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ANew Diet Plan

The United States has a serious obesity problem, and a big part of that problem concerns children. Not only are far too many young people enormously overweight (twice as many today as 30 years ago), but more of them are diabetic and show early signs of cardiovascular disease (especially lowincome and minority children). We know that childhood obesity is basically caused by a combination of poor eating habits and inadequate physical exercise. The trick is to find an effective public policy that will improve kids’ eating habits and prod them to exercise more. Some blame childhood obesity on undisciplined youth and their indulgent parents, just as they are apt to blame children and their parents for teen drug use, drinking, pregnancy, and the like. But, from the public health perspective, shaking one’s head over family failure is not enough when there are measures that can effectively address the problem. That would be like opposing putting fluoride in drinking water on the ground that it would be unnecessary if parents only taught their children to brush their teeth properly. Many public health advocates have called for banning business practices that seem especially egregious—selling high-sugar soft drinks in schools, advertising high-fat and high-sugar products to children on TV, and enticing children to buy supersized fast-food meals. These measures focus on food-andbeverage companies because those enterprises are clearly responsible for the obesity problem in the sense that their products contain the calories that cause it. Moreover, the industry is certainly aware that the obesity explosion is one outcome of its profit-making efforts. But there is another way to improve children’s health that calls for community action, but does not rely upon traditional “command and control” regulations in which government tells the business community exactly what it may (or must) do.