In February, Michelle Obama kicked off her Let’s Move initiative to combat childhood obesity in the United States. In many respects, the campaign is commendable and similar in spirit to past public health causes championed by Rosalyn Carter (mental health advocacy), Nancy Reagan (Just Say No), and other first ladies. When Michelle Obama appeared on The Today Show to talk about why it is important for children to eat healthy foods and stay active, or when she solicited the support of state governors to establish better guidelines for school lunches, she was performing a valuable public service without exceeding her proper role as first lady (by that, I mean her limited executive role, not anything to do with gender roles). Moreover, the Let’s Move campaign appears to promote a variety of public health initiatives that predated Michelle Obama’s childhood obesity campaign. For example, the President’s Physical Fitness Challenge might tilt a wee bit communitarian for my tastes, but its roots can be traced back to the Johnson administration.
The Let’s Move website lists the campaign’s four main goals, which at first glance appear quite innocuous: supporting healthy choices, creating healthier schools, encouraging physical activity, and making healthy foods more accessible and affordable. Many people perusing the website will think that Let’s Move is reminiscent of a 1950s-era PTA drive. The campaign’s strategic “pillars” sound like were inspired by June Cleaver: “more nutrition information, increased physical activity, easier access to healthy foods and, ultimately, personal responsibility.” But when Americans are no longer distracted by the sweet aroma of Quinoa cupcakes cooling on the front counter, they might notice that there is something else cooking in the kitchen—and it is a recipe that usually debilitates rather than strengthens personal (and familial) responsibility, which will always be the most useful antidote to childhood obesity.
In her fight against childhood obesity, Michelle Obama will not rely on rhetorical persuasion and public information alone. On February 10, she “rolled out her national initiative . . . with a show of force that included medical, business and government leaders, grassroots activists, celebrity public service announcements, cartoon characters as nutrition experts, as well as those most directly affected — the kids themselves.” This symbolic mustering of public health conscripts was consistent with Michelle Obama’s stated intention to utilize “government programs” and “public-private partnerships” as part of a “comprehensive approach” to ending childhood obesity within a generation. In other words, the war on childhood obesity sounds like a scaled-down version of the War on Poverty.
When the federal government declares war on social problems, it almost invariably engages in social engineering, the dangers of which are fourfold:
I. It is not the proper role of the government to use regulatory mechanisms in an effort to engage in social engineering. Often, when the government declares war on social problems such as poverty, homelessness, or childhood obesity, it must circumvent and/or expand the Constitution in new ways. For example, the Let’s Move campaign might contribute to the federal government taking an even more active role in local and state educational matters. It is perplexing that childhood obesity would be an administration priority in the midst of a major recession, especially if state governors are arm-twisted into playing along with the campaign’s more intrusive and fiscally ambitious features.
II. Insomuch as the “war” is spearheaded by government, the social engineering project will inevitably fail to achieve its goals, unless the goals are coincidentally reached by other “natural means,” i.e., as a result of economic and cultural forces largely beyond the control of social engineers. Actually, if high schools really want to prepare kids to become responsible adults, they should think about creating a course that explains why it is 100 times more realistic for the federal government to send a man to Mars within the next 30 years than it is for them to end childhood obesity in a generation. What social engineers fail to grasp, and young adults should understand, is that physical, discrete engineering problems—no matter how complex the “rocket science” might seem to us poor poets and politicians—involves far fewer variables than the best-intentioned social engineering project.
III. The government’s social engineering project will cause more harm than good. Take the following example from the Let’s Move website:
As part of the President’s proposed FY 2011 budget, the Administration announced a new program – the Healthy Food Financing Initiative — a partnership between the U.S. Departments of Treasury, Agriculture and Health and Human Services which will invest $400 million a year to provide innovative financing to bring grocery stores to underserved areas and help places such as convenience stores and bodegas carry healthier food options. Grants will also help bring farmers markets and fresh foods into underserved communities, boosting both family health and local economies. Through these initiatives and private sector engagement, the Administration will work to eliminate food deserts across the country within seven years.”
In other words, the federal government is going to subsidize the development and operation of grocery stores at locations across the country where the market cannot support them. Perhaps Mrs. Obama is unaware that, in the not too distant past, predominantly lower-income urban areas in the United States used to support relatively high numbers of mom & pop grocery stores and bodegas, which gradually went of business because neighborhood customers preferred to drive the extra miles to supermarkets that offered higher quality goods and services at lower prices. To get food stores and restaurants that emphasize healthy foods to locate in predominantly lower-income areas will require heavy, ongoing subsidies, which is bad economics, and invites corruption. If Michelle Obama wants to look at something that actually incentivizes the consumption of starchy and unhealthy foods by lower-income communities, she might look at the welfare system, food stamps, farm subsidies, etc. Instead, she proposes to create more “progressive” public/private rent-seeking programs, which have been on the rise in recent decades but are no longer sustainable, and which lead to less freedom and prosperity in the long run for the persons and causes they are alleged to help.
Besides, the idea that the administration could eliminate all “food deserts” in the next seven years is absurd. Of course, program advocates will respond, “aim for the sun to hit the moon.” Unfortunately, the government’s social engineering projects aim for the sun, but end up hurtling back to earth like a comet, forming a crater that wasn’t there before the government decided to fix things.
IV. Like other social engineering projects, the war on childhood obesity will tend to contribute to an erosion of individual liberties and personal responsibility. Michelle Obama is calling on parents to be more aware of their responsibilities in raising healthy children and yet 80 percent of her campaign is sending the signal, “don’t worry, mom, Uncle Sam will take it from here.” When Michelle Obama kicked off Let’s Move, she announced:
It’s an issue [childhood obesity] that I care deeply about — not just because I’m a First Lady but because I’m a mother. And I’ve said this ever since I came into office — I approach this job first as a mother. And I’m thinking about all of you all as a mother, not as a First Lady.
To what extent will Michelle Obama’s “comprehensive” campaign overlap with the “progressive” campaign to define childhood obesity as a public health epidemic? The State of Michigan and San Diego County recently decided to employ their existing electronic immunization registries as a means of tracking the obesity rates of children, while some school districts are using Body Mass Index electronic surveillance models to alert parents when their children are defined as overweight. Parents are upset that they (and their children) are being “shamed” by school officials, saying that their kids are big boned, etc. (the BMI is a notoriously imprecise instrument). Meanwhile, fat groups and self-esteem advocates are concerned that shaming of obese kids might actually contribute to unhealthier habits, including bulimia/anorexia and other unintended consequences.
What we should really be concerned about, though, are the dangers inherent in defining social/individual behavioral problems as an “epidemic” that must be cured with AmeriCorps-style callisthenic revivals and the active assistance of the government. Before I conclude, let me be clear: I would never suggest that the doctors, school officials, public health advocates, politicians, and others who are demanding that childhood obesity be treated as a public health epidemic for which children must be immunized, are in any way, shape, or form really Nazis per se, or have any such sympathies. I hate it when political opponents play the Reductio ad Hitlerum card as much, if not more, than the average blogger. I am sure that the vast majority of the childhood obesity crusaders are completely unaware that parts of their campaign sound like they came out of the 1937 Nazi playbook (see: Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism). They just don’t know any better, but that does not mean that other people have to be as clueless about the dangers as they are.