The food police are at it again. The latest assault on the freedom to control what you put into your own body comes in the form of a 571-page report from the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, established by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services to provide nutritional guidance.
The report calls for a number of "bold actions" to help bring about the "dramatic paradigm shifts" the committee views as necessary to significantly improve public health. Chief among these goals is encouraging people to adopt more "plant-based" diets, such as vegan and Mediterranean-style diets.
Recommendations often begin with "require," "limit," "reduce," "encourage" or "incentivize." In other words, they advocate more government controls. This includes imposing sin taxes on soda, snack foods and desserts and subsidizing healthy foods such as fruits and vegetables, which is sure to please many well-connected farm lobbies.
Other recommended policies include banning certain foods, mandating standardized food labeling, limiting the marketing of "unhealthy foods" to all age groups (and especially to children), reducing "access to high-calorie foods and sugar-sweetened beverages in public buildings and facilities," combating sedentary behavior like watching television or spending time on computers with "behavioral interventions"--including "electronic tracking and monitoring of the use of screen-based technologies"--and calling for obesity "interventionists" to develop "comprehensive lifestyle interventions and evidence-based dietary interventions" not only at public health facilities, but also at workplaces.
The report, additionally, doubles down on support (i.e., taxpayer money) for food stamps, public education campaigns, and the federal school lunch program, whose new nutritional guidelines have led to widespread student protests and a surge in discarded food that students refuse to eat.
Though some of the DGAC report's nutritional recommendations may be sound and voluntary, the level of government intervention needed to achieve its goals is truly frightening.
If we want to remain a free society, we must reject such paternalism--for government is an abusive parent--and the natural tendencies of central planners and their anointed experts to dictate how people should live their lives. For if the government can force (or "encourage" or "incentivize") you to eat Brussels sprouts and kale, what personal decisions can't it dictate?
Editorial on 03/03/2015