Monday, March 5, 2012

What If the Government Treated Food Like Sex?

J.E. Dyer at Hot Air whacks one out of the park.
it would encourage schoolchildren to explore their enjoyment of Twinkies, Oreos, and moon pies; it would employ professionals to devise ways of suiting government policies to the principle that our bodies belong to us and we can put whatever we want in our stomachs; it would hold legislative hearings on the overriding importance of the freedom to eat what we want; it would resist the very idea of remedies that involve the individual eating less, or eating different things; it would pay for liposuction, cholesterol drugs, heart surgery, and diabetes-mitigation measures but not for programs of diet and exercise; it would encourage the development of drugs that could prevent fat formation regardless of what one eats; and it would make it a basic human right to be able to eat whatever one wants and have the consequences mitigated by the public.
 As they say, read the rest.

Actually, I think this is unfair in part.  The government is all over the map on food, with parts trying to encourage as much food production eating as possible, others concerned with health effects, and trying education and sometimes even legislative efforts to discourage overeating.  It does, however, catch an interesting trend in the moral landscape; overeating, or eating the "wrong" food is a possible moral failing, while virtually any sexual habit is to be tolerated and considered normative.

 

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