Quote Originally Posted by dankrutka View Post
I totally agree, but... what do you do when people show the inability to make smart health decisions? We have an epidemic in this country that is straining our health system because people are unable to make smart choices for them and their children (which is mindboggling to me) and it's affecting the entire country. Even though I generally eat healthy, the poor decisions of others affect me indirectly because of rising medical costs, etc.

I think the biggest problem is that most people do not know, or think about, what they're eating. They lack consciousness. They're not conscious that if they eat 1,200 calories at lunch, they probably need to run 3-5 miles to work the extra calories off. What would happen if there was a "sin tax" on unhealthy food? Maybe just a penny (no the dollar) tax, but these unhealthy items would be clearly marked, thus forcing people to at least consider what they're putting in their bodies. Even just requiring restaurants to list calories with food could at least help to raise consciousness and assist people in making better decisions. Anyway, I know the "sin tax" probably won't happen, but isn't unhealthy eating as destructive as smoking (which is taxed) for many people? I'm just thinking out loud so please don't make this into a huge partisan slugfest.
With all due respect, dan, we do not need a federal or state food police to start declaring "food X or food Y" to be "unhealthy," which is a fallacious notion on its face. The choice is the bad one, but whether that choice is bad or good for any one person is, in fact, dependent upon that person, not the responsibility of the government. If I have one soda a month, but run two miles a day, that soda isn't such a big deal. If I have five sodas a day, weigh 300 lbs, then that soda is more problematic - but not as problematic as the person drinking it. And we've already seen self-proclaimed health nazis like Bloomberg try stunts like this, although his steps were even more draconian - government prohibition of certain food sales - which was shot down.

And I say that as someone who's done (and continues to do) the work to eat better, having dropped a little over 70 lbs in the last couple of years. It isn't easy, and there are some foods I eat less of now than I used to, but I also understand that the notion of "unhealthy" food is just so much nonsense in an homage to the whole mantra of the "villain food theology" that has just become the defacto health gospel in the last five years. It is about the people who make the choices to eat, not the food they eat. And the folks who think they're doing something startlingly "healthy" by eating the "egg white mcmuffin" at McD's are arguably an archetype of the concept.