I was a little premature the other day in expressing my partial relief that Michelle Obama’s new initiative to reduce childhood obesity didn’t draw much backlash. Now it has.

I expected the libertarian types to be the ones to lead the charge with yells of “nanny state” and whatnot. And while there has been some of that, it turns out that most of the objections have to do with Obama and her husband the president referring to their successful efforts to get their own children to eat more healthfully and exercise more. President Obama even noted that his daughter Malia had, a few years ago, started to get “a little chubby.” That’s mean, people are saying. Others, some of them professional denialists like Paul Campos, are arguing that obesity isn’t really a problem at all.

I’ll have much more to say about all this shortly on The Big Money. In the meantime, I suggest watching the above video from the TED conference of a talk by the chef and food activist Jamie Oliver, where he describes the “awful, awful reality” of the obesity epidemic. It might convince a few people that the problem is dire enough that concerns over body image and politeness might have to take a back seat for a while.

Marion Nestle, unsurprisingly, likes Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” initiative to fight childhood obesity, announced yesterday with great fanfare and lots of media attention.

“This is big news,” Nestle wrote. “I see much to admire here.” The initiative “focuses on kids” and “is sensitive to political realities (it’s called the uncontroversial ‘Let’s Move,’ not the inflammatory ‘Let’s Eat Less’ or ‘Let’s Eat Better’).”

Sure, it’s pathetic that “let’s eat less” and “let’s eat better” could possibly be called controversial, much less “inflammatory.” But the food industry and its compliant lackeys among the commentariat have always made sure that this is the case—in recent years, by yelling “nanny state” whenever the government moves to address behavior-based public health issues. But Nestle’s right—the careful language will help the program avoid all that nonsense.

Well, not all, but most. A quick scan of the usual suspects shows very little in the way of commentary on the issue. Perhaps they were too busy trying to convince us that bad winter weather somehow disproves global warming. There’s also the fact that the food industry isn’t fighting this one; so far, so it hasn’t sent out any talking points.

Still, when your whole life is devoted to opposition for its own sake, you can always come up with something if you choose to make the effort. So Julie Gunlock over at the National Review‘s consistently nutty blog The Corner decided that, though she applauds Obama’s parent-centric message, it was wrong for the first lady to bring up her daughter’s improved weight (as both she and the president have done before) in discussing obesity. Also, she wrote, parents, not (oy gevalt) “big brother,” should be the ones to teach children to eat better and exercise.

Think about that again: Obama’s initiative is about childhood obesity, and Gunlock’s argument is that it’s great that the main message is that parents need to get more involved in solving the problem. But it’s somehow wrong for a parent to mention a child’s weight in such a context. Gotcha.

The “big brother” bit has to do with President Obama’s creation of a task force to review all of the government’s anti-obesity initiatives and create a report. We don’t yet know what the task force will recommend, but it’s already being described in Orwellian terms. (We assume the task force won’t be tapping our phones to listen to us making dinner plans. But you never know.) This even though the administration has made it clear that encouraging parental responsibility is central to its campaign. 

Nestle’s blog entry, by the way, also includes a nice set of links to various news accounts and bits of (sane) commentary about the new initiatives.  

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The headline on the Washington Post‘s health blog, The Checkup: “Study: Soda drinkers at increased risk of pancreatic cancer.” The headline on the Village Voice‘s Edible News blog, pointing to the Post‘s item: “New Study Adds Pancreatic Cancer to Soda’s List of Evils.”

But both items go on to explain the many weaknesses in the study. From what I can tell, despite what the study’s authors say, there’s no reason to think that sugary soft drinks (diet soft drinks weren’t included) pose any particular risk for pancreatic cancer, though further study might be merited. Of course, they shouldn’t be consumed at all because of the many other health problems they create. But there’s no good reason, so far, to add pancreatic cancer to the list of “evils.”   

Update 9 a.m. PST: I should note that many, many news outlets and blogs have cited this study, with equally alarming headlines. And several accounts, like this one by Canada’s CTV, present the study’s findings with zero skepticism or any outside commentary. 

The New York Times on Sunday reported that the Obama administration will soon introduce legislation to restrict junk food in public schools. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is talking about the proposal in a speech in Washington, D.C., today.

This sequence from the Times‘ article caught my attention:

Orange County High School has vending machines with Pepsi, Mountain Dew and Dr Pepper, but even more popular among students is a candy cart wheeled into the school’s central hallway three times a day by Betty Almond, a school secretary.

The cart is laden with Pop-Tarts, Skittles and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, and Mrs. Almond and helpers barely keep up with demand from students on their way to class. Sales are between $400 and $500 a week, which Mrs. Almond uses to buy uniforms and equipment for school sports teams. Her most recent project was to outfit the wrestling team, on which her grandson competes.

‘The football team wants me to buy them a seven-man sled, but with this new legislation, they’ll never get it,’ she said sadly.

Principal Gene Kotulka said he planned to write his congressman to complain about a ban. ‘It’s not so much the money as the service it offers to the kids,’ said Mr. Kotulka, who has a Santa Claus belly and is known as ‘Poppa K’ to students. ‘I’d like to give our kids all the opportunities I can.’

At a meeting in his office to discuss food offerings, Bette Winter, director of the Orange County schools wellness committee, suggested that selling candy to students was not a good lesson. ‘What’s the best way to teach children? By example, no?’ she asked.

But Mr. Kotulka responded that it was parents’ responsibility to forbid children at risk of obesity to buy candy.”

The whole thing encapsulates so well what advocates of childhood health are up against: The Orange County laissez faire guy with the Santa Claus belly implicitly believes that it’s OK for schools to teach algebra and—more to the point—health and physical education. But at the same time he believes teaching that eating garbage is bad for you should be left solely to parents. But he doesn’t want to make it too easy for them, so he sells the kids all the junk food they want. Should we assume that Orange County High School’s health classes avoid all discussion of nutrition?

If you prefer your coverage of the food industry with a healthy dash of progressive politics (and let’s face it, many of you do), check out the newly redesigned AlterNet. The lefty, reader-supported news site has a new section on food.

The site has long covered food issues, but now there are more of them, and they’re all collected in one place. Many of them are excellent, such as Habiba Alcindor’s examination how poor people are increasingly buying their often-unhealthy food from dollar stores—”the rock-bottom of the food chain, the last stop before the food pantry.” See also Jill Richardson’s article on the shrimp industry’s ”dirty secret“: It’s “a health and environmental nightmare.” And Martha Rosenberg’s “The Overuse of Antibiotics in Livestock Feed Is Killing Us.” Perhaps best of all, Anneli Rufus, in her look at the health effects of sugar, gets high-fructose corn syrup right—what’s wrong with it, and what isn’t—something I’ve long been screaming for.

The food section features lots of articles from other sites, including the enviro-site Treehugger and Marion Nestle’s Food Politics. My favorite thing about it, though, is how well-designed it is, a relative rarity in a world filled with ugly, messy, unnavigable Web sites.