PINA COLADA OR GINA KOLATA?

SUPPOSE YOU HAD TO CHOOSE BETWEEN A PINA COLADA AND A GINA KOLATA? What would you do?
Now, this absurd question is only slightly less preposterous than an opinion piece in today's NYT written by someone identifying herself as Gina Kolata. The article is titled, "Whether A Child Lights Up or Chows Down." The piece, such as it is, goes on to cite "experts" who debate the relative demerits of both teen smoking and child obesity. They conclude (wait for it) that both are bad.
But before he could even get into the gristle of the article (for there was, sadly, little meat), Ned was irked by the silly use of directional suffixes-- you know, 'sign OFF ON,' 'chow DOWN', 'knock it DOWN', 'light UP,' or Ned's favorite blood pressure increaser, 'listen UP.' But let that pass.
The topic of the article was encapsulated in the first sentence "If you had to choose one public health problem to attack, which would it be: teenage smoking or childhood obesity?"
To which Ned immediately replied, why should he have to choose? This is what the logicians call a false choice.
Both are severe health problems and both could be easily addressed. One could raise the price of cigarettes to confiscatory levels, ban their use outside the home, and prohibit tobacco companies in this country from paying dividends until they pay the entire cost of smoking related health problems. Childhood obesity could be addressed by restoring activity to grade schools, introducing healthy school lunches, taxing sodas, banning sugary drinks and 'snacks' from schools (a no-brainer, to Ned) and educating parents on the toxicity of most of what passes for industrially produced food in this country, among other things. But of course, little of that was mentioned.
Ned wonders how someone, whose expertise is not provided, got to write such a non-article in the first place. Is she the wife/girl friend of the opinion page editor? Does she have something over the NYT management? Because Ned cannot think of a better way to waste a quarter of a page in the Sunday Week In Review section that a piece like this, unless it is to write pieces on the LeBron James "story" or the latest item in the sad saga of Lindsay Lohan.
Oops, they did that too.