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By Brett Daniel Shehadey
Special Contributor for In Homeland Security

The American public’s health is directly related to its national security. The problem with obesity (being 20 percent over natural weighted BMI) is that it has been a silent mortal enemy and epidemic.

Obesity rates are currently at 35.7 percent for adults and it is also about thirty percent for children, according to the CDC.

Within the US military, obesity has shot up with a five-fold increase since 1996 and potential recruits are being turned away because of a pre-existing over-weight condition or obesity. [Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center].

Obesity remains the leading cause of preventable disease and a great many of other illnesses and mortality. It was found to be responsible for 20 percent of male and 15 percent of female deaths, according to Ryan Masters, at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Columbia University.

NIH figures and other trackers are much lower and less inclusive, says Masters.

Obese Americans are twice as likely to die prematurely than normal (BMI) weight citizens.

In 2008, the costs directly relating to obesity were about $147 billion, according to the CDC.

Curbing obesity through regulating food consumption has been suggested by California scientists after a study just submitted to the Bulletin of the World Health Organization. They found that deregulation of industry was a catalyst for increasing obesity. Particularly this had an impact for industries like fast food which are known sources.

“Unless governments take steps to regulate their economies, the invisible hand of the market will continue to promote obesity worldwide with disastrous consequences for future public health and economic productivity,” said the leader of the study, Roberto De Vogli, of UC Davis.

For the Europeans and other states, who tend to be much more socially conscious with their laws, this trend of regulating food choices might catch on or become acceptable with further study and legislation. The effect would lower their state health care systems as well.

For Americans, however, this would never fly. Americans like their food choices just the way they are. New York City’s ban on large soft drinks was a major blow back to this policy idea. Last year a state court of appeals struck down the city board’s ban and people of all political positions all over the nation ridiculed the motion.

Americans desire more individual choices and greater social benefits; lower taxes and more services or government spending in general. While this is contradictory, the solution for obesity could lay within taxing certain food choices, as the government already does with tobacco and liquor.

For America, curbing the obesity crisis will require some type of national effort. First, this has to involve an increase in public awareness of warnings; and second, the raising a luxury excise tax; much like what is already in practice and place for unhealthy consumption habits.

Even if the tax on sodas, junk foods and bad fast foods does not discourage enough Americans to alter their diet very much, they will increasingly do so over time. Moreover, they will be contributing more funds into the evolving universal social services that deal with their future medical treatments and social cost burdens from their personal bad consumption choices.

A US federal tax on sodas, junk foods and bad fast foods does not restrict the freedom of choice ad does not give the federal government a power that it does not already have; whereas the restriction of a particular food, quantity, size, etc. seems a great overreaching of government efforts, as some New York State courts have also ruled.

Federal taxation would likely have the impact of altering fast foods and drinks, making them healthier and building up a surge of needed tax dollars on an already strained federal government. States or local governments might also follow suit or slightly raise more revenues from these sources as well.

In addition to these non-restrictive and lawful powers of government authority, Americans must continue to be fitter through exercises regimens and more educated on their own initiatives with other boosts. Schools and certain workplaces, for example, could encourage independent exercise routines, rather than the standard social experiments like P.E. class or locally restricting personal choice.

Obesity and American personal food and health decisions will continue to be the center America’s health debate. Beyond warnings and taxes, there must be a national effort from cradle to grave to: encourage, educate and help guide a better national health overall and halt the obesity epidemic for individual future hardships and the future national burden of health costs.