The So-Called "War on Childhood Obesity"

Interesting and maddening article today published on MSNBC, "How Big Food Beat DC in the War on Childhood Obesity." http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47205551/ns/business-us_business/#.T5rONrM7Uuc What is in equal parts interesting and maddening here is not so much the substance of the article, or the claims made, but rhetoric or nomenclature of the discussion. For example, we have the term "Big Food," which is intentionally intended to echo the term "Big Tobacco," an echo that the food industry is notably eager to quiet. Then there is "the War," the go-to hyperbole for the description of any dispute when there are presumed to be contentious battles and victors and the vanquished. And then, most interestingly (to me), is the term ''childhood obesity," a term that notably defines a condition or occurrence, but not persons, and not an individual. I ask you, How can a "childhood" be obese?

When we speak of the obesity of childhood, we distance ourselves from the inclination to say (and see, thus, face) obese children, even though that is what is discussed. We distance ourselves even further from the inclination to say (and see, thus, face) a single obese child. And it is this distancing, I think, that leads to the real lost battle here, that is, the battle to see the face of a single obese child, to see the morbidity and loss, to see the fragility and lack of care, and to be blind to the lack of responsibility that makes the idea of childhood obesity possible. Historically, obesity was a sign of wealth, which is to say a command of surplus that allowed one to have (and consume) more than one needed. In contrast, a time of war was a time of want, of famine. But now, when we speak of childhood and obesity in the same same sentence (in the same phrase even) we combine concepts in a way that really allows us to talk about everything except what matters: the need for food to live, and the fact that children do not come into this world with the ability to feed themselves.

In this blog, I will try to explore (as I do elsewhere in my work) the meaning of food, doing so in multiple ways, from multiple perspectives. You can therefore think of these few scant thoughts here as an appetizer.

Bon appetit.