Promoting large-scale agricultural activities, especially corn, potatoes, soybeans, and as a result CAFO beef, HFCS, and fa[s]t foods, largely an outgrowth of President Nixon's 1970s agricultural policies, have greatly re-shaped the American food landscape.

Industrialization of other parts of the food industry, particularly as pertains to processed/prepared foods, has done more. Regulations pertaining to such operations (including centralized inspection of meat processing plants, say) squeeze out small operators. Efficient, perhaps, but not healthful.

Liberating food processors from the consequences of their actions (allowing economic externalities in the form of negative health consequences) is a large part of problem.

Likewise institutional food policies at schools, through low-income food support (read up on Roger Lustig and WIC-provided OJ in his anti-fructose rants), universities, chain restaurants (you know, of course, that Michael Dell is a major shareholder of Applebees and IHOP), university, hospital, and military systems.

Toss in some really piss-poor science (Ancel Keys "lipid hypothesis") and, yes, some horribly broken policy. There's a lot government could do to fix things.

Mark Bittman's New York Times food column has highlighted a number of policy fixes which would help. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b...

Amen to that. Especially considering how closely the obesity "epidemic" correlates to government recommendations on what to eat (namely the "food pyramid").

Okay, let's do an experiment. We have two cafeterias, and randomly assign students to one or the other. In one we serve the standard fare, and the other 'healthy fare.' Assume we agree on what's healthy, and that it prevents obesity for most.

Do you think the kind of food available has no effect on obesity rates? Will the obesity (and diabetes) rates be equal between these two groups of students?

Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker. I can't see how not giving kids the choice of eating junk food will lead to worse outcomes. They aren't going to go home and say, "OMG, I gotta make up for all the junk food I didn't eat at school now!"

I think increased deductible for the obese is a fine idea. But if that would work, so would a high tax on sugar (eg 0.5-1+ cents per gram), if indeed sugar is in part to blame for obesity as I believe. The benefit of a sugar tax is that it is felt before the person has gotten fat. The disadvantage is that even the slim and healthy must pay it. Even so, in a proper diet, sugar consumption should be well under 50g/day, more like <20g/day.

There are no nutrition labels on alcohol. On wine bottles, basic facts like the sugar concentration and the specific blend of grapes is often omitted, subject to local laws.

People often don't care enough to even get to the point where they can educate themselves. It's a bit of a chicken and an egg problem - if manufacturers don't disclose the information, consumers will never hear it, and will never ask for it in large numbers. Mandatory disclosure via government regulation solves that "information asymmetry." Once it's on the label, consumers can discriminate with regard to that information.

Somalia has a government which practices quasi-Sharia [1]. Fun fact: most people who want to reduce the size of western governments don't actually favor increasing the scope of the government to pre-marital sex (a stoning offense in Somalia), wearing socks (failure to do so for women is punishable by flogging) or chewing khat (a floggable offense).

[1] Mahmud, who posts here and is Somalian, claims it's not quite Sharia. Knowing very little about Islamic law, I'll take his word for it.

Government simply doesn't ruin everything it touches. I could make a similarly facile argument about how the market ruins everything it touches, turning all of life into a uniform sea of brands, destroying geographic and cultural distinctiveness, as well as laying ruin to the environment and every other cost externality that isn't accounted for in the absence of a regulator to internalize those costs. Factories belching out fumes in foreign lands, child labour etc., all intermediated by the market so that you can buy your consumer goods in your well-lit mall without needing to care about the blood and bones ground up in the machine, because it's all hidden from you: all you see is a price.

I'm in favour of mostly-free markets, and very-free civil liberties. I want as little government as possible, within the scope for the society I personally would like to see. Government that starts a lot fewer wars would be a fantastic start.

But when people go on about how the customer just needs to be educated and the free market will do its work, well, I just sigh. I don't want to have to do that work, because I know (a) I don't have time for that, and (b) in any case companies will be motivated to spend a lot more resources fooling me and people like me than I even have. Information asymmetries are real, and they strongly favour the wealthy. I don't think that's fair, and it's not a society I'd vote for.

The grandparent - algoshift - is simply mistaken about health insurance, for example. The vast majority of health spending is in the final years and months of life. But elderly people have no motivation to reduce this spending; even if educated, why would they reduce it, when the alternative is death? The fact of the matter is, we spend too much money and resources keeping old people alive but on the brink of death. I don't think that's fair either.

Nor did I claim it did. I just pointed out that it's silly to point out a nation with a government that is more intrusive than the US government and then suggest people who want less government should go live there.