What Cause Obesity?

       Radley Balko is a former senior editor at Reason, where his weekly column and investigative features were finalists for and won a number of journalism awards. Radley Balko “specializes in investigative writing on civil liberties and criminal justice issues. He is also a columnist for FoxNews.com and has contributed to such publications as the Washington Post and Playboy.” Now, he is a senior writer and investigative for the Huffington Post. His essay, “What You Eat Is Your Business”, was first published on May 23, 2004, on Cato.org, a site sponsored by the Cato Institute, a foundation that aims to promote the principles of “limited government, individual liberty, free markets, and peace.”
       In that essay, Balko argued with the “government anti-obesity initiatives.” He believed the best way to alleviate the obesity is to foster a sense of responsibility in and ownership of our own health and well-being. However, Politicians have already made lots of measures to control people’s diet, including budget for anti-obesity, banning snacks and soda from campuses, moving vending machines, extra tax, menu-labeling legislation, and so on. He pointed out that “for decades now, America’s health care system has been migrating toward socialism,” and people become less responsible for their own health. Government restrictions force other people or the food companies to “responsible for the bad habits of unhealthy consumers.”       
       Balko figured out the growing number of “nutritionist activists and food industry foes” stimulated this process. For instance, Margo Wootan of the Center for science in the Public Interest said, “We’ve got to move beyond ‘personal responsibility.’” Another title of Jennings from last December, “How to Get Fat Without Really Trying”, also was trying to move the responsibility from viewers to government.       
       In the end, Balko called out to return the responsibility of people’s health and well-being back to them because that is the most private thing. He suggested insurance companies to reward healthy lifestyles, and penalize the poor ones. Congress can admit consumers to reserve their money for health care into the retirement account, which could encourage people care more about their own health.       
       While, unlike Balko, David Zinczenko thought the food companies make eaters sick and obese. David is “the editor-in-chief of Men’s health magazine and the author of numerous best-selling books, including the Eat This, Not That and the Abs Diet series.” His title “Don’t Blame the Eater” was first published in the New York Times on November 23, 2002, and in this piece he figured out food companies do not give enough and clear calorie information. In his statement, for those children whose parents are always very busy, varieties junk foods become their choices.  Balko insisted government restrictions make things worse, and it is necessary to foster people’s awareness of health diet. However, David believed obesity is not a personal responsibility. Companies should “do well to protect themselves, and their customers, by providing the nutrition information people need to make informed choices about their products.”       
       Personally speaking, I agree that obesity absolutely is a personal responsibility, but food companies could also help their customers by warning labels. You can’t avoid obesity if you do not have a healthy diet arrangement, even if the governments close all the fast-food restaurants. One of my classmates in high school, he never ate fast-food, but he ate five or six times per day. Also every meal he took was totally double size than average students’. Calorie is not only in junk food, but in everything we eat. So, you still get the chance to become obese if you take normal food irregularly. Besides, a study “published in the journal Sociology of Education showed that Junk food does not cause child obesity.” But it also stated even they do not cause obesity, “that doesn’t justify it being sold in the first place.” I will put the link of that research below this short paper. Instead of banning fast food, what we need to do is to build an awareness of health diet. Let the eaters know how many calories they need, and how many calories the foods contain. Then, let the customers make their own choices.

"What You Eat is Your Business"  By Radley Balko
      http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/what-you-eat-is-business 
"Don't Blame the Eater"  By David Zinczenko
      http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/23/opinion/don-t-blame-the-eater.html           
Authors Information:
       http://www.huffingtonpost.com/radley-balko/
A Study about Obesity:
       http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/smart-takes/junk-food-does-not-cause-child-obesity-is-that-so/21809
Relevant Reading:
       http://thesystemmd.com/?p=243
Here is a video to show some other important causes of obesity:  
       http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5GCCcWqtZ8