The Homa Files

I can live with higher tanning salon taxes, but closing fast food outlets is going way to far … this guy seems to agree … passionately.

Pro-choice advocates represent the sensical notion that it is not the government’s prerogative to legislate what women do with their physicalities.

It goes without saying that the freedom to abort ones’ fetus should not be the only choice that our country protects. Yet, in recent years, federal, state, and local governments nationwide … have legislated to limit our freedom to chose to smoke cigarettes, gamble our money, bag groceries, borrow cash, drink booze, enjoy tanning beds and anger our girlfriends by getting lap dances.

And just this week, under the leadership of First Lady Michelle Obama, the federal government has launched a new program to limit our freedom to get fat.

While the program is being sold as an attempt to limit childhood obesity, the policies it proposes will affect the lives of all Americans.

As I’ve argued previously, obesity is a physical manifestation of our country’s greatest and most laudable triumph: its defeat of hunger and want.

But, more than that, obesity is a manifestation of personal freedom: if ones enjoy eating hamburgers, then may he chomp away.

Contrary to the infantalizing notion that obesity is a “disease,” an expanding waist line is simply the result of free actors choosing to eat foods that they enjoy.

Indeed, the linguistic decision to label it an obesity “epidemic” reduces dynamic, free individuals into victims and disease carriers, unwittingly transmitting pathogens of obesity. It’s as if they “caught” obesity when they were sneezed on by a fat person.

Realizing that free people will often chose to get fat, anti-obesity crusaders are now actively seeking to limit our choices.

The city of Los Angeles has attempted to impose a moratorium on the construction of new fast food outlets.

Most troublingly, the Obama Administration’s new initiative will seek to change the culinary and commercial makeup of neighborhoods across the country, and potentially mandate the availability of “healthier” options.

All of this is designed to limit our ability to eat what we want, when we want. In other words, it’s about eliminating choice. The thing is: a lot of people like eating jelly donuts, pepperoni pizza, and chocolate cake.

Let them eat cake.

Source blog: Epstein’s Razor
http://trueslant.com/ethanepstein/2010/02/13/im-pro-choice-on-obesity/

This entry was posted on March 4, 2010 at 7:56 am and is filed under Health & Nutrition. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.