Oregon, you may be surprised to learn, has an Obesity Task Force. On Monday it was scheduled to hold its first meeting in Portland.

The 2007 legislature created this group. Its mission is to study how to keep people from getting fat, and how to reduce the number of fat people in the state. Now you may have thought that the state had enough problems, from crime prevention and environmental protection all the way to running the DMV. But no, it thinks it can do some good on the weight issue too.

One of the topics of the task force meeting was the “Statewide Physical Activity and Nutrition Plan, 2007-2009.” If that sounds a little like part of the infamous five-year plans in the old Soviet Union, the similarity is no doubt coincidental.

A few days ago a new study came out that obesity is not necessarily tied to illness. If that’s the case, you wonder all the more if we really need this task force or its plan. (hh)