Just recently, I published a post about the congressional battle to preserve the interests of the rent-seeking flock, led by Big Agra-Big Foods. The Wall Street Journal has since published an article about the Obama Administration’s resistance to the congressional definition of pizza as a vegetable because this does not fit well with Michele Obama’s wonderful little war on obesity. A quote from the article:

The legislation, attached to a 2012 spending bill approved by Congress and now on its way to the president’s desk, also would stop plans to require more whole grains in school food while cutting sodium and starchy vegetables like potatoes.

“All of this is to stem the tide of the rising obesity epidemic,” said Courtney Rowe, a Department of Agriculture spokeswoman. About 17% of children in the U.S. from the ages of two through 19 are obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Hasn’t the government spent enough time (40+ years) and enough of its pilfered booty (taxpayer dollars) causing obesity with the purpose of stemming it?

Note that the Washington Post has made it clear that Congress did not declare pizza to be a vegetable, and no, this is not a fight over pizza. Rather, it is a “fight about tomato paste.” Surely, knowing that will leave any judicious observer feeling relieved that our government is not wasting its time and and taxpayer money on mundane issues. Does it not become immediately clear that Big Guv is offering up the health and wealth of future generations by bargaining with powerful industries using pizza chips in exchange for guaranteed, subsidized profits? Not surprisingly, Ezra Klein & Co. think this is a legitimate function of government.

And meanwhile, the USDA goes out and audits the federal prisons schools to determine whether or not the prison school cafeterias follow its guidelines for fat (replacing healthy, necessary real-food fats with chemicals, processed foods, and carbohydrates produced in a lab). Certainly, we know that the last few decades of the government-special interest, low-fat paradigm has been a raging “success.”