...parents are shown the consequences of poor parenting. The program shows computer-generated images of what their children may look like as adults if they continue with their present life-style, dietary and exercise habits.
First, a family with issues relating to their parenting, dietary and exercise habits is introduced. Then, the children are examined by physicians, and every aspect of their eating habits and physical activity is analyzed by an expert team. Then, the parents are shown what their children may look like by taking present-day photos of them and age-progressing the photos with a computer year by year until age forty. The parents are frequently brought to tears when presented with the likelihood of their childrens' unhappy future appearance and significantly reduced life expectancy.
The show I watched showed a fairly happy family of mom, dad, two young boys and a baby boy. The parents ran a deli and the boys--eight and twelve--were over there continuously eating snacks including chips and soda. In comes savior and nutritionist Dr. Lisa Hark on the show to save the day by providing rules for eating, drinking and living. She tells the boys to quit going to the deli where dad works to eat snacks, that meals will consist of only healthy foods, that the boys cannot watch tv or play video games for some time and then only if they earn points to do so by doing chores, that the parents will quit smoking and on and on...
Now, all of this sounds good and healthy, doesn't it? But the family honestly looks miserable. The younger of the two boys, eight year old Collin, looks ready to cry and does cry in some scenes. Mom and Dad look exasperated with trying to quit smoking and they don't try very hard, leaving them feeling guilty when they are hauled before the nutritionist at the end of the show to talk about their shame. Dad hangs his head and mom barely talks when they are quizzed on how they are doing. It's honestly rather pathetic. They are told by the nutritionist that at this rate, their sons will only live to 60. My gut reaction? So what? If they will be living in a state of misery with such a lack of control over what they like to eat, drink, smoke, or do in their daily lives, what's the point? Isn't happiness and free choice worth something too?
Reason Magazine recently had an interesting article entitled, "An Epidemic of Meddling: The totalitarian implications of public health." The article makes an important point:
The public health mission to minimize morbidity and mortality leaves no room for the possibility that someone might accept a shorter life span in exchange for more pleasure or less discomfort.
I realize that "Honey, We're Killing the Kids" is just a TV show and that the families on the show chose to be there. Yet, I can't help but think that the show is a metaphor for the type of public health policy that many nanny staters want to implement--legally enforceable rules that take away our free choice and demand that we adhere to a utopian view of health--whether we want to or not. "A government empowered to maximize health is not a government under which anyone who values liberty would want to live." I certainly don't.