Every Wednesday morning our NPR affiliate, Mississippi Public Broadcasting, airs a medical show hosted by "Dr. Rick." He is a physician at the University Medical Center in Jackson.
He is on an anti-obesity campaign and went to the capital and talked to some legislators a couple of weeks ago. I only caught a small sliver of that show, but I did hear one legislator say to him "You can't legislate behavior." Amen.
If you could legislate behavior, you could enact laws about being intoxicated, or smoking cigarettes or taking illegal drugs. See how well that's worked.
I called the doctor's show last week and said 1) Food is an addiction like any other addiction-- 2)There are genetic predispositions for obesity-- 3) and what I think is the crux of the matter, is the cultural milieu we live in. There aren't salad bars on every corner, no, there are Pizza Huts and and burger joints, and to change people's ideas about food, you have to change the entire culture of the south.
People like and people eat what they grew up eating, and here it's fried food, and starchy food. People are poor--fried and starchy fills them up. Fresh produce is hard to come by at times and it's expensive. So one generation after the next learns to eat the same sometimes unhealthy food. The legislature can demand that schools take snack machines and soft drink machines out of schools and that healthy lunches are served at school, but the kids go home and eat what their parents eat every night and on weekends. See what I mean? The entire cultural milieu would have to change. We, the poorest state, would have to change, and with the poverty here I don't see that happening.

I think it's a losing proposition to try to ammend people's behavior under those circumstances.

The doctor has said he is a thin man from a family of thin folks-I don't know if he understands all the underpinnings and ramifications of his quest yet--but he's getting attention.

susil