You Are What You Eat

Obesity is a growing problem in the United States and represents a national public health crisis. In his essay, “What You Eat Is Your Business,” Radley Balko argues that efforts by the government to fight obesity are ineffective and inappropriate. Balko maintains that government action deprives citizens of free choice and relieves them of personal responsibility for their unhealthy lifestyles. Balko’s essay is very clever in its presentation, but when examined closely it reveals a number of logical inconsistencies, misleading comparisons, and fallacious arguments. Seen in this light, it appears manipulative and frankly disingenuous. He mischaracterizes the statements and positions of his opponents in order to strengthen his argument against any government involvement in the nation’s diet. Ultimately, Balko fabricates a false dichotomy between private and public efforts, as if it were necessary to choose one or the other. The truth lies somewhere in the middle. Public health is a public matter, and obesity is and should be a public concern that can most effectively be addressed through a combination of personal responsibility and government action.

Obesity rates among adults and children in the United States are rising rapidly, and this places an enormous and growing burden on the nation’s health care system. Balko does not contest this fact in his essay but rather opposes government action to address the problem.

He decries public anti-obesity initiatives such as prohibiting junk food in schools or requiring labeling of packaged food, claiming that this is tantamount to “bringing government between you and your waistline,” and he insists that “this is the wrong way to fight obesity” (Balko). The solution, according to him is to “foster a sense of responsibility in and ownership of our own health and well-being.” Balko espouses a basic duality between government action and personal responsibility and argues that treating obesity as a “pubic health” issue removes incentives for maintaining a healthy lifestyle. But Balko’s dichotomy is false and overly simplistic in that it denies any middle ground that would involve a combination of private and government efforts.

One of the most interesting things about Balko’s essay is the way he adroitly tap-dances around his topic while pretending to be taking it on directly. For instance, the heart of his essay is a paragraph in which he quotes some of his nominal opponents, whom he describes as “a growing army of nutritionist activists and food industry foes” (Balko). One, in particular, is Margo Wootan of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Balko writes that Wootan has said, “We’ve got to move beyond ‘personal responsibility’” (Balko). But he uses the passive phrasing “has said” to introduce the quote and provides no attribution. When did she say this? A concerted effort to find this quote, with an attribution that can be verified, reveals that Wootan likely did not say this and that Balko is paraphrasing her actual statement that “relying solely on personal responsibility and the bully pulpit is too low a dose of treatment to cure this serious health problem” (Wootan). Balko seems to have purposely redesigned Wootan’s statement to make it sound more extreme and to better suit his rhetorical point. He even added quotation marks around the phrase “personal responsibly,” as if to suggest that Wootan dismisses the whole concept. In doing this, Balko sets Wootan up as a “straw man,” a commonly used logical fallacy that relies on misrepresenting an opponent’s position.

Balko uses the same “straw man” tactic against all of the opponents he quotes, including Wootan, Hillary Clinton and Peter Jennings of ABC News. In fact, all three of them went to lengths to emphasize their view that personal responsibility and individual behavior are an important and necessary adjunct to government initiatives to address the problem of childhood obesity.

In a 2012 public debate, for instance, Wootan argued that healthy eating has become more challenging in recent years:

Our food environment has changed dramatically over the last thirty years in a way that makes healthy eating seem like swimming upstream…We are not saying that personal responsibility is not the most important thing, but there is more to it than that. Obesity is a societal problem, and we all have a role to play in addressing it: parents, individuals, health professionals, organizations, food companies, manufacturers of sporting goods, and, of course, government. (Reyman)

In the New York Times article by Hillary Clinton that Balko maligns, Clinton wrote that everyone would have to play a part in any realistic solution, and that “individuals would have to assume more responsibility for improving their own health and lifestyles” (Clinton). Balko derides an ABC News special hosted by Peter Jennings as “an impassioned plea for government intervention to fight obesity.” In fact, Jennings concluded the program by insisting that “we know there is no easy solution to the growing obesity epidemic. Most of us do need to eat better and exercise more. And what adults eat is ultimately a personal decision” (Jennings). Balko conveniently ignores the moderation of his opponents’ views so that he can present their position as being diametrically opposed to his own. This level of dishonesty seriously undermines the persuasiveness of his arguments and raises questions about his sincerity.

Unlike the people he quotes in his essay, who advocate a multi-faceted approach to addressing the national problem of obesity, Balko argues that any government involvement in the matter amounts to the establishment of a “nanny state” that would entrench “collective ownership of private health [that] paves the way for even more federal restrictions on consumer choice and civil liberties” (Balko). This overextended logic intentionally ignores the existence of a more realistic and moderate proposition: that government restrictions, consumer choice, and civil liberties are not inherently irreconcilable, or even mutually exclusive. In fact, each is arguably necessary for the perpetuation of the others. Of course, the lack of moderation in Balko’s argument is tactical; it makes his essay highly provocative, in that it brings a lot of attention to itself and attracts readers. Unfortunately, this tactic also renders Balko’s essay essentially useless as a starting point for any reasonable action to address the problem at hand.

The problem of obesity in the United States requires action on a national level. It is disingenuous to suggest that this is not a public health issue and that it will just go away if we leave people to exercise free choice over their own diets. Personal responsibility is a popular canard, and it sounds good to a freedom-loving people. But it is meaningless in the absence of any regulation or systematization of information about what is in our food. Radley Balko contends that people will make better choices about their diet and personal health in the absence of regulation or government involvement, but he presents no solution for what to do about the consequences if people make the wrong choices. Balko’s laissez-faire philosophy offers no morally acceptable answer to this. Further, his essay is manipulative in that it misrepresents the positions of others and attempts to offer a black-and-white, all-or-nothing framework for understanding a very complex problem that actually requires nuanced solutions. Public health is an important concern in a great society. While people must take responsibility for their own health, the government plays a necessary and vital role in protecting freedom of choice by regulating the industry and by making sure that citizens are armed with the information they need to manage their own lives.

Works Cited

Balko, Radley. “What You Eat Is Your Business.” Cato Institute. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 Feb. 2014. <http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/what-you-eat-is-business>.

Clinton, Hillary. “Now Can We Talk About Health Care?.” New York Times. N.p., 18 Apr. 2004. Web. 6 Feb. 2014. <http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/18/magazine/18POLICY.html>.

Jennings, Peter. “How to Get Fat Without Really Trying." The Documentary Group. N.p., 8 Dec. 2003. Web. 8 Feb. 2014. <http://thedocumentarygroup.com/portfolio/peter-jennings-reporting-how-to-get-fat-without-really-trying/>.

Reyman, Charles. “Health Affairs.” Debate Sparks Food for Thought on the Role of the Government in Curbing Obesity Comments. N.p., 7 Aug. 2012. Web. 8 Feb. 2014. <http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2012/08/07/debate-sparks-food-for-thought-on-the-governments-role-in-curbing-obesity/?cat=grantwatch>.

Wootan, Margo. “CSPI On Rising Obesity Statistics.” CSPI On Rising Obesity Statistics ~ Newsroom ~ News from CSPI ~ Center for Science in the Public Interest. N.p., 8 Oct. 2002. Web. 8 Feb. 2014. <http://www.cspinet.org/new/200210081.html>.