The Freedom Bulletin

An article in Nature (original source with paywall here) claims that sugar should be regulated like alcohol and tobacco through taxes and age restrictions because it is equally “toxic” to people. According to CBS News:

“The United Nations announced in September that chronic diseases like heart disease, cancer, and diabetes contribute to 35 million deaths worldwide each year, according to the commentary. The U.N. pegged tobacco, alcohol, and diet as big risk factors that contributed to this death rate.

Two of those are regulated by governments, ‘leaving one of the primary culprits behind this worldwide health crisis unchecked,’ the authors, Robert H. Lustig, Laura A. Schmidt and Claire D. Brindis, argued.”

If sugar was something inflicted on people against their will, like pollutants in the air, then it would make sense to regulate it. But sugar is something that people can choose to eat, or not to eat. Consuming lots of sugar, just like consuming lots of alcohol or tobacco, may very well increase the risk of dying of heart disease, cancer, or diabetes. But “experts” have no right to assume that it would be beneficial for these risks to be lowered no matter the cost. Each person is the ultimate expert in his or her own well-being, and each person will arrive at a different conclusion when it comes to balancing health and quantity of life with enjoyment and quality of life. It’s not a bad thing for decisions about what to consume to be “unchecked,” as the authors of the article characterize it; it’s a basic part of a free society.

Sugar, alcohol, and tobacco do have some similarities. Sure, they all can have negative health effects. But choosing to consume them does not interfere with anyone else’s life; therefore people have a fundamental right to consume as much or as little as they choose. Instead of considering the similarities a reason to regulate sugar, why not consider de-regulating tobacco and alcohol?

Five elementary schools in Texas are getting a $2 million grant to install cameras to track everything students eat. Each tray, with a unique code, will be photographed when the student chooses their food and again when they are done eating, to see exactly what nutritional content they consumed. This would be an invasion of privacy even if the data was only aggregated for statistical purposes, but each student’s food consumption is tracked individually, and the information is reported to their parents! Yes, these are kids, not adults, and yes, a cafeteria is a public place, but this is going too far. Kids have privacy rights too, and the desire to improve nutrition and combat obesity should not make people forget about individual rights. People of all ages should be able to live their lives without having everything they do monitored and analyzed.

The food police are at it again. Governor Deval Patrick has created an initiative called “Mass in Motion,” which aims to combat obesity. If the initiative passes, restaurant chains will be required to post the amount of calories their foods contain right on the menu, and kids will be weighed in 1st, 4th, 7th, and 10th grades and the results and recommendations will be sent home to their parents.

This is a terrible idea. In addition to costing taxpayers’ money, this initiative will take the pleasure out of eating and will violate kids’ rights.

First, having calorie counts thrown in your face takes the fun out of going to a restaurant. People don’t go out to eat because it’s healthy; they go out to eat as a special treat, because it’s fun. Now, people who are especially health-conscious can go on the Internet and look up restaurants’  nutritional information before they go, and the rest of us can simply enjoy the food without having to worry about how healthy it is. With calorie counts shown right on the menu, however, people might end up choosing foods with fewer calories, but they’ll probably choose things that don’t taste as good, and even then they’ll probably feel guilty because they’ll know there are other foods they could have chosen that have even fewer calories. People should look at food as food, not as numbers. Making people healthier is not good if it requires taking the fun out of everything.

Additionally, making people healthier is not good if it requires violating people’s privacy rights. The purpose of school is to teach kids facts about history, grammar, spelling, math, science, et cetera. Schools should not teach kids what they should do or how they should live their lives, nor should they have any interest in how much kids weigh. Once at my high school, everyone was weighed in gym/health class, and even though no reports were created or sent home, it was slightly humiliating. Imagine if this was done every 3 years and parents received a report about it! Not only would this be humiliating, but it would be a violation of privacy rights, because the government has no right to know how much you weigh.

What is wrong with letting people make their own decisions about what to eat and how much to exercise? How much you weigh is up to you, not up to parents, doctors, schools, or the government.

I saw an article in the Boston Herald about a new ban on junk food in Newburyport, MA schools. I think this is just ridiculous. The state government has basically turned into the gun police, the driving police, the health police, and now the food police.

Sadly, there are a lot of schools that have decided not to sell desserts, soda, and other good-tasting food in their cafeterias. Saying that you’re not going to sell junk food is one thing, but telling people they can’t bring it in violates people’s rights on a whole new level. One could argue that the school has a right to decide what products it wants to sell, but the school has no right to tell kids what they can and can’t bring in.

Kids in Newburyport now are forbidden from bringing in all sweets, from candy to pastries. So much for making school fun. Now kids can’t even look forward to eating something tasty at lunch time.

Dr. Caroline Apovian of the Boston Medical Center was quoted as saying, “I’m all for it. We have an obesity epidemic in children, and candy is just empty calories. I can’t imagine a parent being upset that schools are banning candy.”

I beg to differ. Candy is not empty calories – it tastes good. That’s the whole point of candy.

Maybe people would be healthier if all they ate was fruit, vegetables, and plain, boring meat, but what’s the point of living if you’re not allowed to do anything fun? A life without candy and sweets is not a very high-quality life. People of all ages should have the freedom to decide what they want to eat.