Sarah Palin appeared on Laura Ingraham's radio show last month and criticized Michelle Obama's anti-obesity campaign as "government thinking that they need to take over and make decisions for us according to some politician or politician's wife's priorities."
President Obama today signed into law a cornerstone of Mrs. Obama's campaign -- the Child Nutrition Act -- which, among other things, finally gets more fruits, vegetables and whole grains into schoolhouses and gets junk foods and drinks out of them. In essence, the bill will help end taxpayer-subsidized classroom obesity.
Indeed, before criticizing anyone fighting the childhood obesity epidemic, Mrs. Palin should take a look at a factual snapshot of ordinary American children today. Over the last three decades, childhood obesity has tripled and, today, half of all kids in struggling, heartland communities are overweight or obese.
This crisis puts kids at risk for adult health problems like heart disease, type 2 diabetes, some cancers and strokes. It's not just our kids' health that's at risk. If this crisis isn't reversed, it will have devastating effects on our health care system, health costs and future productivity and economic growth. Equally alarming, 25 percent of 17 to 24-year-old Americans weigh too much to join the military.
Simply put, this crisis is a threat to our national security, not from an overwhelming attack of enemies abroad, but from an attack of overwhelming calories within.
Mrs. Palin is right that reversing the obesity epidemic ultimately comes down to the foods and drinks that kids put in their mouths. However, even Mrs. Palin acknowledged in a landmark speech that it's up to us to "... help children commit to personal responsibility and good character."
That's precisely what Mrs. Obama wants to do. However, contrary to Mrs. Palin's assertions, what's on the family dinner table isn't always a matter of choice. There are millions of American families who live too far from full-service grocery stores that stock healthy fresh foods. These foods aren't just harder to find, they're often out of reach financially, forcing many struggling families to buy cheaper and nutritionally empty foods and drinks.
Save the Children's U.S. Programs extends an invitation to Mrs. Palin to come visit some of the struggling communities where we work. While there, she can learn about the twin childhood obesity and poverty crises, what we're doing to help reverse them and how she and other ordinary Americans can help.
We don't have to agree on all the solutions to this epidemic. However, the question of whether there's a childhood obesity crisis threatening the next generation isn't a debate between Sarah Palin and Michelle Obama -- it's reality. Now we need to work together to do something about it. We invite Mrs. Palin to help us solve it.
Michael Shaw: Reading the Pictures: Palin: The Presidential Study
Source: Alaska 2009 State of the State Address Jan 22, 2009”
Kids should not be punished because of their poverty or their parents' lack of education, but Sarah Palin - who hopes to run this country in 2 years, God help us all if her minions outvote the sane - thinks they should.
About 6 weeks in, Palin shows up with none other than Franky Graham and Jerry I hate g@y people Prevo and brings boxes of food with religious leaflets in them and a plate of alleged homemade cookies. Just a flyby much like the one in Haiti, to show that she "cares" in a way only Sarah Palin can- which is to say she doesn't. Nothing was done to truly help rural AK cope with the high oil prices and the food drives and adopt a family carried on another winter after that one and may even kick off again this winter at some point. I'm waiting to hear.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/akmuckraker/the-hell-with-sarah-palin_b_222859.html
Eric Oliver, a respected political scientist at the University of Chicago, argues in the pioneering book “Fat Politics: The Real Story behind America's Obesity Epidemic” that obesity is vastly overrated as an issue. In his research, he found that the studies the Center for Disease Control and other government agencies used to define obesity and its health risks were largely funded by the weight loss and pharmaceutical industries. He finds little scientific basis for clinical definitions of overweight and obese, and finds that claims of health issues from obesity are vastly overblown. In short, he finds that most of our assumptions on the dangers of obesity are based on junk science created to support special interest agendas and funding.
Oliver’s arguments need to be grappled with before we decide obesity is worth a national campaign.
With all due respect, Mr. Shriver, Sarah Palin doesn't care what happens with the kids that she produces. Why would she truly care about anyone else's?
She only opposed the Let's Move initiative, because she didn't think of it first.
The people on the "right" do not want the kids to have healthy choices, yet wonder why obesity is, pardon the pun, such a growing problem in this country.
Eat healthy, live healthy. It's that simple... but that would cut into the profits of the healthcare industry and junk food providers.
That makes no sense to me, anyway. The idea of supplementing school lunches made sense. Breakfast? A stretch. Now, dinner? Really bizarre.
Why can't the media just boycott her?
I'd rather pay more now to have a generation of healthy, productive young adults entering the workforce, which will save many times the initial investment in the long run. It's too bad that Sarah Palin and her kind can't see the value of this program.
But I do have a question for you: how does this program erode YOUR rights?
This is just flushing another $4 billion down the toilet in an attempt not to replace unhealthy food, but to replace parents. How about a national brown-bag-it initiative that motivates parents to make their kids' lunches for a change, instead of relying on Helga the lunchlady to nourish your children. Won't cost taxpayers a dime.
I've volunteered at a class that taught children and parents to make healthy meals. Without fail, the parents found it easier to give the kids soda rather than fight with them about drinking water. Or to give them a treat of chips or candy after the healthy meal. I do think parents need to take some responsibility, but when you don't know any better yourself, its hard to make changes. As for having parents make lunch for their kids-you're assuming there is a parent at home, knows what a healthy lunch looks like and has the money to pay for it. That is a huge assumtion in this economy.
Palin is a hypocrite and an opportunist. Denying that we have an obesity problem which will lead to other more serious health-related problems is not only irresponsible, it borders on criminally negligent when elected officials, public servants and political leaders refuse to admit or acknowledge the seriousness of obesity, or any other disease which affects millions of our citizens.
Public education on health issues, and how to effectively cope with them, is something one would expect from an advanced and civilized government. How can she possibly rail against the appropriate dissemination of useful and truthful information regardless of the source? It's far better for the nation as a whole that TV and the media be exploited for educational purposes rather than it's current low brow content - amusement and entertainment is all well and god, but not when we are facing serious issues that need to be addressed right now and on an ongoing basis.
Fine, Palin doesn't like all things Obama, that's her right but the spread of her insipid, infectious and virulent brand of ignorance must be halted because it's as dangerous and repugnant as yelling fire in a crowded theater.