photo taken from compuday.co.za
This is a topic that needs a lot of attention. We all know how easy it is to feed on junk food, and it has consequences. This brings up the debate topic.
Should the government have a say with our diets?
Note: Comments are moderated so be sure that your responses are expressed in a respectable and friendly way. We are here to express our thoughts toward controversial issues, not to scold or defame anyone. Watch what you say, and remember that by using this site, you agree to our Terms Of Use and Privacy Policy.
No, definitely not.
I think the government should because America is known for having the most obese citizens. Although fast food tastes good, it's destroying people's lives.
In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with the government providing the standard food triangles, guidelines, etc., but regulation of intake is taking it too far. We have the freedom to make our own choices, and what goes into our mouth is just another one of those decisions.
Eli, what is the difference between an illegal substance like pot and cocaine, and fast food? They are both bad for your health, so what gives fast food it's legality?
Um, hello? Pot and cocaine are drugs – they alter your senses, perception, etc. You cannot normally operate after using them. As far as I know, the only high you get after eating a whopper is a food coma.
Drugs alter your senses and perception. This is true. However, fast food causes you to gain weight, it strains your body and can degrade your senses.
I hope to God you do not have any sort of involvement in the medical field. Fast food makes your gain weight….This is true. Everything else you said was garbage.
Straight from Wikipedia.org Eli,
Obesity is a medical condition in which excess body fat has accumulated to the extent that it may have an adverse effect on health, leading to reduced life expectancy.
Obesity is associated with many diseases, particularly heart disease, type 2 diabetes, breathing difficulties during sleep, certain types of cancer, and osteoarthritis.
You might also say, "Oh, that has nothing to do with your mental health." However, it is true that being obese may lower your self-esteem and confidence level. This can decrease your awareness of what's going on around you.
Government can do what they want, but ultimately only we control our lives and the decisions we make.
Absolutely not! The government has no right to interfere in our lives in such a way.
As for the difference between regulating food and narcotics. The person who overeats never loses control of their senses and therefore only becomes a risk to themselves, not society as a whole. A person who uses narcotics can put other citizens at risks. Laws are enacted to protect innocent citizens from the bad choices of others. In a free society people are free to make poor choices. They are FREE to eat all the fat they want. if they want to live fat and miserable it's their fault and their life. It's not the role of the government to stop them.
That is another reason I think national health care is a bad idea. We shouldn't have to foot the bill for their stupidity by paying for all the medical care those poor choices create. I do think that health insurance companies should be able to charge more for insurance to people with a certain percentage of body fat, just like should be able to charge smokers more, etc.
What does this question mean? Should they tax some of our food and drink and fund public health initiatives with the revenues? Should they ban particular products or restrict access to adults or behind medicinal use clauses as totally dangerous? Should they force recalls of contaminated products in the interest of public safety? Compel companies to reveal nutritional information and label their products? Release dietary and health guidelines that people can ignore if they want?
It's sort of vague what level of involvement in government diet we're talking about.
"I do think that health insurance companies should be able to charge more for insurance to people with a certain percentage of body fat" – What system are we to use to gauge someone's body fat? Because the most commonly understood system and easily measured is BMI and that's totally useless for body fat and relative health effects outside of extremely high rates, getting into morbid obesity measurements. Not everyone who is "overweight" is unhealthy. Likewise there are people who are incredibly thin who are sickly and risky to insure (such as, often, smokers and drug addicts).
In theory a tax on unhealthy products would contain the cost of using them to people who chose to do so, as we do with tobacco and to some extent alcohol. If you didn't want to pay a tax on soda or fast food, don't buy soda as much or go to McD's anymore. The usual argument in economics against doing that is that it is highly regressive. Mostly poor people buy cheap unhealthy products that are using excise taxes in this way, like cigarettes and the proposed taxes on soda. But since we're already footing the bill to pay for poor people's health in medicare or in increased costs of health care and insurance, we may as well punish the people who raise our marginal costs by not fully paying their own.
Using cocaine or marijuana once, assuming a relative safety and purity of the narcotic of choice, is not significantly and quantitatively more harmful to a person who doesn't have an addictive predisposition (usually there are genetic indications of this) than eating a single Whopper. There's almost no difference between someone morbidly obese and a drug addict's relative health risks at that end of the scale either. That doesn't mean I'd strongly recommend people try to do either of the two. But it does raise the question of why one is legal and the other is strictly controlled and police enforced. Often using military tactics.
Altering your perceptions is possibly dangerous, like if you went to drive off and get a whopper to satisfy hunger pangs. But then again, think of where lots of people consume their whoppers. Eating while driving isn't exactly that great for your perceptual awareness either. Irresponsible behavior undertaken in part because of drug use can be penalized already under existing legal codes (like DUIs are). We don't need to further police what people are putting into their bodies by choice so much as penalize the activity which is dangerous or irresponsible itself.
Absolutely Not!!!! They want to make a new tax of soda and sugar products. If I wanna be fat, the government should tell me I can't.
I think it means altogether like should they tell us what we should eat.
Nah, the government should definitely treat the citizens as children on this one. If they don't have a say with our diets, then they should definitely be moderating fast-food nutrition facts.
Then my answer would be definitely no. There is no automatic answer of "what we should eat". Individual preferences, activity levels, and metabolisms are not insignificant factors.
They just studied what putting that information and facts, precisely on fast food, prominently does. It does not reduce caloric intake; it increases it.
This is predictable because people already over assume the caloric data of fast food (they know it is "bad").
I don't know. You really can't compare Whoppers to Cocaine. One is food, which our body needs, and the other is just a stimulant.
That's what the fast food companies want you to believe, that posting the facts doesn't do anything but make things worse.
No. It's common sense if you understand human psychology.
Nah, it's what they want you to believe. You don't need all these little studies and stuff that are a waste of time and money. All you have to do is look around you. Whenever you walk into a restaurant or a fast-food place, everyone orders whoppers and hamburgers without knowing what they are getting themselves into, it's implied.
Then, when you go into a place where they have the calories listed on the menu, you start seeing people looking at the calories and watching what they eat. This happens all the time. Those studies are crap.
People look at the calories yes. But they don't actually reduce their caloric intake as a consequence. Your brain's natural demands for nutrients or calories trumps the logical reasoning centers over time.
I assume living in a world where facts and research doesn't matter is comfortable for you. But since it forces people to allocate resources incorrectly and wastefully, especially for public and social policies, I'm not all that keen on living that way.
I don't trust any study because they aren't necessary. I do my own experiments and to me so far it proves that people do watch what they eat when they see the nutrition facts.
This is exactly the same thing that they do with the election polls. They call only a few thousand people and the numbers don't lie.
I don't trust your "experiments" to be scientifically rigorous or take into account multiple variances.
Yea well all of that crap doesn't matter. That's why problems don't get solved, because once we hear the word experiment, we feel like we have to do all this necessary stuff when the data is all around us.
If you are dealing with complex scenarios and decide to tinker with one variable as though it is independent of the others, this is precisely why we end up with so many "unintended consequences". There are occasions when simplicity matters. But most of them are not things that should be handled as a matter of set public policy.
Wikipedia.org….ok i must tell you that anybody can alter this information change it or what not even ppl who have no clue about the subject….this is why in highschool and college if you use that site as a source they will laugh @ and fail you
Government should certainly advise people on how to live healthier lives, but government should not force people to. Ultimately, people need to be responsible for themselves and not asking the government for free health care after a heart attack.
NO! We have our rights that tell us we can make decisions like what we eat on our own. The government has no right to tell us what to eat at all.
Obesity leads to health problems. Heart disease, diabetes, self esteem, and etc. When those problems occur it not only effects the Obese individual but also people around him. Obesity leads to suicide and mood problems. Obese people tend to put themselfs down and not think they could have girlfriends and do certain things, which leads them into a stage of depression. If you cant keep yourslef healthy then government should defenetly have a say in your diet. This is something that also effects other citizens because of the obese, which means government should control diets.