President Clinton’s former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala says that obesity is a national security threat, which MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell attributed to a cut in education spending.
“It’s really scary,” Shalala, representing the Bipartisan Policy Institute, said of military-aged young adults. “Twenty-seven percent of young people between 17 and 24 are obese . . . It’s the first generation of young people to come through without mandatory physical education in their schools.” Mitchell said that “the lack of physical education is because of budget cuts in the schools.”
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Mitchell, who hailed Shalala’s report as “more ammunition today for new york city mayor mike bloomberg’s campaign against Big Gulps,” asked the former HHS chief for her thoughts on the Bloomberg large soda ban. “The mayor has it right,” Shalala said. “It’s portion size that we have to watch, and that’s why he’s trying to get rid of these big cups and giving people the option of having a smaller cup.” (Bloomberg is banning the sale of sweetened drinks over 16 ounces, not mandating the availability of smaller portions.)
Mitchell asked Shalala to “come down to our [MSNBC] cafeteria after the show and we’ll do a little fact-checking down there.”
