As we reported earlier this week, a new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published in JAMA (the Journal of the American Medical Association) demonstrates that childhood obesity rates haven’t increased since 1999.

Not surprisingly, obesity “experts” and health officials are downplaying the report by simply repeating their static, alarmist talking points. In Newsweek, vegetarian diet doc Dean Ornish directly contradicted evidence from the past decade when he described obesity as “spreading like cancer, metastasizing across the country from 1985-2005.” Reporting on the study, TIME speculated that “it’s still far from clear that … the problem isn’t still getting worse.” And in a similar vein, The Washington Post editorial board warned readers that the threat of shorter life expectancies still remains despite the CDC’s promising findings.

But it may have been NBC’s chief science correspondent, Dr. Robert Bazell, who best characterizes this hard-headed resistance to the truth. On Tuesday, Bazell assured viewers that the percentage of obese children in the US has climbed steadily. He proclaimed: “No one is declaring victory,” and it’s time to redouble our efforts.

Thanks to a persistent food-cop misinformation campaign, many Americans wrongly believe that we need more -- not less -- bureaucratic intervention in our personal affairs. Case in point: an over-the-top Letter to the Editor this week in the Chicago Tribune:

The government needs to step in and in some way, regulate the production and sale of fast food. … Maybe if consumers saw “Warning: this product may cause obesity,” or “Attention: calorie content of more than 500,” on our Big Macs, we can begin to realize that we need to stop polluting our bodies with this unwholesome poison we call fast food.