Weighty Studies

The standard practice for lawmakers unsure of themselves, informationally or politically, is to form a commission to study an issue at length and produce, if the commission finds answers, a short report with the solutions presented therein, or if it cannot find answers, a long report that circles the problem convincingly and calls for further study. Last week, Maine and the nation were blessed with the approval of two study commissions on the new American scourge of obesity.

That the nation is fat is not under debate: Sixty percent of adults are overweight or obese, as are 13 percent of children and adolescents, double the levels of the 1970s. The ill effects are similarly well understood: Obesity is associated with increased risk of heart disease, cancer, diabetes and muscular-skeletal disorders, and may be responsible for 300,000 deaths a year. But why, in an age of cheap, low-fat food and countless print and television reports on the benefits of aerobic and anaerobic exercise, when rippling stomach muscles are the objects of lust, is the nation growing fatter?

The Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee of the U.S. Senate, led by its majority leader, Dr. Bill Frist, last week adopted the usual tactics for understanding the problem. It would offer training for health professionals to identify people at risk for obesity. A fine idea. But the committee also did something especially useful: It voted to ask Health and Human Services to sum-marize the conclusions of existing research on obesity and to design a research agenda based on those results. The abundance of information on the topic should yield helpful results.

This work could be of significant help in Maine, where another obesity study was announced by lawmakers last week. Legislative leadership approved a small study funded by the Maine Cardiovascular Health Council to examine why Maine children are getting fatter, including a look at their diets and exercise habits, discrimination faced by the obese and the effect of obesity-prevention counseling in insurance policies. If nothing else, it is of benefit to start gathering this information rather than repeatedly measuring the state’s growing girths.

It is worth noting that the previous American scourge, smoking, resisted 40 years of health information, cajoling by health professionals and scolding through ad campaigns. Raising the price of cigarettes, however, had a wonderful effect on young smokers: About half of them quit. Maine, it will be remembered, not long ago reduced the price of sugary, fat-laden foods when it removed its snack tax. A study concluding the state should reinstate a streamlined version of that tax would be short indeed.