Bloodless Coup

I don't like it. Shame-based and ineffective.

Well I tend to be favor of consumers having more information, especially about things they'd be putting in their body - and as an eater I'd like to have easy access to the calories involved.

How about I take up the middle ground? I think if you're counting calories, you can find this information in a number of different places (sparkpeople, the daily plate, weight watchers, etc). There are many health conscious people out there who figure out what they are going to eat before they head out to a national chain. Armand and Binky, didn't you notice this while in NYC? I know that I did when I picked up a Dunkin Donuts breakfast sandwich at LGA my last morning, and it just gave me a range of calories, like 280-350 calories. Um, okay... well, how many more calories is a bagel vs. a croissant? Cheese vs. no cheese? How do I stay under that 300 calorie mark? There is no indication of that. So, again, if I really want to know how many calories I put in my mouth, I'd have to use sparkpeople instead of figuring it out while standing at the counter.

Sure. But there a lot of people who aren't able to check the internet before meals, and even those who have access fairly easily aren't going to always know where they are eating in advance. So I don't think that's really a substitute.

And mmmm - how I wish we had a Dunkin Donuts, calories be damned.

Not to mention that there's a vast middle-ground of people who care but not in the New York obsessive requires-a-calculator and comes with homework assignments sort of way. People who might genuinely not realize that a Big Mac comes in at 800 calories or whatever, and know enough to be sufficiently appalled by that fact . . . maybe not so appalled that they run out to the nearest Trader Joe's, but appalled enough that they select a less appalling menu item.

That exactly why I had a coffee and a wonderful breakfast sandwich before I got on my plane. Sigh. I miss DD.

I am just not convinced that shame is a good motvator. Do you really think people DON'T know that McD's isn't "good" for them? They know, and they think that they are not going to make any difference so why care (this is not my advocacy position, just perception of how people view this). How many national chains offer what is ideal (eat less, of what you do eat please eat more veggies, and exercise more)?

Well, I disagree. I think people know it's not good for them to go to McDonalds. But I also think that once there people might make different choices if they knew there were, say 300 calories differentials between their possible selections.

And I think the shame issue might be worse as it currently stands (if you have to walk over to a section of the eatery to read this stuff, as opposed to having it listed on menus).

Armand, I disagree. I think if you really want to know what you're eating, you will check on it before you leave. How hard is it to consider an online menu before you go to the Olive Garden? I know this is something that you might not do, but for millions of Americans who belong to Sparkpeople or WW, they do this already.

Well I agree to a degree, but 1) a lot of people don't have access to an online menu, and 2) a lot of people (like me) aren't planners, but would like the information.

"How hard is it to consider an online menu before you go to the Olive Garden?"

I'm with Armand on a point that keeps not being dealt with: the numbers of internet users are low enough themselves to call into question the assumption that people will look there; but consult with virtually any non-professional over 40 who does use the internet and the ability to find, bookmark, and consistently refer to any particular site is one I find sorely lacking among the people I know who fit that demographic.

Furthermore, the quoted proposition is true of everything one buys at a grocery store, too -- all that information is available online as well. Why is this different with respect to grocery store food, where labels manifestly make a difference? Or is it your position that that, too, is ineffective and could not be there for all the difference it makes.

"How hard is it to consider an online menu before you go to the Olive Garden?"

I'm with Armand on a point that keeps not being dealt with: the numbers of internet users are low enough themselves to call into question the assumption that people will look there; but consult with virtually any non-professional over 40 who does use the internet and the ability to find, bookmark, and consistently refer to any particular site is one I find sorely lacking among the people I know who fit that demographic.

Furthermore, the quoted proposition is true of everything one buys at a grocery store, too -- all that information is available online as well. Why is this different with respect to grocery store food, where labels manifestly make a difference? Or is it your position that that, too, is ineffective and could not be there for all the difference it makes.

So, what's going to happen when these calories are up on the ordering board and you still witness morbidly obese people ordering two Big Macs and a large fry? Is there any evidence that this actually helps with the fight against obesity? It's the same with the nutrition fact labels that we saw appear on everything in the late 80s. Sure, there's 1200 calories in a pint of Ben and Jerry's, but I'm still going to buy it if I really want it. If we want to affect the obesity crisis, then it's about changing behaviors and showing people how to CHOOSE food that is good for you.

Well, yeah. Anyone who thinks this will solve the obesity crisis is kidding themselves. But I don't look at this in those terms. I think this is still pro-consumer legislation, and it does help people choose lower-calorie options.

Well, Kiki, if the standard is either it affects behavior universally or its necessarily an abject failure, you're absolutely right. But if some people modify their behavior somewhat -- a proposition that seems pretty likely to me since I'm someone, I read labels, and have been known to make decisions based on them, and I know for a fact I'm not alone -- it seems to me worth doing, and I fail to see why things will categorically differ between the grocery store aisle and the line at McDonald's.

Moreover, assuming we ever succeed in foregrounding prevention in our healthcare system, which is part and parcel of the next step we have to take in health care generally, than increasingly health-educated people may be more attentive to these things, and it would be nice to have the infrastructure in place.

Finally, I would always and ever err in favor of transparency. Grocery providers have to think in terms of what awful things their customers are going to see, what gotcha investigations might turn up on the 6 o'clock news when reporters and consumers have ready access to ingredients and proportions, and while they still produce junk, I nonetheless believe that they are more honest and mindful than they would otherwise be. Again, I'd like to see the same principle applied to the corporations that are, in some sense, poisoning our country with garbage without any obligation to tell us how.

Moon, I don't think that our opinions are that far off of one another. I too agree that preventative education is the key to fight obesity in the States. People need to know how to use these labels, not read this information and discern "good" from "bad."

Honest and mindful? Have you seen the new commercials promoting high fructose corn syrup as a good for you because it comes from corn? They're still manipulating what they're producing and how they're packaging it.

I eagerly await the governmental anti-slouching campaign. After all, lower back pain accounts for umpty-zillion percent of US health care costs, and since government throws resources into that money pit it has standing to tell us all exactly how to live. Will comfy chairs be banned, or just heavily taxed? Will federal monitors wander through coffeeshops issuing citations to slumping writer types?

If it saves just one life it's worth it, right?

Again, this is about consumers being able to make informed choices - not the government mandating their choices. All this would require is that really large eateries (with 15 or more locations in the state) make a slight alteration to their menu. They can still serve whatever they like and people can still purchase whatever they like.

Someone who's coming out against this as a silly idea please explain to me one reason consumers aren't entitled to know what's in the food they eat, and entitled to have access to it somewhere they can all see it and at the time and in the location when the information is most likely to interest them -- i.e., when they are contemplating buying it? Seriously? What's the argument against?

The information is already available. This isn't about keeping consumers "informed", it's about getting in their face in an attempt to drive an outcome that some social-engineer types find desirable.

Just because this is where the US government's relationship to its citizens is going doesn't mean I have to like it.

Well we fundamentally disagree on whether or not the information is out there. In the first place I don't know that every affected eatery has this information out there. And secondly, even if they did, not everyone can get to it. Even if it was on-line, a lot of people don't have internet access.

This doesn't strike me as being any different from a regulation letting me know the vitamin content of what I buy at the grocery store.

Armand, that's because it isn't. But it's surely creeping fascism to let government require the same thing with respect to another category of items we are urged to put into our body. It's much more democratic and American to let corporations hide the ball even as reports of deadly spinach and peanut butter and chinese toys abound.

Moon, lemme get this straight: The fact that MCD gives you its nutritional info in a brochure that's available for the asking in every store in the US rather than having it stuck up on their menu board is equivalent to E.Coli in badly-inspected spinach?

Can I bust your chops the next time you call Morris out for making an argument that lame?

it's about getting in their face in an attempt to drive an outcome that some social-engineer types find desirable

And I will say it again, this reads less like a tool for people to know what to eat. Because really, we shouldn't eat at McDonalds ever (for the vast majority of the food) if we want to eat healthy. Relative calorie counts from McDonalds? Why bother when it is all (aside from salad, water and oj) crap? Getting in faces is about shaming people, and shame is a singularly ineefective tool for change. People feel worse about themselves, and are less likely to make healthy choices.

Uh, can I just point out that the law creates two different restaurants - chains and everybody else. And the chains (whatever that means) have to comply with the law, and the others don't.

Whatever one thinks of the pluses and minuses of information about calories, can we at least note that having an uneven playing field isn't good?

(And, yes, I know that mom-and-pop restaurants basically can't provide the information, while McDonalds already has it; that's not really the issues I'm arguing about.)

Errrr, that's WHOLE different issue. We already have a wildly uneven playing field when it comes to regulating different types of businesses. This tiny move doesn't affect that tendency in a major way.

And hey, speaking for myself alone, I do sometimes eat at McDonalds (not often, but still), and if I'm trapped in an airport (without internet access) I'd appreciate knowing which meal is 600 calories and which meal is 800 calories.

Yeah, I know its a different issue, but the law (as written) ties the two together; some restaurants have to disclose calorie information, and some don't. And while we regulate different industries in different ways, I don't think we much regulate the same industries in different ways (exception: we do treat businesses that have more employees differently from mom-and-pop businesses that have few employees; but we discriminate in how they treat their employees, not how they treat their customers).

That was my only point, in that comment.

Overall, I'm perfectly happy to have calorie/nutrition information for my meals. I'll ignore it wherever I eat. But you have to recognize that this significantly handicaps places that want to, for example, run a "nightly special." How do you get nutritional information for a dish you make up that afternoon to sell that evening?

Well, there was this in today's NYT. However if more of us did the "eat less, what we do eat make it mostly veggies, and exercise more" approach, that would exclude a lot of the food we're talking about from the get go. And like you, Armand, I do eat that crap when there is no other choice, but I hate it, and always wish there were other options. McD's eliminated the only decent salad (asian) and the last time I got the same at Wendy's (again, when on the road overnight and such) the lettuce was black, slimy and rotten.

Well, I haven't actually ordered more than an order of fries in a McD's in about a gazillion years, so I don't know whether they have pamphlets at the counter, but from the article it sounds like the opposition opines that counter or internet is okay. And for those places that provide such information for the asking, they're pretty good about avoiding signaling that, you know, the information is there for the asking. The only exception I can think of is Au Bon Pain, which has a couple of flat screens placed around its stores providing detailed information. So we're back on the internet thing again, which is impractical and non-universal.

I'll grant that flyers in marked locations around the store is fairly close to the same as posting the calorie counts on the menu, but unless you know something I don't, there are fast food restaurants that don't do that much. And assuming, Jac, that you know for a fact that McDonald's does the flyer thing, then I'll concede that weakens my argument. But I've been using McD's as a proxy for the broader run of fast food restaurants, so telling me that the proposition in question is not terribly effective for McD's alone does little more than undermine my particular choice of proxy.

Finally, and in light of the Times article (which relates a fact that is effectively rediscovered every few years, typically in the wake of some bizarre wildly unhealthy weight loss trend, as though it were something we hadn't known all along), just having calorie counts for different sizes in plain view seems to me a pretty straightforward benefit.

As for the disparate treatment, if McDonald's offered something other than food about as uniquely cooked as an unwrapped Snickers bar I'd have some sympathy. But since their unabashed goal is to make the perfectly identical hamburger in every restaurant around the world, I don't see a problem with the distinction.

Yeah there is no way I'd eat a salad at McBurgerWendys for exactly that reason.

And yes, some of the chains do have pamphlets or a big board somewhere in the store. But there I think you are really getting into one part of the shame issue. A lot of people probably aren't comfortable going over to the one corner of the store where that information exists. If it's handy to everyone in the same way though - on a menu, or listed next to the price above the checkout line - you might see some people make healthier choices without getting stressd out over it. Is it going to solve the obesity epidemic? Of course not. But I like the idea that customers can have that information handy - in a place where it is easily available to all.

We have not even broached the topic of how dangerous the fat epidemic even is. There is evidence emerging all the time that obesity, while associated with some increased risks for some people, is not an across the board bad thing. Recently a study came out showing that somewhat "obese" people were actually statistically more healthy than thinner people. It's not all about BMI. I encourage you to check out Shapely Prose.

Second, the problem with an obesity epidemic is that it is not the decision that people make once they are inside McDonalds that has the biggest impact. It is that we decide to walk in the door in the first place (or like, not even do that as we drive through). The problem is cultural and behavioral at a broader scale.

I feel like a broken record but I think everyone should read both Food Politics and The Omnivore's Dilemma, especially FP. It shows that the way we eat has more to do with agribusiness and corporate welfare (I'm looking at you, corn producers) and collusion between regulatory agencies and industry than it does with people's preferences. Simply put, we eat what is cheap and plentiful. What is cheap and plentiful is full of sugary corn products. They are cheap and plentiful because of the regulatory and price support structures.

What binky said, plus a handful of studies showing that the whole shame-the-fat-folks thing doesn't work which I will post later when I have more time and the relevant book at hand.

Christakis and Fowler may disagree. In the New England Journal of Medicine from 2007, they published the results of a 32 year study of over 12,000 people; it's hard to beat that. They found that when someone's friend becomes obese, that someone eventually becomes obese 57% of the time; importantly, they do not become obese at the same time, so it is not behavioral imitation nor is it shared activities (geographic distance wasn't significantly related).

So what appears to happen is that I'm friends with Joe. Joe becomes obese. I enjoy being around Joe, and Joe's in many respects a good guy, so I don't shame Joe for gaining weight. Whenever I do eat out with Joe, I detach myself progressively from judging his obese condition, because it just doesn't seem like something a friend would do. Then I'm eating dinner one night, and there's a biscuit left over, and since I know obesity isn't bad, I butter it up and swallow it down. Next thing you know I'm doubling the cream cheese in an Emeril Lagasse recipe.

Social norms exist because people talk about what they feel at a gut level, and those feelings when expressed become social norms; no one had an abstact list of rules and told people to obey just cuz. That's victimhood talking. Fat, lazy, and stupid is no way to go through life because we prefer to feel healthy, spry, and smart, unless we have a friend we like who's fat, lazy, or stupid, then we may feel guilty unless we can separate their condition from what we like about them, and accept the world isn't black and white. The social norm isn't the problem; it's the fat, lazy, and stupid that's the problem. Taking away the social norm is like busting the thermometer because it's too hot.

I wonder if those who think posting calories is equivalent to beating someone with socks filled with soap would also suggest restaurants stop posting prices because that might shame some people about how much money they have. I'm really trying to get my head around how I could work with a compulsive gambler without ever talking about money because they might feel ashamed about how much they lost. That's kind of the point.

If you're more concerned about helping people emotionally cope by avoiding shame (questionable strategy to begin with, because without approaching that shame how will they re-sensitize to its significance?) than you are concerned with helping them cope with the problem (what they will lose in obesity), and you don't think it should be considered a bad condition, why in the world would they want to work with you on how to solve it?

You would confuse them, because you want them to work on something that you say shouldn't be considered a problem. You're calling them crazy because you think they shouldn't want to want anything different.

The only other option would appear to be making a distinction between bad morality and bad health, that they're not evil for being obese, but that's a hell of an assumption. Why would you even think that they would think themselves to be evil because they're obese? That would work out as well as taking someone obese out on a first date and whispering, "Just so you know, I don't think you're evil just because you're fat." Talk about giving someone a complex.

You have to accept that they feel shame. Obese people often think everyone's looking at them because they're different; do you know why? It's because everyone's looking at them because they're different.

So you find a way for them to either fix what matters to other people (lose weight by maintaining the felt sense of their fear, drawing a detailed picture of what they have to lose if they continue obesity so that they can call it up and feel it when tempted); or help them let go of what matters to other people (that CBT stuff you love, maybe dehumanize the crap out of people who can't see their underlying reality); or you teach them to care so much about something else that they don't give a damn what other people think of how they look (that spiritual stuff I love).

The real trouble is if they've been fat since they've grown up because then they're likely dealing with parental neglect that favored another sibling, so they may not put much stock in what any authority figure has to say. They will, methinks, protest too much. Their obesity will maintain a physical and psychological distance from other people, to protect them from getting close enough to anyone who will neglect them like their parents did. Victimhood.

The real trouble is that a lot of heavy people KNOW they "need" to lose weight but CAN'T. Lots of heavy people have levels of willpower that non-heavy folks can't IMAGINE and stick to crazy-ass diets and exercise programs that HURT LIKE HELL and ignore the screaming that their bodies are doing and it DOESN'T WORK.

So "shame" as an attempt to drive a supposedly-needed change in behaviors that in many cases are already far far better than anything you could ever realistically manage is just (at best) obnoxious.

There is a lot that is just starting to be understood about why certain bodies gain weight and why it's so hard to lose -- and why lots of diets and exercise programs (the things all us ostensibly-healthy folks are "shaming" the poor stupid fatties into doing) make things WORSE. Read Martha Beck's The Four Day Win for a nice lay summary of all this.

Jacflash,
If I feel good about myself being obese, I wouldn't want to change it, right? I feel good about it. We make a mistake when we tell people they shouldn't feel bad about it because they already do, and it has nothing as much to do with an expressed code of social norms as it does with the fact that unusual things attract attention and obesity (as Binky points out, there is still debate about this (unlike global warming, right?)) is unhealthy, even without the heart problems it often leads to knee and back problems.

We're in an age when we don't call things evil, we call things unhealthy, but they're both shorthand for bad. We could simply say to people that they shouldn't feel bad about attracting attention because they're different, but that's like relabeling disabled as differently able. It's most insulting to the disabled who know they're disabled, and calling the obese weightily challenged wouldn't help much, because they know it's code for something bad.

Your approach sounds like one I hear from people will a little exposure to AA who are told they're powerless over drinking, it's the first step. The trouble is, there's eleven other steps, and there wouldn't be even two steps if that powerlessness were meant to be interpreted as a permanent state.

When we avoid expressing social norms about a condition we'd prefer not to have, we build into being inauthentic (which leads people who want help not to trust us), failing in hope (if we had hope, we wouldn't just assume they had to be this way for the rest of their lives), and failing in our acceptance of others and ourselves.

I have a right not to want to look at someone who's obese, that's as biologically driven as the obesity itself, and it values beauty. And they have a right to be hurt when I avoid looking at them, that values what other people value. But I also value differences, and if I never see something ugly I'll never have appreciated something beautiful, and if they never know someone who avoids them, they'll never appreciate someone who wants them.

However, most people I know aren't all good or all bad, but to see someone who on the surface looks bad and believe there may something good to them requires faith in an unseen, underlying reality. If I judged everything in a most simplistic way, I would assume that bad on the surface means bad for all time in all ways, but that denies the reality of differences.

Lastly, what meaningful change doesn't hurt like hell? If I wanted to pump up my muscles, that would hurt like hell. But there's no straw man argument about rubber band diets unless you're selling a book, because as said above it's a simple formula: eat less calories, eat more veggies, and exercise moderately. The trouble is wanting the outcome more than wanting to avoid the pain, and that takes faith that it will make a difference. I can't eat french fries, bread, and spaghetti like I used to, and it hurts to see them, but I want the outcome of being healthier and awake, so it's worth it.

You're drawing a straw man that people are standing around saying, "Fatty fat fat fat!" The truth is they're too polite to say it on the outside, and that decreases the pain of their bad condition which makes it easier for them to live with.

The trouble is, arthritic knees and bad backs hurt like hell too, and being a shut in is no way to live. They don't hurt because we shame them, they would hurt even if we didn't because they know they're different. People who think they're different and are not is not obesity. Social norms are a way of letting other people know when they're doing something that's different, it's an alert, so they can choose if it's worth it. If they don't change it, then it may become the social norm, which is exactly what the study says is happening.

You're drawing a straw man that people are standing around saying, "Fatty fat fat fat!" The truth is they're too polite to say it on the outside, and that decreases the pain of their bad condition which makes it easier for them to live with.

So, Morris... if we went around and called people fat to their face, something inside of them would click on and they would automatically want to lose weight lest someone else point out something that they already know to be true? Huh. If this method worked, there would be no childhood obesity, considering children are a lot less shy (pick your adjective regarding the lack of a stop sign between their brain and mouth) about pointing out the flaws of others.

"So, Morris... if we went around and called people fat to their face, something inside of them would click on and they would automatically want to lose weight lest someone else point out something that they already know to be true?"

Either you can't read, or you're f-ing with me, which is it? Where did I say anything about an automatic click? For an obese person, it clicked the first time they were so big that it was out of the ordinary, and it kept clicking the bigger they got; so now, they can't hear any click, because the click's become the ordinary. In fact, what I said is that it often won't click, so instead of obese people wanting to be thin, you have thin people becoming obese, that's what the research shows.

There's plenty of reasons for people to want to stay obese, psychologically speaking. They may like the distance it puts between them and others, they may use it as a security blanket so they don't have to take risks like asking people out, because they'd never say yes to an obese person. They can even be these really special people who get what other obese people are going through, without even to have to bother with, you know, listening to what other people are actually going through, because it must be the same, right?

But at the point where I place their emotional coping over their problem coping, I'm the one who's become powerless to help them overcome it. We'll just sit in session, they'll tell me how lousy their life is, I'll tell them how unfair it is, how they're just losers in life's genetic lottery, how people really should care more about what's happening on them inside; I get to feel so special, because I care so much more than those lousy superficial people. So they don't have to take the risk of finding a success which they may lose, they can feel as lousy tomorrow as they do today, so justified in their anger at how unfair the world is, and I'm the one who helps them endure it. It's win win, right? In fact, I may admire them so much I become obese too. Then we're really in it together!

Why do you assume it's a question of morality and/or psychological damage and/or insecurity and/or "evil" (evil? wtf? are you an adult? please tell me that you are not part of this magic-space-daddy-in-the-sky cult foolishness) rather than a physical problem that is exacerbated by many of the supposed remedies on offer?

Hellooooo genetics?!

You guys have been reading the NYTimes synopses of what genetics means, or the Reader's Digest? What scientists are discovering is that genetics in addiction (I'll assume you're talking about those who eat addictively, not just abusing their bodies without a care but who want to stop and find it difficult) play essentially a role of probability; if I have a "genetic vulnerability," this means that I have more than the median odds of developing a condition (obesity) based on my genetic make up.

What essentially flips the switch is epigenetics, something like I feel really terrible one day, then I have a good meal, and I feel better. The switch is flipped, and now I don't just eat in order not to starve, now it's an emotional investment. Food has become feeling, and it will drive me to find comfort in it again, even at the expense of my health. This is why it's silly to focus on emotional coping, because eating is emotional coping for someone dependent on food for their emotional well being. If we want them to be comfortable, we feed them, and we're good.

If we want them to be healthy, the first thing we and they have to accept is that they're not going to be comfortable for a really long time. The trouble is that without food, they're more apt to get stressed out, because instead of practicing tolerating their anxiety while they've progressed in obesity, they've practiced escaping it by eating, so they're not used to anxiety anymore, they have more difficulty tolerating it. So the sin qua non for their recovery from obesity is their discomfort.

Otherwise, they'll continue the rest of their lives with their thinking becoming progressively black and white, which is why social stigma appears to be such a big deal. The black and white thinking makes them feel like complete losers and victims when there probably are good things about them that they don't see anymore. But why spend time worrying about the complexities of their soul, because that would be uncomfortable when they contemplated their failings, and they can just dull that discomfort temporarily by eating.

I think someone is addicted to absolutism.

I think someone is addicted to absolutism.

Helloooooo modern-day "conservatism".

And no Morris, I don't read Reader's Digest. I have however read Martha Beck's survey of the most recent science suggesting why "diets" almost never work and looking at what does -- it's a book called The Four Day Win. I commend it to all of you, overweight or otherwise.

"I think someone is addicted to absolutism."

Right. I write a dozen and a half paragraphs explaining my position, you respond with a one liner, and I'm the one who's black and white? Not so much.

"Helloooooo modern-day 'conservatism'."

Really? Because we're trying to limit the variety of opinions you can hear on the radio? Because we're trying to control people's economic behavior with our policies? Because we're happy letting the Arab-Persian world stay in the dark ages, since they've always been that way? Because we can't let people buy guns to defend themselves, because people might sell them to Mexican drug cartels?

So you guys attribute everything obesity related to genetics, acting as if I'm some neanderthal who doesn't get it, then when you figure out I know more about it that you do, you maintain your position without argument, and you call me the absolutist? Welcome to the Lefty logic. What I say doesn't matter because you won't give up the identification of a victim that gives you the emotional relief you get when you act like a rescuer.

"Really? Because we're trying to limit the variety of opinions you can hear on the radio?"

Yes, and the monopoly is near complete.

"Because we're trying to control people's economic behavior with our policies?"

Yes. The right's caricature of Welfare isn't the only way economic behavior is controlled.

"Because we're happy letting the Arab-Persian world stay in the dark ages, since they've always been that way?"

Huh? As opposed to your version, which goes something like: "How about digging yourselves out of that rubble we just turned your capital into and installing some FiOs already -- what, do we have to do everything around here?"

As for absolutes, You could write a hundred paragraphs of "Black?!? What are you effing, stupid!? WHITE WHITE WHITE WHITE!!!" and it wouldn't be any more nuanced than if you wrote it only once.

Anyway, you are speaking in rather broad terms, which runs you into a lot of trouble when you acknowledge -- and you probably won't -- that the obesity issue we're all discussing is primarily and peculiarly an American problem, among developed countries with the capacity to make their citizenry broadly obese. If you were even vaguely in tune with the human condition, which seems to be your explanatory model, everyone else would be overweight, too.

Also, just as an observation after being away from the debate for a few days, it looks like Morris is working from the marginal, "shut-in" sort of obesity, which is relatively rare. Those of you talking about the real debate about the health effects of obesity are talking more about what we might call Rubenesque sizes, as to which the tag of obesity fits uncomfortably to begin with, although in modern BMI terms almost certainly qualifies.

Anyway, I'm going to stick to the thread and my position and say, I think calorie counts should not just be available to the diligent, but should be pretty hard to miss. I don't think it's about shame. Or about solving the obesity epidemic. I think some people genuinely would behave differently if that information were front and center, and I think some well-meaning but harried or ill-informed people deserve some consideration, and some respect for their individual degrees of agency, however flawed.

"Really? Because we're trying to limit the variety of opinions you can hear on the radio?"

Moon writes: "Yes, and the monopoly is near complete."

Since when do companies seeking a broadcast monopoly try to sell off a hundred sixty one radio stations, like Clear Channel did in 2007? Look up the definition of monopoly, it may surprise you.

"Because we're trying to control people's economic behavior with our policies?"

Moon writes: "Yes. The right's caricature of Welfare isn't the only way economic behavior is controlled."

So your saying that the way conservatives talk about people taking unearned money for the government is exercising more control than liberals who steal unearned money from workers and give it to undeserving people who could work?

Moon writes: As opposed to your version, which goes something like: "How about digging yourselves out of that rubble we just turned your capital into and installing some FiOs already -- what, do we have to do everything around here?"

As opposed to Barney Frank, who's waiting to tell Iraqis who they have to loan money to, or he'll just take it and give it to them himself because rich people don't have the sense to know an identified victim class when they see one? How exactly is a their better than someone who cuts off the hand of a thief? It was Democrats who kept setting time tables, so it is obviously Democrats who thought as you claim, that these savage Persians can keep killing each other as long as we don't have to see it, that the only solution is Joe Biden's, ethnic separation which encourages ethnic cleansing.

Moon writes: As for absolutes, You could write a hundred paragraphs of "Black?!? What are you effing, stupid!? WHITE WHITE WHITE WHITE!!!" and it wouldn't be any more nuanced than if you wrote it only once.

I do enjoy your columns, Moon, and I guess if you oppose whatever I have to say, it must end up looking like the same thing. But what could you possibly get out of responding to the same thing over and over, beyond listening to your own voice?

"Anyway, you are speaking in rather broad terms, which runs you into a lot of trouble when you acknowledge -- and you probably won't -- that the obesity issue we're all discussing is primarily and peculiarly an American problem, among developed countries with the capacity to make their citizenry broadly obese. If you were even vaguely in tune with the human condition, which seems to be your explanatory model, everyone else would be overweight, too."

You miss a lot when you don't read, Moon. The trouble with the genetic explanation is exactly as you say, how would so many people become so obese overnight attributable to a genetic mutation which wouldn't work so fast?

You are absolutely right about it being a product of having plenty to eat, and if you'd read my posts when we were debating starving Americans you might remember that I do know we are particularly fat in this country. I know it's tough, you'll have to decide whether you want to identify with the starving victims or the obesity victims, those who eat too much and those who eat too little, but don't fret, just take them both on, who's worried about consistency?

I would take it a step further. If people actually had to work as much as the human condition dictates in developing countries, we wouldn't have all this leisure time which allows people to worry themselves out of condition; if I have to work tomorrow or I don't eat, worrying about who's going to get kicked off American Idol doesn't enter the picture. I won't get depressed because I don't sit around thinking about what I don't have.

But if I'm living on unemployment and xbox, I can actually afford to become obese, because I don't feel good about my life (I feel too scattered, don't invest myself in anything significant, and I don't have commitments to people which organize my thoughts) so I blank it out with pot and food.

Only someone who lives like a drunk can afford to be a drunk, and it's the same with food; the intolerable becomes tolerated, and life organizes around that emotional relief which becomes necessary to the chaotic organization that develops. As Jacflash's book suggests, people can change their habits in a week, they just have to find a way to live with the change. To change the direction is painful but simple; to wait for what takes time to become evident requires patience and faith because the emotional relief has twisted perception and filled it with what appears to be a lack. Glad your back, Moon.

"I do enjoy your columns, Moon, and I guess if you oppose whatever I have to say, it must end up looking like the same thing. But what could you possibly get out of responding to the same thing over and over, beyond listening to your own voice?"

Good question.

Nice.