The food police, led by First Busybody Michelle Obama, are on the warpath.

Why can’t these obominable people mind their own business? Medium-sized people as we are, we libertarians of this website stand in solidarity (as the left would say) with our large-sized fellow citizens against these interfering bossieboots.

Reuters reports:

U.S. health officials have leveraged the star power of first lady Michelle Obama to roll out a new campaign against obesity, a preventable condition that drains billions of dollars from the economy.

Could someone explain to us how on earth obesity, or for that matter any other condition of the human body, can ‘drain billions of dollars from the economy’?

If there was a nationalized health service in America the government would be sure to claim the right to interfere with what and how much people eat – Fat Panels alongside the Death Panels – but as there is no such thing at least for the present, neither the government nor its henchwomen have any excuse to monitor and complain about individual choices even if they affect those individuals’ health.

[Michelle] Obama, who plans to take on childhood obesity as a cause, headlined the launch on Thursday of Surgeon General Regina Benjamin’s blueprint for what can be done at home, school and work to reverse the epidemic.

Hasn’t the First Busybody got anything better to do? Actually no, probably not.

In her first initiative since becoming “America’s doctor,” Benjamin issued a report on the consequences of obesity to start a national dialogue on the subject.

“The number of Americans, like me, who are struggling with their weight and health conditions related to their weight remains much too high,” she said.

Benjamin’s report lists recommendations for preventing obesity. They range from simply eating more fruit and vegetables to adding “high-quality physical education” in schools and bringing more supermarkets to low-income communities.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said at the launch that the Obama administration was investing $650 million in economic stimulus money in wellness and prevention programs aimed at obesity and stopping smoking.

Ah, now we see! So the government is going to waste hundreds of millions of tax-payer’s money on this busybodying in order to claim the right to interfere? Waste the money and then accuse those they’re interfering with of being the wasters?

She introduced the first lady as “everyone’s favorite vegetable gardener.”

Charmingly sycophantic. But – everyone’s? Not ours! And wasn’t there something about the soil in the White House garden being too full of chemicals to grow edible vegetables? If so, it’s gone down the official memory hole.

[Michelle] Obama, who created a White House garden with local school children, said the solution to the obesity epidemic cannot come from government alone. Everyone has to be willing to do their part to end the public health crisis.

Here it is – the community organizing. The mind of the collectivist at work. ‘Don’t make me alone bear this burden of ordering the lives of 300 million people – be kind enough to share it with me by co-operating.’  That, in coy terms,  is what happened in China when Mao launched the Cultural Revolution.

“This will not be easy and it won’t happen overnight. And it won’t happen simply because the first lady has made it her priority,” Obama told an audience of children’s advocates [?] at a recreation center in Alexandria, outside Washington.

“It’s going to take all of us. Thank God it’s not going to be solely up to me.”

The United States spends nearly $150 billion a year on obesity and related complications — twice what it cost in 1998 and more than every cancer cost put together, Sebelius said.

Note  – in their minds it is the ‘United States’ that spends this money.

Perhaps the First Busybody, obviously having too much time on her hands, could use some of it to learn some basic Economics.

“The unhealthier we are as a nation, the more our health care costs will continue to rise and the less competitive we will be globally,” she said.

Good grief! What a silly woman!