Their is two big problem with it's only people own responsibility.
First what kind of motivation and information are broadcast to the people. My guess is that probably atleast 80 % is for unhealthy food. That if people all the time get information to lure them to eat unhealthy and almost no information how to eat healthy. That can have an affect on people choices.
Also the correctness of the information people get. Take for example Diet Coke. The product is called diet and also market as healthy alternative. But resent studies have shown it can be bad for people having problem with overeating, because diet coke can increase their appetite. So is only people to blame drinking diet coke or is Coca Cola also have a responibility for having over almost 20 years marketed the product as healthy?
Actually, it's the sweetener
in Diet Coke, which means Diet Coke isn't the only product that will have this effect. And look at the second word in that sentence, "recent". If the knowledge is only recently available, and Diet Coke came out will over 30 years ago, how can we say Coke has been misleading? For a long time, a lot of people thought aspartame sweeteners were a great substitute for sugar. More and more we learn that isn't true.
And besides, whether it's Diet Coke or original Coke, if you think either one is "healthy", whether Coke says so or not, I have to question your reasoning skills. Both products are corrosive, for example. In the modern age, there is a wealth of information available on healthy food and healthy eating. And often, healthy eating is no more expensive if you take the time to compare prices.
People make choices. If ignorance is no excuse for breaking the law, I fail to see how ignorance is a valid excuse for abusing our bodies. Further, any parent who thinks HoHos and ice cream after a dinner of friend chicken and mashed potatoes with gravy isn't going to harm their child's health isn't even ignorant...they're just stupid.
True story: I saw a family at Blockbuster....two parents, four children. The youngest was probably two, and even though all of them were overweight, she was the most severe. The little girl literally had to rock from side to side in order to walk, because she had lost so much flexibility due to the amount of fat on her legs and lower abdomen. Her neck was nonexistent, she had fat rolls where her wrists met her hands, and she was breathing like a severe asthmatic. And despite the very obvious problem there, her parents allowed her to eat an entire family size back of crunchy Cheetos while they browsed movie titles. As they were leaving, they also bought her a jumbo-sized box of candy.
That isn't ignorance, that's flat out neglect. In that instance, the government
should interfere...and not with training or coaching, but by removing that girl from the home and putting her in the care of nutritional experts and others who can ascertain whether or not a medical condition is causing the insane overeating and respond accordingly.
Most kids don't get that bad. But
parents are more than capable of monitoring the weights and eating habits of their children. When they don't, it isn't the government's responsibility to step in for every child with an elevated BMI and start shoveling healthy food into their waiting hands. Hold parents accountable, but don't waste my tax dollars doing what those parents are more than capable of doing on their own. The government has no business raising every child that doesn't meet some arbitrary standard of health or performance, and if we start opening the door to that type of intervention for overweight children it certainly won't stop there.
We can rattle off studies about poor people and poor nutrition, but those in poverty are not the only ones for whom overweight/obese children are a problem. Further, we already subsidize those in poverty through WIC, Food stamps, and several other public and private programs. We don't need
more food aid, we need education and stricter guidelines for food stamp usage.
And don't even get me started on BMI as a measure of health. Anybody who doesn't know that BMI alone is a piss poor indication of whether or not one is at an unhealthy weight hasn't been reading the most recent literature.