego the chips and the Chicken McNuggets and the pizza he was being served to no avail. Many times, I've heard from an inner city OB/GYN how hard it is to deliver a health baby from an obese and diabetic 22 year old mother.

This is not the title of a sci-fi thriller.  A few minutes ago, I heard former FDA Commissioner David Kessler, MD repeat it over and over again at Politics and Prose bookstore in D.C.  What was he talking about?  His new book, The End of Overeating­, is the first to pull together the hard science behind the restaurant and food industry hijacking of our eating habits and the source of our obesity epidemic.