What new or revised public policy/law would make it easier for people to maintain a healthy weight?

cmriverside wrote: »

I think we have enough laws already.

People just need to take some personal responsibility. Anyone who's made it past fourth grade should be able to figure this out.

Eat less. Take a walk. Ta Da.

I agree. Im tired of so many people needing to have their hand held whenever they do anything nowadays. There are dozens of calorie counting and food tracking apps available now. Such as the very one we are on now ! If people cant take five lousy minutes at each meal to log and track their food then they are probably too lazy to have success with most any endeavor. Many in modern society seem to want everything done for them. Its really tragic

I find it interesting the number of times in this thread people have expressed an interest that more place be required to label calories and that calorie accuracy should be higher. I think it is easy to see how it would help someone using MFP or any other calorie tracker, but I think it overestimates how much anyone makes calorie based food decisions.

I recall (and I should probably look up) a study that showed calorie counts don't seem to impact food decisions at restaurants. The suggestion was that the numbers are just to abstract. Instead, they found there was a difference in behavior when menus were required to color code foods - low calories had green for go, while high calorie options were in red, and in between had yellow - there was a much greater change in food behaviors. I wonder how much it would work in the long run, or if it people would slowly build up blinders.

Oh and mandate all cities to provide better/safer walk/bike routes to school.

Isnt things like cal count displays what makes a restaurant stand out or chosen over eating somewhere else? Its called competition, stop medling. You want to spend OPP (other peoples property) to pass regulations to make life more convenient by having calories displayed on food?. Some people dont want their taxes wasted and can figure it out them selves so stop regulating and increasing costs. If you want a public policy that will work provide tax incentives for restarants that DO provide that health info, we already have ratings and labels and omg the regulations. Who in here actually reads the federal register daily and looks at what the rules n reg being passed say anyhow? Not to mention they pretty much ALWAYS have different meaning and far reaching implications if you actually read it (the entire thing including definitions) other than what you see or hear on TV or advertising media? Probably the corporate entity who hired a lobbyiest and can afford to keep up with all the mind boggling rediculous laws and regulations that do nothing more than cause small business and individuals confusion, cost, time, pain while guaranteeing more gov. paid employees and attnys to interpret, apply, monitor and follow these rediculously complex regulations.
You want to TRIM FAT? How about figuring out a way to incentivize government budgets to actually SAVE money, lower spending. In our gov. dept. every year its the same thing. "Hey we have x amount of dollars left in the budget this year, be sure to go out and buy everything you possibly can (figure out a way to justify it) because you know if you dont spend it all the city or state or fed dept. will reduce our budget and give it to some other dept. (oh hey how about the tax payers who are being robbed manipulated and used by our media for their own financial gains). This is why we have competition and private companies that actually look at spending, costs, bids and the bottom line. Regulating and taxing are NOT the answer in this pork belly broken gov. system we have.
Provide incentives, rewards, tax discounts, for people who voluntarily choose to eat well, post progress, join fitness communities, reg. work out, and contribute to society. And the fed agency can design these incentive programs (lower taxes for auto ins. co. who give discounts for people who reg. excercse, or restaurants that post cal. counts) then you need a health tax incentive bill that is tied to federal funds going to the state, for any state that adopts and impliments the federal example program.
Because as we all know from learning administrative law (which they should be teaching to kids at age 5+ instead of sex education) the fed gov and all our administrative dept. dont have power (thank god) under the constitution, it places limits to government control over our individual liberties and freedoms, (commerce clause) fed gov. cant pass or enforce a food, health, or water quality standard.

Those laws (Health and saftey) are left to the states to pass and enforce. (Why? Go learn constitutional law. So you can actually be w/in x miles of the actual door where you elect people, have meetings, and have more oversight and less cost and its good and healthy for people to socialize with their community IN REAL FACE TO FACE communication (read book "lost connections") and for people to be more involved in their own community, passing laws that make sense for that area, landscape and type of town, and taking care of each other locally. Point being, if the fed is is going to adopt a policy for food n health, fine, use incentives not regulations. Its not going to be enforceable or constitutional or required unless its adopted by a state volunarily as a condition to get some type of federal incentive or funding (same with water quality standards, air quality, education standards and all the pork belly administrative agencies we invented to do congresses job for them), then gave the agencies all three powers (judicial, legislative rule making, and executive enforcement) which totally adds layers of unneccesary costs, duplicates states responsibility in most cases, and violates the separation of powers provision if there is no right to appeal an admins decision to a REAL court of law.

So good luck with that 3000 page new rule your administrative agency is writing to pass new regulations and increase your deptartments spending so the budget isnt cut next year, its got to feel great knowing 50 gov. lawyers will have job security fighting over definitions, exemptions, how the rules effect other laws, all while, rest assured, it wont be adopted by most places unless the STATE that has constitutional power to regulate in that area actually adopts ur admin dept. 3000 page rule in their next general legislative session. INCENTIVES not regulations. You workout not to avoid a negative consequence (getting fat) but because of the incentives and rewards it brings you. Otherwise working out becomes mentally difficult, same with gov. policies. (Sorry not spell checked or with emphasis on gramatical correctness).