Leave My Big Mac Alone!

The Food and Drug Administration is telling restaurants to cut portion sizes served to customers to help with the fight against obesity.

One has to wonder when this is going to stop. When I go to a restaurant I look for several things, those being quality of food, quantity of food and service. Of course the quality of food is first and foremost. If the food isn’t good I won’t return. If the service isn’t good but the food is good, I may give it another try sometime down the road to see if it just happened to be the particular waiter or waitress who was the problem. But if I feel the price is too high for the amount of food that I receive, or if I finish a meal and I’m still hungry because the portions aren’t big enough, I won’t be a regular patron of that restaurant.

Now the government wants to dictate how large a portion should be. One has to wonder, if you go to a pizza restaurant alone will you no longer be allowed to order a large pizza because the FDA doesn’t think you need it? If you supersize your lunch because you’re a bit more hungry than yesterday, will you have to be reported? Will the supersized lunch even exist anymore?

Don’t get me wrong – I am not making light of obesity in this country. It’s definitely a problem and changing it is important for the health of all Americans. But when the government gets involved in telling us what we can and can’t eat, or how much we can eat, in my opinion they’re crossing the line.

Food doesn’t cause obesity any more than guns kill people, any more than pencils misspell words, any more than cars cause accidents – not even Toyotas according to a recent government report. In most cases (leaving out medical conditions that cause weight gain and/or keep people from exercising) obesity is caused by one thing – lack of discipline. If you can’t control how much you eat it’s a lack of discipline. If you don’t exercise and burn calories it’s a lack of discipline. Despite what the TV commercials say (that if you can’t lose weight It’s not your fault) If you gain weight from these two things and are not physically or medically unable to change it, it’s your own fault. But now the government wants to take that problem out of your hands.

I have no problem with the government wanting schools to serve more healthy food to our kids. It is always a good thing to offer healthy choices to kids at mealtime when possible. But do we take away the not so healthy things completely? What do we do for kids who simply don’t like and won’t eat the healthy choices? (This is a lack of discipline also, on the parents’ part as well as the children’s.) Do we let them go hungry? That’s certainly not a good option. If a kid refuses to eat lunch at school he goes the entire day without nourishment.

What do we do in that case – put him in a retraining camp, along with his parents? Force feed him? Maybe suspend him until he learns to eat? Why not? The government, after all, is just looking out for our well being.

Having the government suggest healthier eating habits is fine. It’s what government should do - suggest. Having the government dictate what we can and can’t eat, or put extra taxes on things they deem unhealthy, is wrong. We are still a free country, so far, and can make our own choices, right or wrong. I would hate to see what will happen in this country if and when the government decides Big Macs (and other things) are no longer legal for sale or consumption in this country. It doesn’t seem so far-fetched anymore. Maybe the fast food industry should start making some major campaign contributions to our politicians. After all, tobacco is still legal...