Why Are We Letting Michelle Obama Off So Easy?
The Obamas are seemingly new territory for America's view of the White House. I'm reminded of the Kennedy years. Kennedy was a first in many ways. He was young. He was the first Catholic. He had young children in the White House. His ideas and focus were reflective of a country ready for something different after the post-war, anti-Communist, bent towards conservatism that had dominated the previous decade. And he had a beautiful wife.
So I can see why critiques of Michelle Obama's fight against childhood obesity have been reluctant to say plainly that she is wrong. We keep talking about her like she means well but is just misguided. Surely this beautiful, articulate woman is a good mother. Surely, she is just being advised poorly. Perhaps, she is just dealing with the same issues that all women face and these issues have colored her vision on the matter.
Well, I hate to be the kid who shouts that the emperor has no clothes, but I'm not buying it.
Michelle Obama is not "just well-intentioned, but misguided." Her campaign is going to hurt children not help them. She is putting the interests of big business above the interests of children in a grand, old tradition in Washington of making your cronies richer while pretending to "do it for the children" and I'm really over excusing her behavior on the basis of good intentions. (BTW, I'm not saying whether her intentions are good or bad. I'm saying they are irrelevant.)
Public Health in this country has been on a downward spiral since Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980. Funding has been cut repeatedly even though costs have risen. The philosophy of public health has moved from a matter of addressing epidemics and providing prevention through vaccinations and early detection to an emphasis on "lifestyle." Lifestyle is a code word in politics for "we do not have to fund any initiatives because all we have to do is blame individuals for getting sick."
Michelle Obama's war on fat kids is just one more example of this mentality. The rhetoric of illness as the fault of the sick serves several monied interests. Most directly profiting is the "lifestyle" industry.This includes any business that promotes diets, dieting, weight control, exercise equipment, gym memberships, and "obesity cures" (including weight loss surgery). Mrs. Obama's rhetoric is the stuff of promotional material for these businesses and now she has opened up a whole new marketing strategy -- sell it to the children. Other businesses profit as well. Big Food and Big Pharm get to promote new products (reduced fill-in-the-blank ingredient) and old products (speed for kids, yay!) to a new market. But let us not forget all the professionals who make their money off of obesity research as well. A lot of money is going to be flowing directly or indirectly into some powerful group's directions. This initiative is big and it is lucrative. Follow the money and you usually find the true motives for big projects.
Don't believe me. Well consider the list of "partners" that her program has:
I'm most intrigued by the second list. If this is a fight that Big Food doesn't want, then why is it buying into the program so fully?
Why does any industry engage financially with a project? Because this is good for business.
The key to understanding why such companies as Pepsico and Hersheys want to be on board with a program that on the surface seems to be attacking their major product lines is to understand the fundamental underlying principle of making a profit in modern capitalism: scarcity.
Scarcity is thought by most to lead to higher demand. After all, if something is hard to come by and it is something that people want, then the demand will be greater than the supply. This means for the same item the seller can charge more. More demand means higher profits and scarcity means higher demand.
So consider this. Diets do not work. It turns out that starving ourselves over a long period of time usually leads to us looking for food and storing up for the next famine. Our bodies really do not know the difference between a diet and famine. It just knows that of late when it was hungry it didn't get what it needed. So when it starts getting access to food again, it prompts a higher appetite and uses what it gets more efficiently. That is probably why most diets end with people gaining weight.
But instead of blaming the process of intentional famine, we blame the dieter (or ourselves) when the diet does not work. Thus, scarcity is created both in the intentional famine and in the greater desire for more when the famine is over. Demand is increased. And, to really make it wonderful, once the feast is over and the weight is gained back, the dieter blames themselves and goes back into the vicious cycle by going on another intentional famine using, of course, all those dieting products that will help them "succeed this time." So demand for the dieting products are also increased. Since most of these companies in Big Food and Big Pharm are on both ends of the cycle (diet food/"fatty" food and diet pills/meds for conditions related to yo-yo weight cycling), they win either way.
But there is one more element. The concept of diversification to create scarcity. Instead of selling one product, you can repackage the same product in several slightly different ways and create a sense of scarcity. So we may have plenty of cola, but once the cola comes in a half a dozen different containers with slight changes in the recipes, you have scarcer cola. Diet products create diversification. So now you not only sell the high calorie or high fat or high sugar item, you can also sell the reduced calorie, reduced fat or reduced sugar version of the same item.
So add into this mix the possibility of having specialized products aimed at children put on forced intentional famines and a whole new set of demands appear.
So do you think Michelle Obama is that naive? I personally do not. I think she is fully aware of how much these partnerships are going to help her husband's political ambitions. This is big business and big campaigning. I have a hard time swallowing the "but we thought they meant well" line.
What do the Obamas gain by setting up this program the way they have?
Well, the most immediate gain is that it takes the emphasis away from the health care reform failure. What happened last year with the health care debate was not what was promised in the campaign. I'm suspicious of the timing of the announcement of this initiative. It was in February, right at the crucial moment of the Senate vote. I smell smoke and mirrors in the timing.
This program also makes it look like something is being done about public health when essentially nothing is being done. Issues such as inner-city pollution of air and water, violence against kids, food insecurity for kids (which is growing at astronomical rates right now) and the rise of drug-resistant infectious diseases are being swept aside in favor of this campaign.
The relationships and infrastructure developed by this campaign will be there to aid Obama in re-election. Money is flowing and in politics when money flows out, a certain amount of it flows back in at election time.
The saddest part is the so-called "unintentional" consequences of this campaign. Stigma of fat kids is going to increase. This not only means that fat kids are going to suffer more bullying and violence, but it may be bad for their health. There is growing evidence that many of the so-called "co-morbidity" conditions related to "obesity" may be cause by the stress of stigmatization and not the state of the larger body. So instead of creating a healthier generation, we may be creating a food-obsessed, eating disordered, stigmatized generation that will be our unhealthiest generation.
One final word. I know that many of my friends and online acquaintances have stated that they really like the initiatives, they just wish that it weren't framed in the language of fighting obesity. The problem is that framing these initiatives in the language of obesity is not an afterthought. It is a fundamental part of these initiatives and as such, it is dooming any good these initiatives might have created. These initiatives are set up to fail and as such they will ensure that any good that could have been done will not be done. It is not simply a matter of removing the frame. These ideas are interwoven with a view that being fat is intrinsically unhealthy and unwanted. The failure of these ideas will further profit the monied interest supporting the campaign. I personally see no compromise here. The campaign needs to be scrapped and a true campaign of promoting exercise and healthy eating for all sizes and ages needs to be developed, and believe me it would NOT gain the kind of support that Let's Move has.
We need real public health initiatives that will address our most serious health issues. We need real health care that will end for-profit exploitation of our health and well-being. We need to address the real threats to our children and their futures.
Real issues are suffering. Rome is burning while Michelle Obama plays the fiddle. I, for one, am not going to look kindly on her doing so. I don't think history will either.
Categories:General | Health | Advocacy | Youth
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