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How Much Does Your Kid Weigh? The Feds Want to Know.
It is well documented that big government is creepy. They’re all up in our business from cradle to grave, and they just keep getting more and more intrusive. Our government seems to have a never-ending supply of new and creative ways to violate our privacy. The Free Beacon reported that the U.S.D.A. would like to weigh and measure children in daycare. Seriously.
This data is being collected as part of the First Lady’s Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, and also will include what meals are served and how much physical activity the kids undertake during their day. A notice in the Federal Register states that “Good nutrition is a key to proper childhood development, but not enough is known about the food children are eating in childcare and related programs.” What they mean, of course, is that not enough is known the by government. Perhaps that is because it has nothing to do with running a country.
The data collection would fall into three categories: surveys, forms and interviews. They include menu surveys, and data collection around costs, but the really creepy part is under “Child intake and weight status,” which includes the following four bullet points “child food diary (completed by parents), standing height and weight form (collected by study staff), infant food intake form, and parent interview.” They want a government representative to weigh and measure your child like a piece of livestock, and then will ask the parents to report every bite that the child eats. To the government.
While it’s unreasonable enough that they even want this information, what does it say about how permissive we’ve become that they are actually taking steps to collect it? These invasions of privacy won’t stop until we make them stop. Now seems as good a time as any to start pushing back.
Published in Domestic Policy
The USDA needs to get back to its core functions: mailing seed catalogs and sniffing meat.
That kid is creepy. She looks like her head is about to spin.
The USDA should be abolished, along with the IRS and TSA.
I agree it’s creepy. But when the federal government is paying for school and daycare meals and things like WIC vouchers, I suppose they feel the right to check on what they are paying for. I wish only parents were the ones feeding kids and making nutrition and exercise choices.
The USDA needs to be abolished. Private institutions can take care of mailing seeds and sniffing meat. It would be cheaper and better.
I would go for that same expression, screaming MOLON LABE if faced with the USDA.
We’ll go along the day Michelle discloses how much Her ass weighs.
I don’t think that picture is creepy at all. That young lady has determined a course of action and is pursuing it with the fervor of a freeborn American.
Barack looks about 185 or so.
The article is fine but that picture is awesome!
Molon Labe !
For a second, I read it as Free Bacon instead of Free Beacon.
Seriously, what is wrong with this initiative? We have a serious obesity problem in this country which is hitting all of us in the pocket book via Medicare, Medicaid etc. Did you know for example that Medicare covers the cost of dialysis (north of $70K per year) for people of any age, not just the elderly? Until you find a way to unwind Medicare (good luck with that), we should consider any initiative that rolls back the obesity problem.
This is a small study, done in day care facilities that accept federal money. If you don’t want your child to participate, don’t enroll your child in a day care facility that accepts federal money. That applies to schools as well. Anyone who doesn’t realize that the federal government is gathering all sorts of personal data on public school children is rather quaintly naive.
I believe that one of the reasons the education establishment hates homeschoolers is that we don’t put our children in their hands. They can’t ask these kinds of intrusive questions and find out just what we’re up to in the privacy of our homes anyway.
Perhaps we should be asking why in the name of all that is holy the federal government is spending money on day care centers???????? And borrowing a million dollars a minute to do it, along with all the other non-essential non-government function-things that they federal government pisses our money away on…….
Its not just children. They are gathering data on everyone. They buy information from your doctor as well. Due to HEPA, the data is not connected to your name, but your weight, blood pressure, etc is grouped with other patients and sold to the Feds.
I fought this battle with the Census bureau years ago in another context, resulting in a series of correspondence that took almost a year.
From Federalist 56 (which I used in a subsequent letter):
“It is a sound and important principle that the representative ought to be acquainted with the interests and circumstances of his constituents. But this principle can extend no further than to those circumstances and interests to which the authority and care of the representative relate. An ignorance of a variety of minute and particular objects, which do not lie within the compass of legislation, is consistent with every attribute necessary to a due performance of the legislative trust. In determining the extent of information required in the exercise of a particular authority, recourse then must be had to the objects within the purview of that authority.
You mean besides us being free men and women? That’s the thing about freedom: You get to make sub-optimal choices. It is creepy when the government views us as cogs that can be inserted more effectively into society.
Is that kinda like suspending the free markets to save the free market system?
That picture is classic. Can’t stop laughing.
RE: #15—Really? Like, are you serious? You are willing to give the government information on what foods your child eats, and how much they eat? Monitor how much exercise they get, and what type? Have someone weigh them, measure how tall they are, and give that information to the government? Does your child’s school still offer recess in the morning and afternoon? If so, for how long and what activities do they take part in? Does your child have money to buy snacks, soda, and other edibles without you knowing? Are you willing to take time from your adult activities to go with them to the park and make sure they get exercise? Do you prepare meals at home, or is the local pizza place on speed-dial? Are you going to join them in a pick-up baseball game, or volleyball, or kick-the-can? Do you have them enrolled in so many after-school activities, you hardly see them, except for ferrying them to and from those activities?
Think about the next step—first, your kids, then YOU will be weighed, measured, and written in some government report. Is that what you really want?
If the “Society Against Round Americans” wanted to do the study, would it be ok?
I can see the need for good studies in this area.
The problem with the initiative is that while you or I may “like” to have this information as a curiosity, it is not a function of government, federal, state or local.
As for Medicare or Medicaid, the exact same argument can be applied to private insurance. My wife used to complain bitterly about her younger colleagues and their partying and poor diets. She said it was costing her more in health insurance and this was in the 1990’s, WAY before O-care.
Here is where individual health accounts could be a big advantage. By bringing the market to bear on personal healthcare costs, people would be allowed / required to make individual choices about their own health. This is the same as deciding whether to put your thermostat at 75 or 68 during the winter. Can you afford 75? Go for it. Can you afford higher MD bills? Pass the Twinkies.
Yes, IF…
They are willing to pay the full cost of the study.
They get written consent from every parent of every child in the study.
No data about children whose parents had opted out would be collected. (i.e. Day care providers are not incentivized to “include” data about the “off-limits” kids.)
Data must be obscured to such an extent that no daycare center (and therefore no child) could be identified from it.
No racial, ethnic, religious, gender or other sub-grouping information can be gathered. The survey cannot be used to promote any “special” program for any minority.
I get your argument and I agree with it, but only if we are willing to forgo Medicare support for dialysis or other obesity-related diseases. We can’t just cherry-pick the times when we want to be free and the times when we want to get support.
More like accepting that the markets are not free with the status quo anyway.