From Obesity Battle Should Be EU Priority, Experts Say:
Obesity is becoming the world’s biggest health problem, experts said on Thursday, as they called for the newly expanded European Union to make fighting the flab a top priority.They are pushing for controls on marketing and television advertising for children and a labeling scheme to distinguish which foods should be eaten as part of a healthy diet.
‘Obesity has now become a strong candidate for being the number one health problem mankind is facing,’ said Professor Claude Bouchard, president of the International Association for the Study of Obesity.
From The Nazi Seduction:
Nazi “nutritionists mounted a frontal attack on the Germans’ excessive consumption of meat, sweets, and fat, and argued for a return to ‘more natural’ foods such as cereals, fresh fruit, and vegetables.” Repudiating the public/private distinction central to liberal societies and liberal political philosophy, the Nazis declared that the personal was indeed the political. One slogan declared: “Nutrition is not a private matter!” Each person’s diet was a matter of state concern, for the state was responsible for the health of the body politic. Hitler himself declared that “reforming the human lifestyle” was “far more important” than anything else he might accomplish. Hitler loathed obesity and launched campaigns against it both within the SS and in the polity at large.
Once you find Hitler’s ringing endorsement of a progressive cause — vegetarianism, fitness, eugenics, gun control, whatever — it’s entirely too tempting to use it as an argument against that cause.