Athlone: The only problem I have with your argument is that obesity isn't a particularly heritable trait. Whether you're obese is determined more by factors like lifestyle, occupation, and socioeconomic status. There may be some degree of genetic susceptibility, but the current evidence is that such a factor is pretty weak if it exists at all. That said, I do agree that there are forces at work that are likely to bring down obesity rates in the coming years. More than anything, governments have finally started to take the obesity epidemic seriously as a public health issue, most likely because obesity-associated medical costs are becoming a significant driver of our healthcare financing problem.
Gmac: Food stamps aren't the reason why poor people have higher rates of obesity. Poor people eat a lot of fast food and other unhealthy shit because it's cheaper, more available in areas where they live (google "food desert" if you don't know what I'm talking about), and takes less time to prepare than balanced, healthy food. We need to fix our ass-backwards food policies that reduce the price of unhealthy foods by subsidizing things like high-fructose corn syrup and start subsidizing fruits and vegetables instead. A tax on common fast food ingredients with the revenues allocated to subsidies for healthy foods and incentives for grocery stores to open locations in low-income areas would go a long way toward addressing the obesity epidemic among the poor.
Gmac: Food stamps aren't the reason why poor people have higher rates of obesity. Poor people eat a lot of fast food and other unhealthy shit because it's cheaper, more available in areas where they live (google "food desert" if you don't know what I'm talking about), and takes less time to prepare than balanced, healthy food. We need to fix our ass-backwards food policies that reduce the price of unhealthy foods by subsidizing things like high-fructose corn syrup and start subsidizing fruits and vegetables instead. A tax on common fast food ingredients with the revenues allocated to subsidies for healthy foods and incentives for grocery stores to open locations in low-income areas would go a long way toward addressing the obesity epidemic among the poor.