Body-weight management is not the government's job

If you're like most Americans, you've probably stuffed yourself like a holiday turkey during the past few weeks. So it should come as no surprise that the average American gains about one pound between Thanksgiving and New Year's, according to the National Institutes of Health. That pound a year really adds up over the decades.

Today, 17 percent of children are overweight.

By the time they reach adulthood, that number climbs to 66 percent.

It's a common political refrain that America faces a childhood obesity epidemic that's turning us into a nation of blubbery diabetics.

Underlying this is the premise that we're helpless before gingerbread cookies and honey-roasted hams — unable to resist these and other foods and incapable of putting down our forks. We can be cured, it seems, only by government intervention such as the banning of trans-fats and sodas from public schools.

But is it the food, or is it us? Is it a proper role of government to tell us what we can or can't eat? And are we really as fat as the NIH numbers suggest?

Before we let Uncle Sam into our kitchens, at school or at home, these questions deserve some exploration.

For starters, government data about what constitutes "overweight" and "obese" are misleading.

The standard metric for this measurement is a person's body-mass index, or BMI — the ratio of one's height to one's weight. But at best, BMI is a rough tool that does not take into account an individual's body type. A 6-foot-2 athlete who weighs 210 pounds would be classified as "obese" according to BMI charts — despite his 32-inch waistline, 17-inch biceps and his less than 6 percent actual body fat.

If you believe the BMI tables, most of the best players in the NBA and NFL are "overweight," including superstar athletes Kobe Bryant and Tom Brady.

Many Hollywood heartthrobs also qualify as fatties — Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Tom Cruise and George Clooney, to name a few.

What's more, the acceptable BMI continues to be ratcheted downward — transforming those who were considered perfectly healthy yesterday into "overweight" and "obese" today.