The War on Fat.

I am one of the three authors of the University of Baltimore's recently released Obesity Report Card, and I found Jacob Sullum's "The War on Fat" (August/September) a great read.

I am far from a proponent of government intervention, but in this case I side closer to Kelly Brownell's view. We can influence children's habits to encourage better health, and we should, just as we did with smoking. Sucking back an 850-to-900-calorie Super Big Gulp is just plain disgusting and ought to be discouraged.

Yes, the sweetened little snacks taste good and you want to eat more even when you suck up enough calories to propel a Freightliner from New York to L.A. We are, on the whole, wealthier than we used to be, so the cost of food is a smaller part of our budget. Still, demand curves slope downward. Make crappy food cheaper, and more of it will be consumed, hitting all of us in the pocketbook: Obesity-related health care tends to be expensive.

Obesity prevalence accelerated upward rapidly in the late '70s and early '80s. Something, perhaps many things, changed at that time to push the balance toward a rapid gain in weight. For one, agricultural subsidy policy changed just prior to that in a manner that encourages overproduction. The growth in Twinkle consumption is in part explained by policies that subsidize corn production. (Similar changes occurred in Canada, but at a later date. Now Canada's obesity levels are catching up.)

Also, caloric intake has increased. The portion of our diet that comes from highly processed foods has increased more than the rest of our diet. There is basically an infrastructure of obesity that subsidizes processed foods, encourages urban sprawl (reducing exercise), and discourages healthy living. Vested interests are likely to prevent the implementation of potentially helpful policies, as with tobacco in Kentucky and Frito Lay in Maryland.

Health care affordability in this country is a serious problem, and obesity-related costs make it worse. From everything I have seen, there is a genuine need to take proactive steps, even if those steps are objectionable government interventions, since there is no other obvious way to change behavior in a manner that is fast enough to prevent a disastrous outcome.

Kenneth R. Stanton

University of Baltimore Baltimore, MD