* Where are my Freedom Fries?
Topics: Regulation
06 Mar 2006
From: Ervan Darnell
[ I wrote this for the local LP newsletter. There was no debate
format this time. ---Ervan ]
A Big Mac contains 560 calories, 30g of fat, 47g of carbohydrates, and
25g of protein[1]. A quiche lorraine at a fancy French restaurant
could well have identical statistics. Can someone explain to me why
the former is unhealthy but the latter is not? Apparently, the
non-nutritionist, non-scientist DeSaulnier on the Contra Costa board of
supervisors can. They are considering banning the Big Mac but not
fine dining [2]. All I have really learned from this is where the
bureaucrats dine.
I'm reminded of Thomas Sowell's analysis of limousine liberals.
They will ban low-end housing in an effort to help the poor because
"people shouldn't live like that". Never mind there is
not an alternative. Liberals will outlaw what the poor can
afford, give 1% of them a housing handout from higher taxes, and then
declare the problem solved. It appears to be the same for food as
for housing.
But this plan is not even that good because there is no reason to think
that the alternative will be any healthier. Neither fine dining nor
grocery items are necessarily any healthier than that Big Mac.
Outlawing Big Macs will not turn the tubby toward celery sticks.
Even if there is a correlation between obesity and fast food, which is
not at all obvious, it does not mean that fast food causes obesity.
It says only that people who enjoy eating a lot like to eat things that
are affordable and easy to buy. That's a surprise? Outlawing
Big Macs will cause people to spend more time shopping and cooking or
waiting for take out, instead of enjoying their lives. That cost is
not in the equation.
The hype machine is amazing too. What is agreed upon is that
Americans are about 10-15 pounds heavier than they were 30 years [3a,
3b]. The CDC calls this an "epidemic"[4] and reports it
as an increase from 0 to 10 in the number of states with >25% of the
population with a BMI > 30 [5]. This is massaging the data to
get the scariest number possible. They went from an 8.5% increase
in weight to a 100% jump in a contrived statistical category. The
Mercury article claimed obesity "cost [ in 2002 ] $22 billion
statewide". California DHS claims only $6 billion (in 2000)
[6]. Put this in perspective: even if $6 billion is accurate,
that's $175/person. You want a crisis? How about the $2,600
in state taxes every Californian pays (on average) per year? The
Mercury does not see that as an epidemic.
"costing billions of health care dollars [...and...] 'It's like with
tobacco' said [councilman] DeSaulnier". DeSaulnier happens to
own a restaurant not likely covered by the ban. Overlooking that
conflict of interest, this is a tidy study in how one encroachment on
freedom creates the next. The tobacco analogy is obvious. The
MediCal one is more insidious: once the government takes away some of
your freedom to enjoy our own income (via MediCal taxes), it then takes
away your dining freedom to try to fix their first mistake.
Just like every economic price control leads to the next to fix the
previous distortion, every implicit price control in the form of a
handout leads to the next price control in form of a freedom
denied. The denial of freedom here is both serious and
laughable. DeSaulnier wants to force restaurants to offer healthy
alternatives, like that will make people eat them? I'm reminded of
the peas (of inedibly low quality) we were served as part of government
school lunches. Some bureaucrat computed how healthy those were,
and spent millions of tax dollars dispensing all of those vitamins, for
peas that no one in the real world would actually eat. I guess we
kept the pea farmers and garbage workers employed.
I do not know why obesity is increasing. The dietary culprit has
gone from fat, to saturated fat, to trans fat (which is actually
unsaturated fat), to carbohydrates. Lifestyle changes are part of
the cause too. The scientific answer is not in. What is known
in the lab does not apply well to the real world, where restricting one
kind of food just causes people to consume something equally bad, but
different. Politicians surely do not know the answer.
The libertarian ideal of the government not having the authority to do
such things might lead to some people fattening themselves. But it
is much better than the alternative of politicians proposing ridiculous
ideas that are not likely to work, are never checked to see if they do
work, impose unaccounted real hardships on average people, and increase
the corruptibility of local government as people lobby to get certain
businesses on or off of the prohibited list.
[1]
http://app.mcdonalds.com/bagamcmeal?process=item&itemID=5
McDonald's nutrition chart
[2]
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/13698000.htm?source=yahoodist&content=sjm_news
San Jose Mercury, Tue, Jan. 24, 2006
[3a]
http://www.southbendtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060222/Lives08/602220500/-1/Lives/CAT=Lives08
South Bend Tribune, February 22, 2006, "Is the 'obesity epidemic' a
big, fat lie?", indirectly from "Fat Politics: The Real Story
Behind America's Obesity Epidemic,"
[3b]
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/ad/ad347.pdf,
table 10
CDC publication "Number 347 + October 27, 2004, "Mean Body
Weight, Height, and Body Mass Index,United States 1960–2002"
[4]
http://www.cdc.gov/washington/reltopic/obesity.htm
[5]
http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/obesity/trend/maps/index.htm
[6]
http://www.dhs.ca.gov/hisp/chs/ohir/reports/others/Obesity2000_2002.pdf
====================================================
Ervan
Darnell
ervan@kelvinist.com
http://www.kelvinist.com
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