not sure if it's silly or stupid...

Labelman aims to educate about obesity.

Yeah - the FDA is coming out with another exhortation to get people to eat less or eat healthier or whatever the hell.

(This will look like a digression but it isn't:) The first stats class I ever took was a business-stats class. I didn't learn a whole lot that's directly applicable to my life now (but I did learn Simpson's paradox). The class also covered Deming's principles. Now, as a non-business-type, I'm frankly agnostic on Deming (neither pro nor con), but one thing the prof said stuck with me:

"Exhorting people to do things doesn't work."

(Or, as the website I linked to puts it:

eliminate practices that undermine workers' self / mutual respect and motivation (production quotas, sloganeering, sexist / racist expressions, favoritism / nepotism).

)

Because, you know? People hate being told what to do. They especially hate being told what to do when it's something that's not really fun, or is presented in a way to make it seem not fun. I mean - if someone offered you a nice slab of pizza-with-everything or a piece of plain broiled fish with no salt, just lemon, which would you take? Or if the choice for dessert was cake or no dessert, which would you take?

All of these "eat healthy" stories have at least a faint whiff of the punitive about them - I guess since we're no longer scourging ourselves for our sexual sins, we have to do it for some other sin of the flesh. (What's next? People who sleep for one minute more than the approved 8 hours per day are the next villains?)

I'm also dreading the War On Obesity gear-up for the "holiday" season. The whole old (false) trope about how people gain five pounds (it is actually more like 1.5), how many horrible calories there are in eggnog or candy canes or turkey or God knows what other seasonal treat. You know what, anti-obesity-nannies? You can go off in a corner and gnaw on a celery stick, I'll take the shrimp cocktail and the cheese bites. And don't try to tell me the celery tastes just as good as hot crab puffs. That's just peeing on my leg and trying to make me believe it's raining.

Also - please, let's not go to the "Oh, wow, HEALTHY treats!!!" thing where the cookies have been modified (using prune puree and powdered fake eggs and tofu and who knows what else) into unrecognizability, and yet be told, "And they're JUST AS GOOD as your old, fatty recipe!" No. They are not. Again: pee, leg, raining.

Look: I understand moderation. Maybe some people do not. But I'd rather have one really good butter cookie -with REAL butter and REAL sugar - than some plate of syntho-Victory-cookies that are made out of some kind of snot extracted from algae and Splenda. (Because Splenda gives me the trots, yo.).

But: for the love of all that's good, just leave me alone. Look, if I have arteries clogged with yummy delicious butter and I keel over at 50, what business is it of yours? After all - and I'm speaking to the gub'mint here, the purveyors of Labelman and other things to do with telling us what we should and should not put in our mouths - if I keel over at 50, you won't have to pay me "back" that Social Security you claim you are putting in a "lock box" for me. In fact, you can go out and profligately spend it on the Baby Boomers for all I care.

So, how is "labelman" going to get people to eat healthier? What is the target for this thing, anyway?

If it's tiny children - shouldn't their parents be teaching them nutrition? I mean - is it really in such a sad state that the government can do a better job than Mom or Dad or Grandma or Mom's 'friend' or whomever pushing the vegetables and fruits? And you know? I'm ready to go all survival of the fittest on this. If you and your family want to never eat vegetables, if you want to eat whatever you want, fine. Just don't try to sue the food companies out of existence when something happens. There's plenty of nutrition info out there that people don't follow now. (And don't give me the sob story about "vegetables are really expensive." So is cable. So are cell phones. And I don't see people demanding that all the poor be given free cable.)

If it's teens - well, Labelman's dead in the water. Not cool. Kind of like rapping the periodic table - the dorky kids who care about the thing might find it amusing, but the target audience will be turned off. (Like Hank Hill once said about Christian rock, it made both church and rock worse).

If it's adults - then I guess the infantalization of the American public has advanced to the point where they need a talking nutrition label to tell them about healthful and not-so-healthful foods (The news story I linked also talks about "Thermy" and "Bac," which I have seen on the packages of steak and such I buy. I roll my eyes at them and cook the steaks the way my mama taught me. I've never contracted salmonella or whatever they're trying to scare you off of yet.)

I don't know. I'm getting really tired of the landslide of obesity/food/diet related stories. And I'm tired of the head-scratching over "why is this happening?" as if there is some Fat Virus that has infected the world, or if people have gotten stupid from cosmic rays, and stupidity causes fat.

You know what, war-on-obesity folks? I can tell you why we're getting fatter. Two simple facts:

1. We have labor saving devices now. You can bet your sweet bippy no American (except maybe the lunatic fringe of environmentalists) are going to go back to using a washtub, beater, and washboard on their clothes, when you can toss them in a machine and let it work. My grandma rejoiced when my parents gave her a "real" washing machine so she no longer had to wash things the old-fashioned way. Likewise - most of us drive instead of walking, because, see, Wal-Marts like to build really large, and they like to build on the outskirts of town.

And yeah, some of us spend part of our precious precious free time to work out to make up for the calories we're not burning because we're not clubbing bunnies for dinner or washing our linens in a stream. But I'd still rather have the labor saving devices and give my pound of flesh on the treadmill each day.

2. Fattening food tastes better than non-fattening food. We ecologists have a term for it: optimal foraging. Our ancestors, back in the bad old days of famine, learned that if they ate the fatty part of the animal, or if they could scrounge enough honey or sweet fruit, they were more likely to live through the winter than their counterparts who ate leaves. It got bred into us, and we can't get rid of it.


And besides all that: life is pretty short. (And it may be even shorter than we all expected, given that Iran apparently has enriched uranium). I refuse to spend my days chewing rice cakes and choking down bitter greens as the bulk of my diet. Don't get me wrong - I like salad, salad has a place in meals. But. Don't tell me to eat a double helping of salad instead of enjoying some bread and butter with it. Or instead of my nice piece of steak.

Actually, I think it's kind of ironic that "Labelman" was trotted out the day after the finding was released that eating chocolate may be as good for you as taking the daily aspirin. (But of course, everyone is quick on the draw to point out that "only a tiny bit" of chocolate is healthy, and to remind people to eat chocolate with as little sugar or added milk as possible. Eh.)

Actually, you know? I think I answered my question. I'm gonna go with "stupid."