I was watching a thing the other day in which British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver worked in Los Angeles to try to convince the school boards to give students better food (ie; less pizza, chips and chicken nuggets) in their cafeteria lunches. He worked with a group of students to whom he taught basic culinary skills and nutrition, and it all seemed to go quite well. The kids, and some of their parents, responded well and after some difficulties, general improvement became the order of the day.
At one point, he asked the kids if any of their family members were suffering from a chronic diet-related illness like diabetes or obesity or heart trouble. One of the kids, just 16 years old and herself significantly overweight (though I'd say not obese) said that both her parents and her
13 year old sister had type 2 diabetes and she was terribly afraid that she would develop the disease. Jamie was very helpful, telling her that these things can be greatly helped by improved diet (and exercise, but the show didn't record him talking about that part) and that it could be avoided all together if she put her mind to changing things. She was in tears several times and it was all very affecting and heartwarming, etc.
On another part of the same show, Jamie was working with the owner of a fast food joint to bring up the level of nutrition in his place without increasing cost. The man was very resistant, however, so Jamie arranged a meeting with the girl and the man, in which she told him about her family's health troubles that, she said, had come from a steady diet of fast food. The man was mostly unmoved, and the idea was that he was very hard-of-heart, but at one point he said, "Well, there's an element of choice about this, isn't there."
Ah. There, as they say, is the rub.
I don't remember once in the programme a moment when Jamie, or anyone else, suggested that the people suffering from diet-related illness have a choice in what they eat. That, essentially, they not only had only themselves to blame, they could drastically improve their situation by making different choices. No one holds a gun to their heads, or a spoon to their lips, and demands that they eat nothing but crap. I've been to American supermarkets, and while it is true that they are filled to bursting with the most guddawful prepackaged rubbish, every, single one of them has a produce section.
The health (and social) problems the kids and adults experienced and talked about so tearfully on the show were treated as though it was something that simply fell on their heads from the sky. They talked about "it happening to me," as though it was a kind of evil spell cast on them by fast food purveyors and the carelessness of the school boards' dieticians. The show was premised on the idea that if schools just provided better food for kids, they'd be healthier.
But wait, since when did schools start being the source of all food in a kid's life? Or the source of all information about what was and was not good for them to eat? When I was in school, it was more or less taken for granted that the kid knew the basic necessities of how to walk, talk, dress himself and eat before he got there. The school was there to teach him math and reading skills. The attitude seemed to be that it was normal for the school to be a primary source of food for these kids. Which I thought was really weird. And if we assume that this is the kind of role that is appropriate for schools, why wasn't anyone at the school calling the parents of the fat kids in and talking to them about what they were eating? It seemed that the whole message was that these poor kids, and their poor parents, were being forced to eat badly and be unhealthy. Not once did anyone seem to suggest that any of them take the slightest responsibility for what had happened to them.
It was indeed heartbreaking to see the kids in this show, most of whom were about 15 or 16, and nearly all fat. I know they don't go their entire lives without hearing that junk food makes you fat, or being told, at least by someone, that a steady diet of fast food-joint burgers and fries (or in the case of Britain, frozen chicken tikka masala meals) will cause significant long-term damage to their health. I've seen the ads on tv, I've seen the magazines, the dietary charts in every doctor's office, every school nurse's room and plastered all over the walls of classrooms. The information is there and it is simply absurd to suggest that until the day Jamie Oliver showed up in their school, no one in their collective lives had ever suggested to them that they needed to eat properly to stay healthy. It's kinda intuitive.
But we don't live in a world that tells people to be responsible, and to face the consequences of their decisions. Funny, isn't it, that the kids have probably heard nearly all their lives, (and in Britain, absolutely certainly have) that they need to make "responsible choices" about sex. (Which means, "Got an urge? Go ahead, knock yourselves out but use a condom, and if it breaks, get an abortion... Here, let us help with that.") British school children are bombarded with precisely this "safe sex" advice from early primary grades to graduation and beyond.
But the thing about all that is that the message isn't actually about making responsible choices. It's about avoiding the consequences of indulging your whims and appetites. We have an entire culture that is totally addicted to appetite. Is there anyone left who is surprised that the kids are fat? And that they are having illicit sexual relations as casually as you and I go shopping for socks? Everything in our world tells us that we can do whatever we want all the time - and heaven help anyone who suggests a little self-control! - and there will be no consequences whatsoever. Pregnant? For heaven sake! get an abortion as fast as you can!
Is it possible that the "safe sex" message has percolated down to infect everything else? "Safe sex" really means totally unrestrained indulgence, which kids are told will have no long-term consequences as long as they're "responsible". Kids aren't stupid (no, really!) they've heard the underlying message loud and clear: "Indulge every single one of your appetites, every single time they bother you. Nothing bad will happen, and if it does, the school/state will step in and help you avoid the consequences". And this message has been sold to them by every one of their authority figures. Kids respond to authority. So, completely surrounded by a culture of total indulgence, how are we surprised that the kids are fat, flabby and out of shape? And getting diabetes at 13? And getting pregnant? And getting STDs?
Frankly, I like frozen chicken tikka masala meals, and ate plenty of them in Britain. I also like fast food, beer, pizza (esp. Roman pizza), pasta, bread, cake, chocolate, prosecco, gelato and pie. If I thought I could get away with it, I'd eat nothing else. I also, though this is changing lately, like sitting around on the sofa more than I like exercising; it's certainly easier. But I know if I choose these things, I'm going to be very, very sorry afterwards.
When I was done with surgery last year, I weighed about 73 kilos, and (once the swelling had gone down) looked pretty good, actually. It was quite heartening and helped a lot with my mental state... for a while. What didn't was the news that between the removal of ... well, between the type of surgery I'd had, and the drugs I was now going to have to be on, as well as my age, my metabolism had slowed to next to nothing, and the
average weight gain was between 25 and 40 pounds. Lovely. And it was shortly after this that a sense of hopelessness came over me, and I sank into a depression that lasted until the spring.
But I did the reading and though the news was not the best I'd ever heard, it wasn't the worst. It wasn't inevitable. There were things I could do. And really, it's not rocket science. Reduce carbs (including sugars) and get regular exercise, 20-30-40 minutes a day. And it doesn't have to be really strenuous exercise either; just walking up the steep hills in town, or biking every day, plus a few sit-ups and push-ups and whatnot to improve muscle tone, and I'd be right as rain.
But I didn't do them. I didn't eat a lot of junk, but I did spend the last year until April mostly staying at home, not exercising and drinking a lot of wine (mmmmboy! nothing like inactivity and a lot of prosecco to make post-operative depression better! I tell ya). And guess what? I gained more than 20 pounds. Am I complaining now to the heavens that I've been hard done by? Am I trying to blame the prosecco manufacturers? Am I even surprised?
Ah, no. It was me and the choices I made and these are the consequences of them. I knew perfectly well what I was doing and what would happen. (And yes, I'm doing something about it now.)
This is also the basis of the argument between the gun control people and the law abiding gun owners. It's true that guns don't kill people. People kill people, often using guns. It is statistically verifiable that in many places with strict gun control laws there are serious problems with gun crime. I'm not suggesting that this is a cause-and-effect thing. I don't think gun control laws cause increases in gun crime. But I do think that in cultures where people are told all the time that they can and should indulge their every whim, violent crime rates go up. And in these societies-of-indulgence, it is equally impressed upon the populace that while they are indulging their appetites and whims, the government will take care of all their problems, including that of violent crime.
We live in such a culture and it seems clear that as long as we continue to maintain the Fantasy that we can indulge all our whims and appetites without consequences, violent crime will continue to plague us. It isn't confiscation of the guns of law abiding people that will decrease gun crime. It's returning to a culture that tells people, from childhood up, that there are consequences to the choices they make, and that these consequences can't be avoided.
There is a reason gun control is a favourite hobby-horse of the left, the left that wants no one to take personal responsibility for their actions and choices. It's the left that thinks the solution to every problem is to have someone in authority take care of it, to have the Mummy State come and clean up their mess. It's the same left that has spent the last 40 or 50 years pushing the notion that kids should have as much sex as they want, every time they want, and that the state should pay for the abortions, or keep the single mothers in high style in their council houses. The same left that decided to make divorce easier. To spread artificial contraceptives to every school child. To put a Planned Parenthood abortion mill in every black neighbourhood in the US.
Indulge, indulge, the consequences aren't your fault
But the Real here is that it's not guns that create violent crime, and it's not spoons that makes us fat.
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