Governmental Policy and Obesity

Governments perform many tasks. One of the tasks is to deliver services to the people they govern. Healthcare promotion and regulation is a government service that promotes the good of the population of the state. Policies to meet the challenge of a globally spreading epidemic of obesity are being developed and implements by all those countries experiencing an obesity epidemic in contrast to those countries where poverty and malnourishment still prevail.

All governments perform three general functions. They make laws, enforce laws, and adjudicate cases arising under the law. The institutions of government that perform these functions vary from country to country. In the United States, they are performed by the constitutionally defined three branches of government—the legislative, the executive, and the judiciary. In the states, a similar division of legal labor exists, but in many states the executive branch may be a plural one in which the state governor shares power with other elected executive officials.

Policy-making in the United States occurs within the separation of power system between the three branches of the government of the United States and also in the federal system that joins it into a union with the several states. The effect is usually a policy-making process that is democratic without a single person or group in charge, but one that is also at times inefficient.

The politics of the policy process requires the identification of a problem. In the case of obesity, it was noted by a number of health specialists, including public health officials who measure demographic features of schoolchildren or scan them for health issues. It was also noted by many observers that many people in the adult population were gaining considerable weight. These observations were interpreted as a significant health issue that was not simply private or personal but a public issue that needed to be addressed by government. Consequently, the problem was pushed onto the agenda of the government, where in due time, it would be considered for some kind of solution.

Once the government identifies a problem, the next step on the agenda is to define that problem. Otherwise the “problem” that will be “solved” may be something entirely different so that the problem does not actually get addressed. In the case of obesity, the problem was obvious, or so it seemed, until challenged. Critics claimed that despite casual observations that Americans had gained enormous amounts of weight, there really was not an obesity epidemic. The accusation asserted that government bureaucrats and health researchers were colluding with drug and weight-loss industries to mislabel 60 million Americans as overweight to attract funding. Instead of a health problem, it was a political corruption problem, according to critics.

Despite opposition, Congress held hearings and other government agencies in cooperation with health officials moved toward defining the causes of obesity. Again, the politics of the policy process came into play as a number of food growers, processors, and distributors were accused of being responsible for the epidemic of obesity. These include the manufacturers and distributors of corn syrup, the fast-food industry, and even vending machine companies that placed “junk food” in schools for children to purchase. In the struggle to define the problem of obesity and a solution(s) as legal policy all of these participants—healthcare providers, food producers, food distributor, advocacy groups, government agencies with an interest in the development of policy, and others—engaged in a struggle to hammer out a policy that deals with the issues surrounding the problem. This stage of policy adoption is crucial, for without a success at this stage, bills in Congress die and do not become policy. Once adopted, the policy process moves to the fifth stage, which is implementation.

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