You're Fat and You Need Government Help

There are more obese people in the world now than there are undernourished people, according to comments presented at the annual conference of International Association of Agricultural Economists. Simply put, worldwide humanity is quickly becoming fat and fatter and market manipulation is viewed as a solution.

Barry Popkin says government intervention or a manipulation of pricing on "unhealthy foods" may be the way to reduce the fat:

"But all countries have failed to address the obesity "boom," Popkin said. Food prices may be used to manipulate people's diets and tilt them towards healthier options, he suggested.

For instance, if we charge money for every calorie of soft drink and fruit drink that was consumed, people would consume less of it. If we subsidize fruit and vegetable production, people would consume more of it and we would have a healthier diet," Popkin said."

Marketing - not as in going to one, but as in advertising to consumers - is seen by some as the real culprit here. Rules over adverstising, existing federal guidelines which are often deeply deceptive, and an enormous increase in the reliance on processed foods do not make it simple for the average person to even comprehend what foods we eat and what we don't.

A recent interview with writer/author Michael Pollan says we have to become "food detectives" to discover what we are really eating in America -- mostly corn and sugar. Then of course, there are the cows fed chicken poop, which we then eat, and that supermarkets are the worst places to get good food. Yeah, and which government agency decided to allow for crap and meat to be fed to chickens and cows??

Read the interview with Pollan here.

And put that bag of "go-food" down and take a dang walk, people.

Or wait until Nanny Government, pushed by industrial needs and fearful consumers, dictates what your daily intake of calories will be.