White House Fingers PlayStation As Obesity Culprit

theodp writes "The winners of the childhood obesity infographic design contest sponsored by GOOD and First Lady Michelle Obama's Let's Move! initiative are in, and the overall winner calls out Sony's PlayStation as a major milestone on its timeline of childhood obesity (together with Coke, Pepsi, mall food courts, fructose and high sugar tariffs, TV, McDonald's, and other fast food). Somewhat ironically, the First Lady's other anti-childhood obesity efforts include a $60,000 video game contest."

Huh

[Cwix]

It barely even mentions the playstation. It seems to be more pissed off at soda then anything else.

Re:Something is missing

[Low Ranked Craig]

Of course not. Xbox is Microsoft, an American company and a big lobbyist / campaign contributor...

Value meal

[tepples]

Do fast food establishments in the USA make it easy and convenient to just order water with their burgers? Or is it more expensive to do so than to order it with sugar water?

The "value meal" gimmick at U.S. quick-service "workaurants" is roughly buy a burger and fries and get a free Coke.

Re:Huge Idiot

[Vahokif]

Do you know what the leading cause of obesity is?

Eating too much.

Blaming it on the food you eat isn't going to help anyone. You could lose weight eating only bacon, cholesterol notwithstanding, if you limit your intake. The only way to lose weight is to consciously make an effort to eat fewer calories than you burn.

Re:Hmmph.

[poetmatt]

its not hard to tie together the prevalence of HFCS in foods and a major increase in obesity.

good luck buying any convenience food without hfcs anymore.

Re:wheres the story?

[Vintermann]

Government for telling people that the world is coming to an end, and keep your kids inside.

I don't get it. Do the government own the entire media only where you live? Because newspaper headline scares outnumber government information campaigns about keeping your child indoors about ten to... zero.

Re:Huge Idiot

[rotide]

Portion control is _not_ starving yourself. I don't care how healthy you eat. If you have a habit of eating too much all the time you're still going to be fat.

Re:Hmmph.

[WrongMonkey]

Normal sugar is the disaccharide, sucrose, which is a combination of fructose and sucrose. These two are separated by hydrolysis and metabolized separately. But many of the biochemical regulatory mechanisms only apply to glucose and the body just "assumes" that there's one fructose for every glucose. So a diet with a significant unbalance of fructose will bypass many of the body's natural regulation mechanisms, leading to things like child diabetics and obesity.

you know why people eat too much?

[roman_mir]

people eat too much because government pushed the agenda of stabilizing food prices during Nixon actually and it carried on, and due to prices being fixed, the ingredients became worse and worse for human consumption, including the gov't not even mentioning that fiber needs to be in the food 'pyramid'. Watch this Sugar - the bitter truth. [youtube.com] An explanation on why people are obese.

The answer is fructose, which is a form of alcohol without the buzz, and which is not regulated by the FDA because its bad effects are not immediate and happen over time.

whitehouse is the cuplrit

[roman_mir]

and scientists finger the White house as the culprit of obesity: Sugar - the bitter truth. [youtube.com] An explanation on why people are obese.

Short version:

1. Nixon pushed to stabilize food prices to help him in elections, he succeeded in doing that to food.
2. Various gov't programs included providing 'juices' to the poor.
3. Fixed food prices caused corporations to start looking for other ways of taking care of price fluctuations, namely using cheaper and more cost effective ingredients.

The food that causes obesity is...

fructose.

The video above explains that fructose is a form of alcohol without the buzz and how it does damage by not allowing the body to understand that it doesn't need to consume more food, while causing obesity, liver damage, and various other illnesses normally associated with alcoholism.

BTW FDA doesn't control substances that even though harmful to you, do not cause acute poisoning, and fructose does not cause acute poisoning, it makes you sick over time.

White house is the culprit.

Re:Hmmph.

[drsmithy]

What chip?

That would be the part where you try and conflate children not getting out of the house with gun control and "more rights to criminals" (whatever that's supposed to mean, but I assume you're implying that crime is higher now that it used to be when everyone was wandering around with a six-shooter on his hip).

Crime - particularly violent crime - is at pretty much the lowest point in recorded history, despite what Fox News might be telling you. Even ignoring that, all those other countries out there with much, much stronger gun laws and "criminal rights" have nothing close to the obesity problems the US does, *and* their children get outside more (generally walking/riding/bussing/taking public transport to school, rather than being dropped off by mum driving her small tank).

This is changing, however, as the sensationalist news reporting pioneered in the US becomes common everywhere, and helicopter parenting starting to take hold across the world[0].

Just listing reasons why kids don't get out anymore as they once did.

Your reasons are bogus, as even a moment's thought demonstrates. Further, if you think the typical parent would be _more_ likely to let their kids out of their sight if every random Joe was walking around with a gun on him, you're delusional.