By now many of us have probably heard the news: New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg plans a ban on a sugary drinks larger than 16oz. The story was carried in full in yesterday's New York Times.
This morning while cruising news sites and blogs, I ran across this article by Café Mom regarding this hot new controversy in New York City. I have heard her argument echoed over the Internet and by friends repeatedly since this story broke yesterday -- Americans have the right to be fat. The government shouldn't regulate our personal choices. We are free citizens.
Really? We are free of influence over what we eat, what we wear, what music we listen to? Last time I checked companies hired and paid millions to ad agencies that would manipulate our thinking, taking away our freedom of choice and leaving us with the feeling that using their product was the only thing that would make us feel happy, safe, relaxed, energized, etc. The point of a good ad campaign is to eliminate this feeling of choice.
Many, many millions of these sugary beverages are served up to kids. The ads show kids and families drinking them, they show athletes that our kids revere consuming them and they put their favorite cartoon characters on the side of the bottle. Of course a child is going to be influenced to want to buy that beverage. We have a responsibility as parents and advocates to keep our kids safe from things that harm them. If we aren't going to do that job, then the government has every right to protect future generations from an epidemic of obesity that could cause serious health problems and reduce the lifespan of our younger generations. Quite frankly we don't have the money to fund the health problems of an obese nation. In the immortal words of Bugs Bunny, "What's a rabbit to do?"
To advocate that a culture of children has a right to be fat is inhumane. Ask any neuroscientist and they will tell you that children and teens don't have the reasoning capabilities of adults. In fact this is exactly why teens often do really stupid things that we shake our heads at, like sneaking out at 3:00 a.m. or riding their skateboard down the middle of a busy road. This is why children have parents, to help them make the safest choices possible to stay healthy. If we go along with the logic of Café Mom, our kids also have a right to get cirrhosis of the liver, drive on the Audobon at age nine and smoke a pack day and die of lung cancer at the ripe old age of 16. But we have outlawed these behaviors and products because, as parents and as a society, we know they aren't safe for our kids. These are not responsible behaviors that will help create a generation of children that is happy and healthy. It also won't foster an innovative, forward thinking society.
This law is a gesture to give our children a chance at freedom, the freedom to move their bodies run, play and jump instead of being jailed in a body inhibited by obesity. It's our responsibility to protect our kids. If we let commercialism win this time, we are making the statement that we care more for our money than we do for our children.
Of course I agree with all my friends and fellow advocates that the best way to make consumers free is to educate them on their choices, but until our educational system has the same resources as a private ad agency, then it's naïve to think people would be able make well informed decisions.
So while I understand that it's fun to roll up to the Piggly Wiggly and slurp down a 32oz soda on a hot day, it's time we start thinking larger than our need for instant gratification. We have a health problem, an epidemic. It justifies action on the part of citizens and our government.
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That's because these Far Left Progressive's don't have the slightest idea or interest in how the Common People live, except for Telling us how we SHOULD live that is
Welcome to the Left's Brave New World
Ad companies can suggest that you TRY their product, but if you aren't interested, you aren't going to purchase what they are trying to sell. If you try it and don't like it, you aren't likely to buy it again.
Everyone should have the freedom to make their own choices. If a person CHOOSES to engage in behavior that is detrimental to their health, guess what? That is their RIGHT.
We have the right to tell that person that they are responsible for the consequences of their choices, which is exactly why government-sponsored health care is such a BAD idea.
Believe it or not, if people are responsible for paying their own medical bills, amazingly enough they will engage in the behavior that costs them the least amount of money. Funny how that works.....
I don't want the government responsible for making decisions about my health care, because then they will feel that they have the right to take more of my money and then turn around and tell me what I can and cannot do.
And that, my dear, leads to tyranny.
No thank you.
You can see personal responsibility in the shopping malls, streets and hospitals - tons of human flesh waddling around eating unhealthy food. Like it or not, you have been already paying for them through higher insurance premiums (lot of them are uninsured).
There was a time when citizens’ actions were proscribed only when they negatively affected another or your right to swing your arm stops at my nose, for example. Now that we’re providing or subsidizing healthcare, education, highways, the Internet – everything, there is no limit to state control under your argument.
Dozens of desserts can make you fat. Pizza. Prime rib. Candy, pasta, bagels and cream cheese. Frankly, just eating too much food period can do it. So what’s the answer? The Fat Police come out once a week and weigh you? If you’re not within the proper body fat standards, fines or, jail time?
Plus, as we all know, plenty of other details of life can make a person less healthy. Let’s monitor how much sleep people get every week. Let’s outlaw motorcycles, mountain climbing, race car driving and hundreds of other activities that are more dangerous and less healthy than others.
Finally, if the cost of government funded health care justifies a substantially more intrusive nutritional and exercise programs, then why doesn’t welfare/section 8/food stamps/etc warrant government mandated labor?
How many of those "unhealthy foods" are truly unhealthy?
If people would step outside of the comfortable bubble of believing that all of the "studies" that are rotely repeated on the Nightly News are the end-all, be-all of scientific knowledge about nutritional "science", they might actually find that the so-called "experts"......
.....aren't.
In fact, most of the studies which AREN'T reported on TV are the ones which tell the truth about which foods do - and more importantly, DON'T - cause health problems.
Funny thing is that each time the government comes down with a mandate to lower fat intake - and adjusts the free-lunch requirements accordingly - there is a huge jump in the obesity AND diabetes rates.
Every.Stinking.Time.
Yet these geniuses can't seem to make the simplest analytical/causal correlation, so when the rates go up, they decide they need to lower the fat content (and raise the grain content) even more.
And the obesity/diabetes rates kick up even higher.
Because I was not a Smoker.
Then they came for the Trans -fat Eaters and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Trans-fat eater
Then they came for the Happy Meals, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Happy Meal Consumer.
Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak for me
What is lacking in America is not laws, we have too many of them already. What we have lost in America is empathy. The one product that is sold by almost every ad campaign in our "free market" is "self-centeredness". The idea that you "deserve" to have every cool product that comes down the pike. Need or consequence have nothing to do with it anymore. Self is all that counts in America today.
Don't you just LOVE regressive economic impact LOL