Government May Soon Regulate Portion Sizes

Published on June 2, 2006 By Gideon MacLeish In Current Events

In the latest attempt to create a nanny state, the FDA is looking to enlist restaurant owners in their attempts to reduce portion sizes to combat obesity. Not only does this overlook personal freedom issues, it will effectively do nothing, as all it will do is cause customers to spend mroe to overeat.

I said some time ago that I envision a future where individuals are arrested for public gluttony, and where parents have children removed from their homes because they smoke in the homes. I am beginning to believe this could include the outlawing of "all you can eat" buffets as well. At the time, most people considered my arguments extreme; however, given current trends, it could well happen in the not too distant future. As for kids being removed because they overeat, that's already happening; basically if your child isn't within the 33-66 percent growth curve for their age, you run a very serious risk of having them seized by a nanny state "in the best interests of the child" in some parts of our country.

It is not much of a stretch to see FDA "agents" complaining when their attempts to control our weight are not successful, and demanding enforcement methods to ensure that we control our weight, because the "government knows what is best". In addition to public gluttony laws, this could well include tracking of our purchases and offering "counselling" to families known to purchase inordinate amounts of hohos. The government does not belong in the restaurant business, nor in fact does it belong in my life, making decisions for me that I was meant to make for myself. We should do everything we can to restrict the government from legislating portion sizes.

Comments (Page 2)

bakerstreet

on Jun 04, 2006

My God people, what the hell is the problem with being fat? Have we really reached the point that we are going to judge the relative success of a society by how healthy or beautiful it is? I want kids to be healthy, but this garbage of sending my daughter's body mass index home from PE class once every two or three months is insipid.

People need to mind their own business and raise their own kids and stop deciding who needs to be shot. I've seen kids (with skinny parents) that were fat until they hit 12 or 13 years old and then they thinned up nicely, as did their parents before them. I've seen kids that were thin all the way through puberty that immediately fattened up with zero change in lifestyle or eating habits. If we looked at them as children and seen fat parents with skinny kids, we'd think they were doing an admirable job, when in fact the view means basically dick.

Governments suggesting that restaurants shouldn't give us as much as we want for our money is a further infringement of our free market, and an idiotic one at that. Maybe they should limit how many hours of TV are pumped into our homes, so that we won't watch too much, too. Or we could be like dolts elsewhere that have mandated video games have a timer that cuts you off when you've played too long.

This is insipid.

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