An excellent article by Greg Beato on Reason quotes a nanny state Doc as saying, "Everyone's assuming you have a choice, but when your brain is starving, you don't have a choice.... Congress says you can't sue McDonald's for obesity because it's your fault. Except the thing is, when you don't have a choice, it's not your fault."
The nanny Doc says we need to force the government to force people to stop eating unhealthy food. How do these food totalitarians expect to enforce their decrees that would have no one eat anything that's bad for their health? Is there going to be a black market for donuts, along with a Junk Food Czar and the Secret Sugar Police?
Beato goes on to say that, no, we have a zillion choices in today's marketplace. In fact, it is because of the abundance of really bad food and really chunky people that we have a rising demand for thinness and good health and all of the good things that the market brings on because of that demand - 5am kickboxing sessions; 24-hour gyms; cheap, frozen fish that are individually-wrapped; and deliver-to-your-door organic foods online.
Where I live, there is a plentitude of produce markets, and over time, they eventually all became produce-specialty markets, selling formerly hard-to-find imported foods on the cheap, along with having the best fresh meat and fish available. A common practice is for local restaurants - especially my favorite vegetarian restaurant - to package their meals and ship them off daily to the specialty stores for sale as on-the-go meals. When time becomes an issue and interferes with cooking, I can get a cilantro, chick pea patty meal (no, I am not a vegetarian) freshly made for the price of a "value meal" at McDonald's. But we are supposed to believe that people, whose daily lives are brimming with choices, have "no choice," and their own actions are "not their fault." The central planners, as always, need to establish a reason for their intervention, and thus the declaration of individual exoneration and collective incompetence.
