Evangelicals resist Obama’s childhood obesity push

Don't those people resist anything that the President Obama, the First Lady, and the administration as a whole, propose?

By Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Evangelical Christians in the USA are the only major religious group where a majority opposes the federal government’s efforts to reduce childhood obesity, a Pew Research Center survey shows.

Asked if the government should play a significant role in reducing childhood obesity, 56 percent of white evangelicals said it should not, compared to 42 percent who said it should.

Overall, 57 percent of Americans favored such a government role while 39 percent did not.

First lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” initiative has drawn both praise and criticism from conservatives, and divided potential GOP presidential candidates, with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee supporting it and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin opposed.

Other groups viewed a government role more favorably, including 61 percent of Catholics and religiously unaffiliated Americans, 75 percent of black Protestants and 51 percent of white mainline Protestants.

Obama expanded her “Let’s Move” initiative to include congregations last November and marked its one-year anniversary in February at an evangelical church outside Atlanta.

The survey by the Pew Center for the People & the Press was conducted Feb. 22-March 1 with a national sample of 1,504 adults, and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

It would appear that the white evangelicals do have a serious problem with President Obama and his administration and they have had that from the very beginning of his presidency.

Was it not them, many of them, who called his candidature and subsequent election as illegal claiming that he was not “native” born and many of them still are of that persuasion well into 2011.

Not that Obama has delivered what he has promised and for the very reason one could be opposed to him, such as the promised closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention center and the illegal incarceration of those many people there, without trial and proper recourse to justice.

Now we are being told that this center will be permitted to continue is existence ad infinitum, for as long as the “war on terror” persists.

One broken promise after the other from the US President in the same way as from the British coalition government.

The adage that one can tell quite easily when a politician is lying still seems to hold true for it is every time when he or she opens his or her mouth.

While I understand the stance of some of those evangelicals, who believe that government should stay out of our lives, and I can but feel with that too, as I too would like government to do just that, the obesity problem does not seem to get solved by people on their own.

All I need to do is see pictures of children in America, Whites, Black, Hispanics, and Native Americans, and all I am seeing are a majority of youngsters who are clinically obese, or should we call a spade a spade, and put it bluntly; they are fat, extremely fat.

Much of this problem we can fairly and squarely lay at the door of the McDonald's Corporation and others of their ilk who have made the youth of America and elsewhere addicted to their junk stuff. To call it food would be to elevate the stuff to actually something that one could eat and that could actually do someone good.

Everything in moderation, is always being said but, it would appear, that some people have no moderation when it comes to that kind of “food” and the amount of food in general. Portions in America a far too large, whether in restaurants or at home. In addition to that the fact that families no longer sit down at table for their meals also has contributed to the obesity time bomb.

Stop resisting some good ideas and get those kids trimmed down again, before they will die before their parents, on heart disease.

© 2011