Bill Maher on Fat and Healthcare: Liberals, You’re The NRA of Mayonnaise
[guest post by Dana]
Not usually a fan of the smarmy Maher, but in this, I mostly agree with him. Democrats pound healthcare all the time, but they don’t address Americans being too fat and not assuming responsibility for the unhealthful state in which they find themselves. For the majority of us, the power to maintain a healthy weight is in our hands. Certainly there are factors that can make maintaining a healthy weight nearly impossible. But for most of us, the only real obstacles in the way are the tempting smorgasbords of deliciousness that beckon us from the cookie and ice cream aisles of our local markets and the exquisite aroma of French fries wafting through air outside a fast food eatery. All of which we find irresistible and unable to walk away from. It’s a land of plenty we find ourselves in, and options for fat intake are well, everywhere, 24/7.
But:
Worldwide obesity has nearly tripled since 1975.
In 2016, more than 1.9 billion adults, 18 years and older, were overweight. Of these over 650 million were obese.
39% of adults aged 18 years and over were overweight in 2016, and 13% were obese.
Most of the world’s population live in countries where overweight and obesity kills more people than underweight.
41 million children under the age of 5 were overweight or obese in 2016.
Over 340 million children and adolescents aged 5-19 were overweight or obese in 2016.
I’m no expert, but I’ve noticed that losing weight is a fairly simple proposition: Eat less meat and processed foods, eat more veggies, fruits, nuts and legumes. And most importantly, get up and MOVE!
(Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.)
–Dana
Full disclosure: I bought a package of Pepperidge Farm Dark Chocolate Milanos not one hour ago.
Dana (fdf131) — 9/7/2019 @ 3:35 pmThere’s a 100% chance Maher has a private cook and a decked out workout room just for himself. And, having no family he probably has eons of time to hit the weights and peloton. No trips to McD’s or Daily Queen to make the rugrats happy, either.
He always brings his wealth of life experience to every issue, much like your random teenager.
Munroe (732181) — 9/7/2019 @ 3:58 pmI always have my mayonnaise with 5 ozs of white albacore, two chopped up hard-boiled eggs, a spoonful of dill relish, a little black pepper, a bagel, a 4-oz bar of Hershey’s milk chocolate, and a glass of water. How do you have yours?
nk (dbc370) — 9/7/2019 @ 4:02 pmand he still looks like carp, but he wants a recession ‘so we don’t lose our democracy’ and he wanted ‘to drag us to obamacare’, he desires state power to achieve his gold, he doesn’t like radical islam, but he doesn’t affirm any moral standard, except ‘do thou wilt’
narciso (d1f714) — 9/7/2019 @ 4:04 pmI might not have the whole Hershey’s at once.
nk (dbc370) — 9/7/2019 @ 4:05 pmWhite albacore on greens with cranberries, sunflower seeds, tomatoes, avocado, and a sliced up nectarine or apple, dressed in balsamic vinegarette. No bread because I have no self control, and maybe a few chocolate chips for something sweet.
Dana (fdf131) — 9/7/2019 @ 4:18 pmEverything in Moderation
mg (8f83ac) — 9/7/2019 @ 4:50 pm5# bag of chocolate chips in the freezer?
mg (8f83ac) — 9/7/2019 @ 4:51 pmThere are simple answers. Just no easy ones.
rcocean (1a839e) — 9/7/2019 @ 5:28 pmHow to solve obesity? Easy. Mandatory Exercise programs. At Noon, every american 18-65 must go into the street and do 30 minutes of Jumping jacks, push-ups and “sweating to the oldies”.
rcocean (1a839e) — 9/7/2019 @ 5:31 pm4… crap or carp, that’s a face only a mother could love.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 9/7/2019 @ 5:31 pmMaher may be thin, but he’s still short and ugly. And in 2019, old.
rcocean (1a839e) — 9/7/2019 @ 5:32 pm1… Ha! Just came home with BBQ: a two meat (ribs & brisket) plate, small corn muffin, onion rings and chili beans as sides that I grudgingly split with my wife. We won’t do that again for another six months.
As said, moderation is the key, along with activity… daily 2.5 mile walks, yard and car work and a lot of pool time for me.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 9/7/2019 @ 5:39 pmThere was an interesting discussion during the heated debate about Obamacare about Americans and our obesity rates and lack of exercise. It was kind of along the lines of Justice Scalia’s hypothetical about eating broccoli: to the extent that much of our health problems are caused by obesity, can the government require us to engage in some sort of daily activity, given that they are guaranteeing that our health care will be fully paid for? Would we have mandatory check-ins at a gym or yoga studio or pool? Would we be required to wear a fit bit? It goes along with this idea that if government guarantees your health coverage then why can’t they then dictate your diet and activity.
I can see the compromise being that fast food, sweets, soda pop, alcohol, and other things deemed unhealthy by the food police will eventually carry a pretty stiff “health tax,” which will of course be a regressively attack upon the working poor. I wonder though if we will ever get to the point where this stuff gets rationed, so that we can’t overindulge. I’ve been stockpiling the bourbon just in case.
JVW (54fd0b) — 9/7/2019 @ 5:52 pmSo what? How does that relieve anyone else of the responsibility to maintain a healthy weight?
Dana (fdf131) — 9/7/2019 @ 6:06 pmAlways!
Dana (fdf131) — 9/7/2019 @ 6:07 pmJVW,
I like your thinking. I don’t want any food police monitoring my junk food intake, nor do I want to see any food item rationed like we are small children and Father will dole out the goodies. Look at how well Prohibition worked out. Yet at the same time, the mass availability of junk food is making us fat and the number of obese Americans is increasing dramatically, as is the litany of health issues, which in turn, help to cause health care prices to go up. I don’t know what the answer is.
Dana (fdf131) — 9/7/2019 @ 6:10 pmI don’t know what the answer is.
This won’t help that much, and I can actually see lots of reasons why I wouldn’t support it, but the Feds could declare that EBT cards are no longer able to be used at fast food restaurants. Or if we want to go Big Brother in a huge way, the cards can be set to only allow the purchase of salads and other “healthy” items at the McDonalds and Wendys of the world.
If we are being excessively strict, we can also say no more using EBT cards to purchase high-calorie processed foods (frozen pizzas, potato chips, ice cream, candy) at grocery stores either. We can make them only applicable for fruits, vegetables, bread, meat, and dairy.
JVW (54fd0b) — 9/7/2019 @ 6:19 pmHonestly, I don’t have a problem with a few limitations on EBT cards. Of course, fast food joints now have salad bars and healthy options available.. I guess you’d have to find out the percentage of EBT card users that go for the healthy stuff versus the unhealthy stuff.
Dana (fdf131) — 9/7/2019 @ 6:21 pmI’ve been inhaling the chocolate peanut butter cups from Trader Joes lately.
mg (8f83ac) — 9/7/2019 @ 6:22 pmI’m not usually a fan of that smarmy Bill Maher either, which is why I’m not going to watch that video. If I have to listen to smarmy Bill Maher decry obesity and unhealthy choices, I’m going to feel compelled to go buy a carton of cigarettes, a case of Twinkies and a five pound bucket of lard just on general principles. Smarmy Bill Maher telling you to call your mother and tell her you love her is enough to make you fervently wish your mother were dead.
Jerryskids (702a61) — 9/7/2019 @ 6:23 pmForgot to mention that I haven’t watched that hump Maher other than when he masochistically has Ben Domenech on, but that classless harangue he gave about the death of Charles Koch sealed the deal.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 9/7/2019 @ 6:33 pmJust read the bolded parts:
nk (dbc370) — 9/7/2019 @ 6:34 pmAnd ditto about Maher, but youse guys make for a nice discussion.
nk (dbc370) — 9/7/2019 @ 6:38 pmOf course California participates on SNAP.
Dana (fdf131) — 9/7/2019 @ 6:47 pmI don’t think it’s just diet and exercise. Look at photos or video of crowds of people from the 70s or 80s: disneyworld or a New York City street. *everyone* is skinnier. It’s like you’re looking at pictures of an entirely different culture. I don’t believe our habits have changed that drastically in 30 years to make so much of the population that much fatter. There is another culprit (hormones? GMO corn? I dunno).
JRH (52aed3) — 9/7/2019 @ 6:50 pmhttps://bigthink.com/ideafeed/are-genetically-modified-foods-making-us-fat
“In two recent experiments, animals got fatter at a faster rate when fed genetically modified food.”
JRH (52aed3) — 9/7/2019 @ 6:51 pm“So what? How does that relieve anyone else of the responsibility to maintain a healthy weight?”
Dana (fdf131) — 9/7/2019 @ 6:06 pm
I’m just much more interested in hearing what Prince Harry has to say about climate change.
Munroe (732181) — 9/7/2019 @ 6:56 pmGonna cancel your subscription to Patterico’s Pontifications, Munroe?
nk (dbc370) — 9/7/2019 @ 7:14 pmI’m paid up through the year, nk.
Munroe (732181) — 9/7/2019 @ 7:22 pmNow we need an Objectivist to tell us obesity is good because it’s caused by the triumph of freemarket capitalism.
I don’t eat vanilla creme cookies. I simply vacuum them up a box at a time with my mouth.
Kishnevi (7595ea) — 9/7/2019 @ 7:34 pmTough crowd. Post about Trump, get eaten alive. Post about a lib calling out libs over healthcare, meh, not interesting.
Dana (fdf131) — 9/7/2019 @ 7:50 pmDairy Queen… my wife and I were driving around St. George, Utah on our scouting relocation trip, just got in town from Vegas and she says I need a cold drink. So I make a left turn and there’s a DQ on the right. It’s 107 F, so we both order a medium root beer freeze at the drive-up window. It took a minute of slurping those down, when we both agreed that was about the best damned cold drink we’d had in a long, long time.
Near fatal mistake, as we’ve had two more since returning home a month ago…
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 9/7/2019 @ 7:52 pmSee, Col., that’s the way it always goes…sadly.
Dana (fdf131) — 9/7/2019 @ 7:56 pmDemon Root Beer will always get you…
Kishnevi (7595ea) — 9/7/2019 @ 8:01 pmMaybe, JRH, but we also ate earlier then and we moved more after we ate. We have changed our lifestyles and how long we give ourselves to digest food.
DRJ (15874d) — 9/7/2019 @ 8:19 pmLike their idol himself, Trump super-duper-loop-de-looper-ultra-fans only want to hear about Trump. Whether it’s good or bad, because no attention paid to Trump is bad attention. To them he is the alphabet soup and the omega oil, the beginning and the end, the center of everything, and nothing else matters.
nk (dbc370) — 9/7/2019 @ 8:21 pmIf he hadnt been all about imposing govt power, i would take him more aeriously
Narciso (1fc69a) — 9/7/2019 @ 8:21 pmAlso, Americans, at one time, had more physical occupations rather than sitting in front of computers all day.
Dana (fdf131) — 9/7/2019 @ 8:25 pmOf course California participates on SNAP.
I didn’t realize that it was so limited. All I know is that every fast food restaurant out here has a sticker in their window saying “EBT Cards Accepted Here!”
JVW (54fd0b) — 9/7/2019 @ 9:05 pmWell we could go soylent green like the swediah scientists.
Narciso (1fc69a) — 9/7/2019 @ 9:08 pmThe 5th grade spelling bee champion in me can’t help but note that “mayonnaise” has two n’s, not one. No offense.
Paul Montagu (a2342d) — 9/7/2019 @ 9:50 pmOops! Thanks, Paul Montagu. It’s particularly funny because just this afternoon I was making fun of a headline from Fox News where they spelled attorneys “attornies”:
I just checked the post and it looks like an editor saw the error and corrected it. But I have the screenshot.
Dana (fdf131) — 9/7/2019 @ 9:53 pmSNAP’s RMP (Restaurant Meals Program) is limited. Just plain SNAP is everywhere. You must live in a Democrat county, JVW.
nk (dbc370) — 9/7/2019 @ 9:58 pmIt used to be “attornies”. And now I’m wondering if I ever spelled it “attorneys”. That’s what seems foreign to me.
nk (dbc370) — 9/7/2019 @ 10:07 pmMy winning word was “silhouette”, which was easy because I had a Hot Wheel with that name. The way I spell attorney in plural is lawyers.
Paul Montagu (a2342d) — 9/7/2019 @ 10:25 pm“Worldwide obesity has nearly tripled since 1975.”
Three thoughts;
1) I am given to understand that sometime since 2000 the government’s definition of ‘Obesity’ was changed. So I would be interested to know how much worldwide obesity has increased according to the standard of ‘obesity’ used in 1975.
2) While I am not going to argue that fair people (like myself) are not less healthy than they could be, I would like to observe that we have achieved a society in which the primary dietary problem of the poor is that they are overweight. Before we freak out over obesity, could we have a small celebration?
3) I keep hearing/reading people calling this an ‘obesity epidemic’. Strictly speaking an epidemic is “a widespread occurrence of an infectious disease in a community at a particular time.”. Do the panicmongers think they are in danger from fat germs?
C. S. P. Schofield (9eb8bc) — 9/7/2019 @ 10:52 pmIn terms of height and weight trends, the average height of a man in the United States increased by a mere one inch in the 42 years between 1960 and 2002. However, within that same stretch of time, the average weight of an American male leaped from around 166 pounds to 191 pounds.
What’s more, the biggest increases were racked up by older men:
Men between the ages of 40 and 49 saw a weight increase of 27 pounds.
AJ_Liberty (165d19) — 9/8/2019 @ 5:49 amMen between the ages of 50 and 59 logged an increase of 28 pounds.
Men 60 and older saw an increase of 33 pounds.
@AJ_Liberty,
As I recall (from various RPGs) 1″ should account for 10 lbs. OK, that leaves us with between (for the age ranges) 17 and 23 lbs. to account for. Not terrific, but not ridiculous either. Something else occurs to me; in that time the ideal of a ‘fit’ man has shifted to a much more muscular and ‘defined’ look, and muscle mass is heavy, so I wonder how that has effected things. I do know that the hight-and-weight charts so beloved of health-scolds tend to fall apart when they are used on high school athletes; that was one of the idiocies of a recent change to ‘school lunch’ guidelines…they were starving athletic kids who were heavy or their hight because of muscle mass.
*shrug*
C. S. P. Schofield (9eb8bc) — 9/8/2019 @ 7:11 amMost modern diets don’t advocate eating less meat, although maybe less red meat. Carbs are what fat is made out of in the body, particularly raw sugars. Want to lose weight? Put down the soft drinks (or the beer) and you have a pretty good diet.
Kevin M (19357e) — 9/9/2019 @ 11:14 amA male who is buff is generally considered overweight by the modern BMI standard.
Kevin M (19357e) — 9/9/2019 @ 11:16 amWorldwide obesity has nearly tripled since 1975.
Everyone was better off when all those people in India and China were starving.
Kevin M (19357e) — 9/9/2019 @ 11:17 amWe really cannot give up on people with Obesity since there is remedy and good guidance to eradicate it. help your friends and love ones. http://bit.ly/2kKYNkA
Favour Daniel (9c3b08) — 9/15/2019 @ 3:29 amNews Bulletin, you may not have heard this but dieting doesn’t work and its the only means available to induce weight loss.
B. Adu (86878a) — 9/23/2019 @ 10:49 am