War on obesity threatening right to eat junk

Four score and billions and billions of hamburgers ago, our forefathers brought forth on this continent a new way of eating, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men and women are created hungry.

But the right to junk food is threatened by a war on obesity that leaves some Americans clutching their Big Macs and Twinkies in fear. They’ve seen attacks on consumer freedom before, especially in the campaign against smoking. It begins, they say, with a plea to protect children — but ends with the stripping of cherished liberties from every citizen.

“I don’t need people to tell me what to eat,” Sean Then, 31, of Falls Church, Va., said between bites of a Quarter Pounder, nibbles on a large order of fries and gulps of a super-sized Coke at a McDonald’s in nearby Washington, D.C. “We’re slowly losing our rights to everything.”

He and others see capitulation in McDonald’s decision to phase out super-sized french fries and sodas by year’s end.

McDonald’s says the change is to simplify its menu, and it rebuffs suggestions that it is reacting to a documentary called “Super Size Me.” The film, to be released this month depicts a man eating nothing but McDonald’s food for 30 days as his weight soars, his cholesterol skyrockets and his libido goes south.

But if Mickey D’s is eliminating some choices, it is adding others. It just launched an Adult Happy Meal featuring a salad, bottled water, pedometer and advice from Oprah Winfrey’s personal trainer. Critics say all this healthfulness is a response to lawsuits by obese customers alleging that McDonald’s failed to warn them its menu, like cigarettes, is hazardous to their health.

No plaintiff has won to date, but some worry about a chilling effect.

“The paternalists are on the loose, and they’re kind of glorying in the idea that if you threaten litigation a company will get rid of its super size,” said Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington. “This is becoming the nanny state, governed by people who think they can run my life better than I can.”

After watching tobacco companies pay multimillion-dollar settlements to people who puffed their way to cancer, the food industry is taking no chances. It has lobbied Congress to pass a “cheeseburger bill” barring people from suing restaurants for making them flabby. The House passed a bill; similar legislation is before the Senate.

Eating rights are under siege, fast- food industry advocates say, because obesity has become the health threat du jour. The federal government has labeled it an “epidemic,” rivaling smoking as the nation’s No. 1 preventable cause of death. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 130 million Americans — 64 percent — are overweight or obese.

“Once proponents of government intervention convince the public we don’t have an obesity problem but an obesity epidemic, they can impose fat taxes and put restrictions on certain foods to control this epidemic,” says Rick Berman, executive director of the Washington-based Center for Consumer Freedom, a restaurant and food industry group.

While Berman’s lobbying helped push the “cheeseburger bill” through the House, he laments that more citizens aren’t riled up. “It’s a bit like the story of the frog not jumping out of the kettle of water that’s slowly rising in temperature,” Berman said. “People’s freedoms get marginalized over time, and every inch they give up seems too small to fight over.”

Fat fighters are borrowing a strategy from other health campaigns by focusing first on children, who are politically powerless, Berman said — once kids’ rights are curtailed in the name of public safety, it’s easier to do the same to adults.

Removing snack and soda machines from public schools, he said, has become “the wedge issue” of the anti-obesity agenda.

More than 20 states restrict students’ access to junk food until after lunch. Several others are considering legislation to ban such foods even though financially strapped schools rely on vendor contracts to pay for fat-burning activities such as extracurricular sports. Some schools rake in as much as $100,000 a year from these contracts.

Lisa Katic, a dietitian and spokesperson for the Snack Food Association, based in Alexandria, Va., calls it “un-American” to restrict food choices, even for kids.

Yet Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich has proposed a plan that would remove all soda and unhealthy snack food from school vending machines. Some Illinois students aren’t taking the proposal lying down.

“What we do with our bodies is a basic constitutional right,” said Peter Fu, an 18-year-old senior at Naperville North High School. “If a student wants a caffeine high or some extra energy for P.E. or math, that should be the student’s choice. While adults may know what’s best for us most of the time, they don’t know what’s best for us all of the time.”

Fu, a member of the school’s debate team, makes another point: Tell teenagers they can’t eat something and they’ll devour it. That’s Child Psychology 101.

Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, doesn’t buy arguments allowing schools to peddle salty and sugary snacks. “We believe, and much of the public health community believes, that all choices made available to children should be healthful ones,” she said.

If the food patrol has a chief of police, it’s Wootan’s Washington-based nonprofit, which has $15.2 million in annual revenues, according to its latest report to the Internal Revenue Service.

The center labels high-fat products marketed to kids “food porn” and has even targeted whole milk, once an icon of American health, because of what Wootan calls its “artery-clogging fat.” The group advocates taxes on soft drinks and snack foods to provide funding for nutrition and health campaigns and has called dishes like fettuccine Alfredo “a heart attack on a plate.”

And while this rankles some consumers, others applaud the crackdown on fatty foods even if it reduces their menu choices.

“I think it’s good because I know what I’m doing is wrong, yet I still do it,” Jeanne Richardson, 42, of Covington, La., said after ordering a McDonald’s Double Quarter Pounder with cheese and a super-sized fries during a recent visit to Washington.

“If it wasn’t available, I wouldn’t be able to do it. I’m a sucker for big portions.”

Eva Rosenberg, 51, of Los Angeles, also points the finger of blame at herself. “Who’s responsible for my weight gain?” asked Rosenberg, whose fast-food choices include Original Recipe Kentucky Fried Chicken. “Surely me.

“Have we reached the point in our civilization where there is a complete abdication of responsibility? Has this country turned into a nursery school where blame is always placed on someone else instead of facing up to our own responsibilities?

“You bet.”