For the love of God, when are we going to stop pushing for more government intrusion and micromanagement of our lives? I'm currently eating a potato chip. I shouldn't have to pay a tax for it. I shouldn't have to show ID to buy it. I shouln't be told when, where, and in what manner I'm allowed to eat it. Surely, even the most left-wing of you out there have to see how nuts this is.

The government has tried to outlaw poor health since prohibition. The only good that came out of that was the birth of stock car racing. What, in the name of Richard Petty, do these people think they're going to accomplish? What's next? Sending Arlen Specter into my house to make sure I spend time on the treadmill every morning? Come on, folks. Learn how to take care of yourself for once and leave me the hell alone.

Fact: Potato chips and pop don't kill you. Fact: Alcohol doesn't kill you. Fact: Tobacco doesn't kill you. Fact: Beef doesn't kill you. Fact: Fried chicken doesn't kill you. Fact: Snickers bars don't kill you. If you think I'm wrong, please take me up on this challenge. Go down to the vending machine in your office or to any check out line of a grocery store. Pick yourself up a nice Milky Way. Eat said Milky Way. Wait. If you are still alive at the end of this experiment, you prove me right. If you drop dead, I humbly stand corrected. Disclaimer: if you have been diagnosed a diabetic or have an identified allergy to chocolate, please exercise caution. You may substitute a chicken leg from Kentucky Fried Chicken for this experiment.

Can the blatant overuse, or abuse, of these products kill you? Potentially, yes. Is there anyone over the age of 4 that doesn't know this? No.

Here's my question. What the hell do you regulate? Do you regulate potato chips, cola, and candy bars? OK, fine. But do you also regulate potatoes, cooking oil, and bags of sugar? No one in their right mind would suggest a potato tax or regulating the purchase of cooking oil. So, guess what, geniuses? I can make my own damn potato chip if I want to. All I need is a sauce pan big enough to deep fry a couple slices of spud. You can't watch my every move, nor do you have the right to. You don't have the right to monitor everything I put to my lips.

I know you all mean well. I know you think you're helping. And finally, I know you're going to say, "What about alcohol?" Please understand that I recognize the danger of someone getting behind the wheel of a pick-up truck after half a case of Yuengling. I've never seen anyone swerve across 3 lanes of traffic after eating a hamburger (not to be confused with the morons who swerve across the road while eating a hamburger).

Where in the Constitution, or the Ten Commandments, or the Koran, or the Torrah, or the Tom Cruise Bible of Scientology does it say, "Thou shalt not eat stadium hot dogs"? Which constitutional ammendment justifies the taxation and/or regulation of a freaking can of Pepsi? How much is enough? How far do you have to go? Will you please let me wipe my own ass, for crying out loud? When I turned 18, and eventually 21, I expected to be able to make some decisions on my own as a supposedly free, adult citizen of the United States. All of you bureaucrats, leftists, Marxists and policy wonks out there are not my parents. You never were, and you never will be. You are not my caretaker. You are not my nursemaid. You are not put on this Earth to hold my hand and decide how I should live my life. Go away and leave me the hell alone.

Respectfully,

Ford Driver.

I am - GASP - drinking a can of Coke as I type this. (Pause for shudders of horror from all reading this.)

I can agree with some regulation on what can be sold in schools, particularly in lower grades. Part of growing up is learning to make decisions, and parents need to have the opportunity to teach kids something about good and bad decisions before they have the chance to try out those skills. By the time kids get to high school, though, I'd definitely want to see things easing up - those kids are almost adults, and besides they can go out and buy junk food easily anyway.

I can agree with regulations intended to protect people from the direct effects of another person's bad decisions. For example, no smoking in the mall is valid; no smoking in your own home is intrusive. No drinking & driving is valid, but if someone wants to get plastered, that's their right. (I think it's a stupid decision, but if we outlaw stupidity, we may as well define most of the world as technically being a jail.)

I can agree with truth-in-labeling requirements. My can of Coke has 50 mg of sodium. If I discovered, somehow, that it actually had 100 mg of sodium and they were lying, I'd be upset.

However, I'd agree that I should be able to drink the stuff, no matter what someone else thinks of it. It's a can of Coke, not rat poison. And those Hostess Cupcakes I had last week? I don't want people to try taking those away either. If they make me fat, that's something I'll just have to live with. Besides, if someone starts telling me that I should eat better, I get to tell them what THEY'RE doing wrong - it's only fair. No one really wants me telling them how they should live their lives.

Oh, and as for making your own potato chips, Ford - you're right, it's pretty easy. Can you imagine clandestine potato chip processing plants in our neighborhoods? Quiet suburban houses where people, with an eye out for the Nutrition Police, secretly trade potato chips and fries for cakes and cookies? Innocent-looking middle-class people hauled into court for - horrors! - Possession of Baking Chocolate. And people think our courts are crowded NOW...

Ford and E-Girl,

My political tendencies is to completely agree with you both.

...but. There really is a but.

What you're defending is the right to mistreat yourselves. With cocaine or heroin, I'm on your side: those things are BAD, but it's pretty clear they're bad--and they provide an "experience" that some people seem to want. They also come more or less directly from plants. So, when I say I'm on your side I mean that people should be able to buy and use cocaine and heroin as they please.

Junk food was INVENTED. And it was invented ONLY for the purpose of being a commercial product. And it was SOLD not like cocaine or heroin--as something of entertainment value--but as FOOD; except twinkies are more like SLOW ACTING RAT POISON than food.

The problem with this entire question is in precisely DEFINING things. There is a "reasonable" and direct way of seeing things and defining things such that junk food can be seen as an INSANELY pervasive product, MARKETED as food, which is in fact NOT FOOD, but instead something that INEVITABLY causes harm to the person who eats it. That's a scenario that seems appropriate for consideration of regulation. Afterall, you could not MANUFACTURE much of this junk without huge corporate factories, etc. It's NOT food, it's a highly developed commercial/corporate PRODUCT--one that serves NO NEED other than to fill the desires it itself has created, and which is NOT FOOD--yet seems like food.

I used to think control freaks were all right wingers. I've long come to the realization that left wingers are just as bad, if not worse.

It mainly boils down to how our political spectrum operates. Most people think there's simply a liberal/conservative left/right continuum, but really there an authoritarianism/libertarianis­m parameter, tending towards authoritarianism as you approach the center (where all our elected officials stand). That's why the democrats want to force you to wear seatbelts, not smoke, and drink beet juice, while republicans want to force you to go to church, not do drugs, and not be gay. Once you get to the fringes, you have either left-wing radicals who think you should be allowed to smoke anything you want, and right-wing radicals who want the right to own assault weapons. Sadly, most Americans prefer the center and want their lives controlled for their own benefit.

Ford, be very careful. Counterrevolutionaries will be dealt with (for your own good of course).

Anyway, I want to know two things. First, what was that about stock care racing? I imagine theres a tidbit of fascinating history that I'd like to know more about.

Second, is all regulation bad, or only regulation of private behaviour? Food labeling for example seems like a reasonable government reaction.

"Junk food was INVENTED. And it was invented ONLY for the purpose of being a commercial product. And it was SOLD not like cocaine or heroin--as something of entertainment value--but as FOOD; except twinkies are more like SLOW ACTING RAT POISON than food."

So, if it's natural then it's okay? Well, junk food comes from natural food, and things like nightshades and belladonna are also natural. I really don't see how your statements make any real difference. PROVE to me that by eating one chocolate bar every day I will eventually die from chocolate poisoning. I mean, truthfully I eat 3-4 servings of produce a day, get regular exercise, don't drink, smoke or do recreational drugs. My 2 big vices are caffine and chocolate. If I consume them I don't generally worry about being so out of control that I shouldn't drive. If I DON'T consume them then I can get pretty cranky, but I don't go commit crimes to support my habit. In fact, unlike many "recreational drug users," my vices don't interfere in the least with my ability to hold down a job or pay my bills. I used to smoke cigarettes, and quitting them was THE HARDEST THING I've ever done in my life. And while I joke about being addicted to Diet Coke or Dove Chocolate, I really don't think the two can be compared with any seriousness.

I would dispute your statement that junk food is not food. It is not, generally, highly nutritious food; but if you define food as something that a person can eat, which the body then breaks down through digestion and uses for metabolic processes, then it certainly is food. To use my Coke again as an example - it's all gone but I have the can on my desk - it has 50 mg of sodium. How else do you get sodium? Well, how about from NaCl - table salt? This is very natural, not at all invented. It has carbohydrates - 39 g of sugar. Sugar's natural. Caffeine is natural - the Ethiopians used to chew on coffee berries to get it.

OK, there's some processing. I grant you that. But please tell me, how much processing is involved in, say, bread? Wheat is ground into flour, you combine all these things together, bake... I've never yet seen a "bread tree" anywhere. Yet bread, eaten in moderation, is nutritious.

As for inevitably causes harm? I disagree there. TOO MUCH causes harm. So does drinking to excess - and not just alcohol either, there is such a thing as dying from too much WATER. But even if that were true - if you could say "this product is harmful, but it's enjoyable" - does the government have a right to restrict informed adults from choosing to purchase and consume it? I say no. When I was a child, my parents had the right and responsibility to tell me "NO, you can't have that, it's bad for you." As an adult, it's my right and responsibility to make that decision.

I'm sorry, but that's not actually a factual statement. If your response is that you will get sick and die if all you eat is Big Macs, I say, the same thing would happen if you only ate corn, or only ate pork chops, or only ate broccoli.

If you feel really strongly that people should be aware of what is (and isn't, in the way of nutrients) , I'll go with you on that. Better labelling would be a good thing. But if you want to actually regulate this stuff so that I can't buy it if I want to, you're in for a fight.

Beware, fat people hyped up on caffeine and trans fats can pack a serious punch.

* I'm pretty sure that very, very few people that make this big distinction between man-made (ie chemicals!) have any kind of a science/rational thinking background. The only relevance is from an evolutionary standpoint. i.e. we may not have evolved to handle Olestra particularly well.

* Why shouldn't drugs be legal? I very much believe that we are not property of the state. If we want to destroy ourselves (and god knows, there are plenty of ways to do this outside of drugs), why shouldn't we be able? Only at the point where there is real danger of society failing should government intrude on our freedom. I don't think that is the case with drugs.

E-Girl (and others),

I understand that I'm fighting an uphill battle (and believe me, NONE of you is as libertarian/free market as I am). I only mean to suggest that the sale of FOOD (OK, let's call it food now), is something that might fall under some substantial regulation.

Is it reasonable to have a regulation that cars must designed and built so as to prevent the leakage of carbon monoxide into the passenger cabin? Why should it be? A leaking car would still be a CAR, you could drive with the WINDOWS open.

It's reasonble to regulate cars for that because it's reasonable for government to regulate products so that:

1. You get what you SEEM to be getting.
2. You're not sold something that has hidden dangers.

Junk food is not food in the proper sense (i.e., you would DIE in rather short order if that was your only food source--even if you had variety: twinkies one meal, ho-hos the next). AND, it is unambiguously dangerous--being dangerous in very slow motion doesn't disallow the use of the word dangerous.

Those conditions: food that isn't food but is "used" as food, and made through the involved processing of something that had some food ingredients, which is THEN harmful....I can see logic there that seems to make something like that susceptible to regulation; where I DON'T see fair, free-market logic in regulating things like narcotics or seat belts.

Junk food is a kind of a scam that cocaine or cigarettes are not.

The tidbit of NASCAR history from prohibition was basically that the bootleggers/moonshine runners would soup up their innocent looking family sedan of the day and try to outrun the cops (often successful, or they'd have gone out of business). One day, a bunch of them decided to build a makeshift track on the beach and race. Alas, the Daytona 500 was born. Anyway...

Stevie, potato chips and Ho Hos were not invented as a scam to profit from your eventual heart attack and death. They were invented because they taste good. Actually, somewhere along the line, someone sliced a potato really thin and deep fried it and put some salt on it and discovered how good it tasted. Someone else took some flour and sugar and eggs, etc., and mixed them up, put the concoction in the oven and watched it become a cake. Variations of such a recipe became biscuits or, in our hemisphere, cookies. Someone else realized that if you sold items like this that were already baked/fried/fricasseed, they could make some money. Hence, Frito-Lay and Hostess were born.

What you call "self abuse," or whatever definition you gave it, is really just giving yourself a harmless treat that feels good. I said in my first post that anyone can abuse anything and potentially kill themselves. This will sound ridiculous, but you could make playing the drums illegal for the same insane reasons. Hey, some rogue drummer could jam a Vic Firth jazz stick into your eyeball and kill you with it. Hell, you could play too long and get carpal tunnel...You see where I'm going here? One man's 10 minutes of R&R is another man's self-abuse (don't read anything into that).

I'm all for individuals making good decisions. If you own a restaurant (or a chain, in the case of Eat 'n' Park here in Pittsburgh) and you decide that your clientele would be better served in a non-smoking environment, then by all means, you have the right to establish such a rule in your private place of business. Making a law that says I can't puff on a Marlboro while walking down Forbes Avenue is overreaching. No one's getting lung cancer from 3 seconds of outdoor tobacco smoke. Engineer Girl said it pretty well. You can't outlaw stupidity. If you could, well, let's just say that my commute to and from work would be much easier.

Now, Stevie, what moron actually thinks that you can replace a steak with a pack of powdered doughnuts, or an ear of corn with a box of Cheese Nips? Please, Stevie, even you have to understand that there are some personal decisions left to be made. Junk food isn't a scam. There are no hidden dangers because everyone on the planet knows that it isn't healthy, hence the tern "junk food." The car analogy made no sense, because CO can kill you in five minutes. I say again, though, that no one ever died from eating a potato chip. 19 bags a day, yeah, that'll kill you quick. But simply eating spud chips? No way in hell.

Besides, my friend, food already is regulated. We already have standards for what can be sold. You can't sell tainted food legally. Just ask Food Lion. You have to label every package with every ingredient that you looked at and considered putting into the food item. Now, you want the government to regulate whether or not I get to eat a few Ruffles once in a while? Sorry, bud. That's not the America I signed up for. I don't know how you can call for this kind of insanity and say that you're more "libertarian" or "free-market" than us. Does not compute.

Where on earth does this idea that only junk food is bad for you come from? We can all agree that too much sodium, or too much sugar, or too much fat can kill you in the long run. However, chewing sugarcane will rot your teeth, salt occurs naturally and is considered delicious by most mammals, and you can clog your arteries just fine by eating duck and cheese and pork chops.

Mmmm, pork chops.

There is no magic spell cast on a Twinkie that makes it deadlier than eating a pile of sugar, a heap of flour and a big old spoonful of Crisco.

I usually just mutter grouchily from my corner when the local Powers that Be decide I need another petty little rule, but if someone tries to take away my thick-sliced bacon, things will get ugly.

Freki

Thanks a lot, Freki. I haven't had breakfast yet. Damn you.

Anyway, you make a good point. I touched on this a little here and in another thread, but guess what happens if I go to Giant Eagle and buy a bag of flour, a dozen all-natural eggs from the chicken's ass, a jug of milk, a bag of all-natural cane sugar, and a handful of other minor products, bring them home, mix some of it together in a bowl and throw the concoction in the oven. I end up with a "cake" type product. If I add some all natural cocoa to the pre-cake sludge, I get what's known as "chocolate cake." Viola, I made my own damn junk food. Go ahead and tax my flour, you Marxists jag offs...sigh...I'm sorry, I get a little edgy about this kind of nonsense.

I think your post says it all in a nutshell (unfortunately, most of these people need a damn encyclopedia to explain the simplest concept). We don't need a rule, law, regulation or forcibly imposed government suggestion for every possible human activity at every waking moment. Some of us, surprisingly enough to these people, readily accept a little personal risk in exchange for the freedom to eat, drink, and do what makes us happy. I'm ready to strangle our county exec for pumping another 10% out of us for "poured drinks." I guess the good news is that my local beer distributor does a better business now.

One thing that's clear here is that these people have never taught children. If they had, then they'd understand that they never learn to become independent unless they're allowed to fail once in a while. We are so dependent on someone to hold our hand and take care of us anymore that we wouldn't know true independence if it leaped up and bit us in our pampered asses. In short, you can't teach people to think and behave properly by constantly doing the work for them, or at least forcibly guiding them through every painstaking step of the process.

Ford,

I would love to think that the American obsession with cramming lard into our faces results from lack of education or exposure to healthy, flavourful food, but that is just not the case. My sister and I were raised the same way, dirt poor, and that should really give a person an appreciation for food. My mother cooked healthy stuff, but didn't skimp on the very important sugar-and-fat food group. There is nothing like a homemade chocolate chip cookie, still so hot it sweats butter.

As a result, I learned how to appreciate fresh fruit and veggies from the garden, right beside my meat and potato. When we could afford meat, that is, being poor and all. Today, I eat well, exercise, and carefully control my various beloved vices. I can enjoy a giant greasy burger, or a small cognac dipped cigar, or a swig of Jameson's. I just don't do it every day.

My sister, on the other hand, lives on cinammon rolls. Occasionally someone may take her out to dinner, but otherwise, that is her staple diet. She will call me and complain about her health on a regular basis.

"Wah! I have 6 new cavities!"

"God, my skin is so gross lately."

"Ugh, I'm getting fat."

Every time I suggest the proper remedy might be to cut down from 5 cinnamon rolls a day to maybe two, I get "You don't understand! YOU get to eat whatever you want! It isn't fair!"

Now, this is a well-educated, relatively intelligent young woman, raised on healthful food of all kinds by intelligent, widely travelled parents. She is just a f*cking ditz.

I say, let the Wal-Martians eat chicken nuggets. Let them get as fat and as sick as they want. The only thing that has gotten Americans to stop chain-smoking is realizing it is killing them; perhaps the same will be true of junk food.

Freki