Voices in My Head: Banning Bad Foods

The new rage of the machine we call the government is to now ban the use of trans fatty acids or 'trans fats' because these are what make us obese. (Apparently it isn't the fact that we eat three times the amount of food our body needs and then work it off by surfing the web and watching television). The British are even considering a more than 17 percent tax on foods that contain trans fats. All this is in hopes of curbing our appetite for bad foods and to make us eat more healthily.

I don't know about you but I think that sounds a little overbearing as far as what we expect our government to do. If we want to eat foods that will make us fat we should be allowed to. I think allowing these bans or taxes to be implemented may pave the way for some even more intrusive laws if we're not careful.

For example, I heard the United States Government is considering legislation that would ban all wives from entering the family room during the Super Bowl because as we all know, Super Bowl Sunday has the highest rate of Daddy's telling Mommy's to "just be quiet". That can hurt someone's feelings.

According to my source, in Britain they are entertaining the idea of arresting anyone even suspected of wearing shoes that are too big for them because they could easily trip and injure themselves. Better to be safe than sorry. The government always knows best. Good thing we have the government in place to do all the thinking for us. If we didn't we would probably all be wandering around the woods without shelter, food or even clothes for that matter.

What gets me is that instead of using common sense we just pile more stupidity on top of the original bad idea. Instead of taxing trans fat or banning it (which most likely means a fine if you disobey), why not inform us of the danger it poses and then trust us to make our own decisions. It worked with smoking. Once people started to understand the dangers and side effects of smoking the number of smokers has steadily dropped. It's kind of like the time that cave man discovered fire. (I think his name was Sparky). I'm sure he got burned once or twice, maybe even torched his in-laws house (by accident of course) but eventually he learned to control fire and no longer lost all his facial hair every time he built a flame.

I'm not anti-government by any means. I think the democracy in the United States is the closest thing there is to a dependable, trustworthy government. I'm just saying people need to be able to make their own choices regardless of potential side effects. Not all decisions are going to be good ones. Bad decisions are part of the learning process. Even governments learn from their mistakes. For example, remember that time we elected that guy who made all those empty promises just to get elected but then once he was in office he never lifted a finger to fulfill any of those promises? We didn't make that mistake again, did we?

Ok, bad example. But you see where I'm going with this. We've always taken pride in our freedoms. Being told what I can eat and what I can't eat doesn't sound like freedom. It reminds me of when I was a kid and I had to eat fish on Fridays. What's next, the government telling us that we have to go to bed by eight at night "Because I said so"?

I can understand limits. Laws like speed limit or drinking age make sense. We've learned through trial and error that some things need specific thresholds and people need to be forced to adhere to them or bad things will happen. That doesn't mean the government needs to watch what we eat. I understand that without laws we would be living in anarchy. God knows we don't want anarchy. Although, have you ever seen an obese anarchist? Didn't think so. I'm going to go stock up on some trans fat before it gets confiscated and replaced with something good for me.