Is Fast Food the New Tobacco?

              Obesity if the United States has become an epidemic that spans all generations. But, is it the government’s job to regulate and dictate to the citizens of the United States what we should eat, where we can eat, and how much we can eat? Absolutely not. Similar arguments that are regularly debated on the national level include tobacco and abortion. And in my opinion, right or wrong, the government is the last person or entity on earth who should be telling you, controlling you, or penalizing you for what an individual chooses to do with, or put in your body. There are consequences for every action you take, and personal accountability for those consequences is what has been lacking in the obesity/weight epidemic in the United States.

              Education is the only area in which an overseeing entity should be involved. For instance, children are taught in public schools the negative impact of using tobacco products and what the usage of said products will do to your body.  I knew the risks, and yet I chose to engage in using that product. Eventually I realized my body was growing old of the usage, and I could feel my body’s sluggish behavior and decreased lung capacity and made the decision to quit.

The surgeon general ups the ante one step further by plastering warning signs and labels on every package of tobacco sold in the United States. And yet children are still curious to try smoking for a variety of reasons. In high school and as a young adult, I knew all the warnings and had an amazing education about tobacco and still chose to smoke. I, like many others, enjoyed smoking because I liked the way it made me feel. I enjoyed the social aspect of walking out back behind a bar on a warm summer or spring night and lighting up a Marlboro. The tobacco amplified the alcohol and made the night livelier. Smoking also served as a stress reliever providing a five to ten-minute break where I could pause and refocus myself on whatever I was working on that day.

              Food is no different. The food we choose to eat is a conscious decision made before every meal. No one is holding you hostage three, four, maybe five times a day when you become hungry and need to choose a meal or a snack. Stopping at the McDonalds or Taco Bell is significantly easier than pre-planning and meal prepping your meals, it is often much tastier as well. But there are consequences to constantly eating at these establishments. The health factors alone are enough to prove that fast food is not healthy. But that is not a new or unknown fact. I simply think that in today’s fast paced, single parent household, or two full time working parents’ households preparing quality nutritional meals has fallen to the wayside. Finding the time to shop is difficult. Preparing to cook is time consuming. Cooking a meal itself is not only time consuming but also requires technical skill to achieve a finished meal. Couple that with trying to keep children contained or focused on their homework and you have a recipe for disaster, and our health is what suffers. Society today is often over worked and underpaid, but that is a topic for another day.

      

        So how do we change it? Government needs to keep their hands off the equation. Families need to become more accountable to their actions. As Radley Balko says in his article What You Eat is Your Business, “That means freeing insurance companies to reward healthy lifestyles, and penalize poor ones.” I agree with Balko. The biggest motivating force is to hit people in their wallet. If insurance companies, free from government constraints, charge a higher premium to individuals for their poor choices and charge healthy people less, it will encourage people to change their ways. Most people need to be incentivized to change. Balko also states, “If the government is paying for my anti-cholesterol medication, what incentive is there for me to put down the cheeseburger?” Balko reinforces that people are less likely to change on their own when someone else will foot the bill for them. It is not fair for the already over taxed citizen to pay higher taxes because someone else cannot motivate themselves to change their ways. Government has no right, and no role, in telling anyone what they can do to or put in their bodies.