...unfortunately. [still too high]

You know the thing editors do to add hidden meaning to sentences that can be lost by editing or missfires the brain sometimes makes when on TV? There you go.

Though, to be fair, Bush should have had a few of them present at all times.

You need water. You don't need Cheetos.

99.999% (I'm forgoing a few 9s here due to laziness on my part) of people get immense essential irreplaceable health benefits from water. Unless you are starving in the street, you won't get ANY health benefits from eating cheetos.

You reduce the availability of water and everyone is worst off.

You reduce the availability of cheetos and everyone is better off.

It's that simple.

Not sayind implementing those measures for junk food would make everything perfect, but it would make things better than they are now.

Rather than viewing policies as an all or nothing sum, perhaps we should view them in terms of incremental improvements.

Then we would lose some good commercials. Let's take down that etrade Baby commercials first, and then work on the companies with other lousy commercials.

Only because they don't drink too much of it.
Just looked at the ingredient list for Cheetos (crunchy kind) and it doesn't seem as bad as some other things, actually. It does have MSG though plus some artificial flavors and an artificial color, so I guess if you count those as "junk" (or you can't have MSG) then you might want to avoid.

Obesity is caused by a person eating too much and it doesn't really matter what.
Now, how well their body is balanced, health-wise, is determined by what a person eats and if you eat one type of food constantly, you'll have a lack of balance there.

(Think it's funny how we ended up talking about food.)

There is no debate : Everything is poison ... depending on the dosage.

Edit : some clarification, you can eat what you want as long as you don't eat the same damn thing everyday. And eat fruits. And yeah junk food has poor nutritive value so it shouldn't be considered as food to begin with, but snack or something.

Well, it's outrageous that someone actually considers the lack of TV commercials for tobacco meaningful, especially since everyone can see other people smoke in public or even at home (which is MORE influential than stuff on TV). There's only laughable attempts at limiting the distribution (for example the consumer should IMHO always have the right to buy single cigarettes, not always packs - that would have certainly made dropping the habit easier for me - btw, what ultimately helped me quit smoking was electric cigarettes which all sorts of organizations, including supposed health organizations, want to get off the market).

Anyway, more importantly - I highly recommend you watch Fathead. The film does not claim that junk food is healthy, it does prove however that (or at least explains why):
a) junk food is not nearly as unhealthy as everyone seems to claim or believe (the guy came up with the idea for the movie when he noticed that the results presented in Super Size Me are mathematically not even possible - and conducted the same experiment himself with absolutely different results)
b) the diets recommended by some health organizations and companies producing "healthy" food are in fact just as harmful or even worse
c) that obesity is not nearly as harmful as those organizations want you to believe
d) how many statistics and how much research was faked by the "health" lobby

Anyway, what I'm saying is: the government officially agrees with those health organizations and ultimately whatever the government would do - it might ultimately not help anyone except that lobby while making the average guy pay more for his meals without receiving any health benefits.

" Obesity is caused by a person eating too much and it doesn't really matter what."

and winning a soccer match is *caused* by scoring more goals than the other team. A room having a 100 people in it is *caused* by 100 more people entering it than leaving. Having a bank balance of $10000 is *caused* by depositing $10000 more than you withdraw.

Caloric surplus and weight gain are not synonyms, no they are *cause* and *effect'. What a great and meaningful scientific insight you have brought us!

Soccer coaches shouldn't worry about strategy, tactics, physical fitness of their players, formations or the like. Just score more goals than the other team that will *cause* them to win the match. It is that simple. You(or a Nutritionist or Medical Doctor) should coach one of the major football clubs like Real Madrid or Manchester United you would make a heck of a lot of money.

Sorry this is not minded against you in particular but reading diet and nutrition literature is a major hobby of mine and I have come to believe that the dietary advice peddled by the USDA and similar organizations are wrong, detrimental and not based on solid science at all. One running theme in the obesity litterature is the same confusion about what actually CAUSES obesity that you harbor. The researchers aren't even asking the right questions.

That's not what I said. I never mentioned calories at all. I said "eating too much", which doesn't necessarily mean "caloric surplus".

I'd have to eat 10 kg of celery daily to get 1500 calories which isn't going to happen. If I did though, I would gain weight without the "caloric surplus" (and have other health issues).

The man is the duly elected President of the the United States - please do not denigrate the office by referring to him as obummer. His name is President Obama. Thank you for your respect and consideration no matter how you feel about his actions. Btw, one of my close friends is a Yemeni woman that came to the US to attend a high-level, year-long photography course and is now back home attempting to teach others to shoot with their camera's not their guns. Despite the omnipresent oppression she lives with as a woman, even she does not denigrate elected leaders with untoward commentary. Her I revere for her bravery and tact - she deserves all the respect and care I can offer simply because change happens through calm, considered actions, behavior and words - not name-calling.

The irony.....

We live in the United States, one of the rights we ostensibly value is the freedom of speech. Freedom of speech means I am free to mock and disrespect my leaders if I choose to without reprisal or censorship. I see absolutely no reason why a member of another nation is not allowed to mock my leaders as we generally recognize freedom of speech as a universal right. You are free to criticize the mocking but by no means are you entitled to dictate how another person may speak.

Please, try to admonish someone for disrespecting your leader without disrespecting one of our founding principles. You are welcome to continue doing so, of course, this post would be equally ironic if I said otherwise, however, I am simply tired of people applying a double-standard to freedom of speech. It does not solely apply to speech you are okay with, it applies to speech you may find very offensive as seems to be the case here. The Bill of Rights does not include "the freedom to not be offended" anywhere within its text.

Pet peeve of mine, nothing personal.

Fair enough but my thinking is that if you're calling a person out on their actions with which you disagree, then calling them by a derogatory name sure isn't going to win you any "freedom of listening" points. A tenet of civility is based on proper usage of a person's name and while "freedom of speech" may give anyone the right to call another person by a derogatory name, in my book, you then lose their "freedom of listening" to anything you say after that...

Just sayin is all....

Haha :).

Yeah, because we aren't hardwired to drink lethal amounts of water, with the notable exception of some marathon runners who really should drink stuff with more electrolytes in it.

Calories, sugars, salt and fat though, we are wired to crave for the stuff, because we evolved in an environment where such things were not plentiful. In essence, our craving for it was balanced by what our environment could deliver.

Fast forward to our current society and our cravings are not longer in balanced with what our environment can deliver. Now, we can readily find foods with crazy concentrations of fats, salts and sugars, not to mention calories overall.

Cheetos are chunk food because they pack tons of salt, sugar and calories while giving no real nutritional benefit in return.

Boy are you ever wrong there. I cut processed sugar off the things I eat and lost 15 pounds right there.

There is such a thing as calories to satiety ratio. For junk food, that ratio goes through the roof (not to mention salt and sugar... processed sugar is really potent stuff, the like of which is seldom found in the natural foods we ate over the course of our evolution).

Taking your cheetos as an example, I could probably polish off 3-4 large bags before feeling sated. The calorific consumption (not to mention salt and sugar) would be through the roof of course. Same thing for a bag of cookies.

And at some point, I looked at the nutritional info for a sandwich at a restaurant and realized to my horror that while the sandwhich sated me just enough for a meal, it had all my recommended daily calorific intake packed in it.

In order to keep a balanced weight, you need to eat smart. Eating junk food is not eating smart.

Actually, healthwise, you're better off eating the same balanced healthy meal all the time than eating what they serve at your regular burger joint.

Not saying you won't lack some things, but it will actually be a lot less.

Junk food really is empty calories with practically nothing packed in it.