Palin Defends The Right To Ignorant Obesity, Heart Disease, Diabetes, Cancer...

I guess we all have food on our minds during the holiday season. On Wednesday we looked at how politically charged it gets to even bring up healthy alternatives for school children. Reactionaries and the corporate interests that sponsor their careers are fit to be tied because Michelle Obama planted an organic vegetable garden and because she's encouraging school cafeterias to offer fresh fruits and vegetables as an option among all the processed garbage being offered.

The very same day Sarah Palin discussed the First Lady's campaign to gives kids choices of healthy food in schools on Laura Ingraham's hate talk radio show:

Take her anti-obesity thing that she is on. She is on this kick, right. What she is telling us is she cannot trust parents to make decisions for their own children, for their own families in what we should eat. And I know I'm going to be again criticized for bringing this up, but instead of a government thinking that they need to take over and make decisions for us according to some politician or politician's wife priorities, just leave us alone, get off our back, and allow us as individuals to exercise our own God-given rights to make our own decisions and then our country gets back on the right track.

Is Palin so evil that she wants to kill people with a toxic diet? Not that I know of; but she's steeped in pigheaded ignorance that amounts to exactly the same thing. Wednesday night I was listening, absently, to a program on NPR-- another bête noire of the partisan Right-- when Elliot Petty, Director of the Alliance for Healthy and Responsible Grocery Stores, started speaking. He talked at great length about L.A.'s food deserts, a term I-- as well as Sarah Palin-- must have missed. Wikipedia describes a food desert like this:

A food desert is a district with little or no access to foods needed to maintain a healthy diet but often served by plenty of fast food restaurants.
The concept of 'access' may be interpreted in three ways.
* 'Physical access' to shops can be difficult if the shops are distant, the shopper is elderly or infirm, the area has many hills, public transport links are poor, and the consumer has no car. Also, the shop may be across a busy road, difficult to cross with children or with underpasses that some fear to use because of a crime risk. For some, such as disabled people, the inside of the shop may be hard to access physically if there are steps up or the interior is cramped with no room for walking aids. Carrying fresh food home may also be hard for some.

* 'Financial access' is difficult if the consumer lacks the money to buy healthful foods (generally more expensive, calorie for calorie, than less healthful, sugary, and fatty 'junk foods') or if the shopper cannot afford the bus fare to remote shops selling fresh foods and instead uses local fast food outlets. Other forms of financial access barriers may be inability to afford storage space for food, or for the very poor, living in temporary accommodation that does not offer good cooking facilities.

* Mental attitude or food knowledge of the consumer may prevent them accessing fresh vegetables. They may lack cooking knowledge or have the idea that eating a healthful diet isn't important.

That doesn't exactly sync up with Palin's campaign against what she calls the Nanny State. Healthy food is largely unavailable in the parts of town people like the Palins never see... or think about.

Community and faith leaders with the Alliance for Healthy and Responsible Grocery Stores recently issued report cards on Los Angeles area’s grocery chains. The organization held a conference to introduce the reports to the public and to describe the critical issues in the grocery industry impacting Los Angeles. The report cards graded the grocers on community standards, including store quality and access to healthy food, location in food desert communities, job quality, and general neighborhood impact.

Food deserts-- areas with no easy access to healthy food-- are one of the chief problems targeted by the Alliance. Speakers also discussed the economic role of grocery stores, which should be to provide key jobs with benefits that are accessible to people raising families in all neighborhoods.

“Access to healthy food is a basic human right, and that right is being violated in communities from South L.A. to East L.A. to the Northeast Valley,” said Elliot Petty of the Alliance for Healthy and Responsible Grocery Stores. “The grades these grocers receive are not inevitable; they are the result of decisions that create food deserts. We urged the grocery chains to serve our communities and this report highlights stores who are passing or failing the grade.”

“While none of the chains are failing overall, the industry is completely failing a large portion of Los Angeles. The chains scoring well on store quality, who provided healthy food and better job standards are not locating in the areas of L.A. that are most in need. Meanwhile, the few chains that are located in those areas are providing substandard service,” explained Petty.

...The link between food options and health has been demonstrated in numerous public health studies. Families with limited access to fresh fruits and vegetables rely on high-calorie, low nutrient processed foods from fast food restaurants and convenience stores. As a result, many low-income and minority residents suffer from higher rates of diet-related health problems. Supermarkets also play a vital role in the Southern California economy, as major employers. So the absence of major grocery stores in food desert communities has meant serious health consequences for families, as well as a lack of good jobs in communities.

At least in a solidly blue area, like Los Angeles, this is being addressed. What about in red hellholes... like Mississippi? Watch this-- and then think about the difference between Michelle Obama and Sarah Palin... and between Democrats and Republicans:



Why is this a bigger deal than Sarah Palin thinks feels it is? I found a website that more people in Red America ought to look at ObesityEpidemic.Org, one-stop, easy to understand shopping for why the winger's whining about the Nanny State is pathetic-- and dangerous. No one is going to force anyone to eat well or to exercise, but getting out the message about why these things are important are legitimate societal endeavors.

People are getting fatter and more depressed with more anxiety. It's not just conjecture. It's sad and true. That is why many health organizations have called for unity over the important topic of obesity. Obesity is effecting just about everyone.

Do you realize how many people are overweight or obese? It's just about everyone in the US. About one third of the population is in a healthy weight range. Currently, the statistics show that around 33% of the US population is obese and 67% of the US population is overweight. It is estimated that at current trend levels, by 2030, 86.3% adults will be overweight or obese and 51.1% will be obese. If that's not bad enough, by 2048, all American adults will become overweight or obese (source: Obesity Research Journal). Obviously trending can level off and hopefully we will not reach these numbers. Here, at obesityepidemic.org, we are trying to fight this obesity trend and reverse it backward. We are calling for unity in action across all health organizations, manufacturers, and government oversight.

...Obesity is linked with heart disease, diabetes, cancer, liver disease, gallbladder disease, and a lot of other diseases. It is so bad, that some health organizations have turned a bulk of their research away from infectious diseases and more towards chronic disease. Studying chronic disease, seriously, is a big change.

Obesity is also linked with anxiety and depression. Researchers think that obese individuals become depressed from discrimination and then social isolation. People really do treat the overweight and obese badly.

UPDATE: Others Are Noticing Palin's Threat To The Health Of The Nation Too

Last night Roland Martin denounced Palin's reckless views of obesity in a CNN opinion piece.

It's clear that we can't go 24 hours without Sarah Palin saying something so stupid that it defies logic, but leave it to the Kim Kardashian of politics to find something wrong with first lady Michelle Obama's effort to curb obesity in America's kids.

...According to the first lady's "Let's Move" website:

• Obesity rates among children have tripled in the last three decades, and one in three children are obese.

• One-third of all children born after 2000 will suffer from diabetes.

• Children are less active today than at any other time in American history, spending 7.5 hours a day watching TV, playing video games or simply involved in efforts that don't require movement.

• Obesity is contributing to the vast increase in hypertension among Americans.

Now, since Palin is always talking about our nation's military and how we have to honor them and show them love and affection, let's listen to what a group of generals said a few months ago about obesity and America's national defense.

A study released in April by Mission: Readiness, a nonprofit group of more than 150 retired generals and admirals, concluded that 27 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds are too fat to join the military.

The culprit? Junk food and too much fat in school lunches.

Said the study: "Today, otherwise excellent recruiting prospects, some of them with generations of sterling military service in their family history, are being turned away because they are just too overweight. Our standards are high because we clearly cannot have people in our command who are not up to the job. Too many lives depend on it."

In testimony before Congress, the former head of the California Army National Guard, retired U.S. Army Major Gen. Paul Monroe, said that "80 percent of children who were overweight between the ages of 10 to 15 were obese by age 25."

He and other military leaders want Congress to enact a massive child nutrition bill to remove all junk food and high-calorie beverages from schools, improve nutrition standards in schools, upgrade school menus and, the group said, "help develop new school-based strategies, based on research, that help parents and children adopt healthier lifelong eating and exercise habits."

Monroe testified: "In 1946, Congress passed the National School Lunch Act as a matter of national security. In the past, retired admirals and generals have stood up to make it clear that America is only as healthy as our nation's children. Childhood obesity is now undermining our national security and we need to start turning it around today."

So, Sarah Palin, are you going to also rip into this decorated American and say that he and 150 other military leaders are dead wrong?

...Any Republican with common sense should see that Sarah Palin poses an immediate threat to the future of this country. She proves that every time she opens her mouth.

I'm surprised Mike Huckabee hasn't had a quiet talk with her.