Queen business: Let them eat peanut butter!

Many, many times on this blog, critics have suggested Americans don't need big government to protect them from obesity. The argument is we don't need government to tell business what to do. Let the consumer decide. Let the individual decide. Let the company decide.

So these so-called individual rights advocates want government out of our lives when it comes to gun control, and when it comes to tobacco use and when it comes to unhealthy fast foods.

However, if the Wall Street (and Main Street) crisises have taught us anything: it's business only care about making money and mostly making money and bonuses for themselves. To the point that businesses will kill people to make money.  Witness the salmonella outbreak in peanut butter.

The company tried to keep the salmonella outbreak secret. But they are not the only company keeping salmonella poisoning secret. ConAgra Foods -- maker of Peter Pan peanut butter -- hid salmonella in its products from the public for THREE years.

All you "individual rights" advocates, all you caveat emptor people, all you fat-cat executives: Are you ready for your PB&J sandwich from Peanut Corporation of America?

If you want to get sick (or not get sick), read today's article in the NY Times:

Problems emerged in southwest Georgia’s peanut country in 2004, when a whistleblower reported that the food-product giant ConAgra Foods had found salmonella in peanut butter at its plant in Sylvester, Ga., 75 miles from Blakely. But when plant officials declined to release their laboratory tests, the Food and Drug Administration did not pursue the records and was unable to confirm the report of salmonella.

The government finally demanded the records three years later, and verified the whistleblower’s claims, after hundreds of people were sickened by salmonella-tainted peanut butter produced at the plant in 2007. Even then, ConAgra insisted that the government not make those records public, according to documents obtained last week by The New York Times. Calling its testing proprietary, ConAgra told the food agency in a Feb. 27, 2007, letter: “Once F.D.A. has completed its review of the documents, please return them to ConAgra Foods or shred.”

Everything is bigger in Texas including the bill for obesity

The phrase, “Everything’s bigger in Texas,” rings true when we consider the current state of Texans’ health. Nearly two-thirds (64.1 percent) of the state’s population is overweight or obese.

And it's costing billions.

In 2005, there were nearly 3 million more obese adults in Texas than in 1990. Only 12.3 percent of Texas adults were obese in 1990; by 2005, that share had more than doubled, to 27.0 percent, well above the national average of 24.4 percent.

But who cares if Texans get fat. Doesn't Wall Street want all those Americans spending big chunks of money at fast food restaurants? However, Texas business may be thinking twice.

Texas Comptroller Susan Combs reports obesity cost Texas businesses an estimated $3.3 billion in 2005. This figure includes the cost of health care, absenteeism, decreased productivity and disability.

Most of the cost of private health insurance is borne by America’s employers. Since 2001, their health insurance premiums have risen by an average of 68.2 percent. The national epidemic of obesity is a major factor in rising health care costs and skyrocketing health insurance premiums.

Sadly, the epidemic begins at an early age. In a Texas-specific study conducted from 2004 to 2005, researchers found that 42 percent of fourth graders were overweight or at-risk of overweight, as were 39 percent of eighth graders and 36 percent of eleventh graders.

By 2025, many of these overweight children will be entering the work force as overweight or obese adults, at a considerable cost to their employers. If the prevalence of obesity continues rising at the current pace, obesity could cost Texas businesses $15.8 billion annually by 2025.

“Obesity has roughly the same association with chronic health conditions as does twenty years’ aging; this greatly exceeds the associations of smoking or problem drinking,” stated Roland Sturm of the RAND Corporation in 2002.

It's worse than smoking and drinking and it's going to cost Americans billions. When will Americans realize this is a national crisis, not a personal image issue.