Posted on February
27, 2015
Casus Belly
Gov’t will dictate our eating habits
by
Daniel
Clark
As if the mere existence of a federal entity called
the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee wasn’t chilling enough, just wait
until you see the suggestions that body is making to the Departments of
Agriculture and Health and Human Services.
The DGAC is proposing that Washington dictate our eating habits through
coercion, and stating this goal as if it were as innocuous a governmental function
as the issuing of a new stamp.
In what it calls its 2015 “Scientific Report” (and who
wants to oppose “science?”), the DGAC “highlights the major diet-related health
problems we face as a Nation and must reverse.”
It goes on to observe that, “The dietary patterns of the American public
are suboptimal,” and that, “few 
improvements
in consumers’ food choices have occurred in recent decades.”
“Furthermore, more than 49 million people in the
United States, including nearly 9 million children, live in food insecure
households.” If an unsupportable gobbledystat like that doesn’t justify immediate federal
intervention, what does? No wonder the
report’s Executive Summary concludes that, “In order for policy recommendations
such as the Dietary Guidelines for
Americans to be fully implemented, motivating and facilitating behavioral
change at the individual level is required.”
Not only must “behavioral change” be initiated for the
sake of our own health, but it’s also needed, as if you hadn’t already guessed,
for the purpose of combating “climate change.” After defining “sustainable
diets” as diets “higher in plant-based foods,” the DGAC asserts that “the
average U.S. diet has a larger environmental impact [than any of the
plant-based diets] in terms of increased greenhouse gas emissions, land use,
water use, and energy use.” Even if one
were to accept the premise that individual Americans’ health is the
government’s responsibility, this intrusion of environmental activism corrupts
the report by overtly introducing an ulterior motive.
Even if we wanted Uncle Sam-I-Am to make us healthier,
how could we ever trust it to do so while also attempting to use our dietary
choices as a means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions? No truly “Scientific Report” that was trying
to accomplish either one of those goals would ever combine them. Logically, there’s no reason those two agenda
items must necessarily arrive at the same endpoint. It could just as plausibly be that many of
the most healthful foods are ones whose production results in an increase of
atmospheric CO2 and methane.
Where the causes intersect is in the prescribed means
of achieving their respective outcomes.
According to the left-wing totalitarians who masquerade as the voices of
science, both “climate change” and suboptimal dietary patterns call for the
suppression of individual freedoms by a supposedly benevolent central
authority. It is quite obvious that this
consolidation of control by the collective over the individual is itself the
end, and not just a means to it.
Okay,
one might say, so there are lots of insignificant little busybodies toiling
anonymously away in some forgotten nook of our federal labyrinth, occasionally
producing a document like the Dietary
Guidelines in order to lend a facade of officialdom to their delusions of
grandeur. But what power do they
actually have? By themselves, none. Their role is to contrive an impetus for
bureaucrats and legislators who were already determined to dictate our
behavior, but want it to look like they’re being compelled by “science.”
Don’t think the government can tell you what to
eat? Ask yourself if rising beef prices
have dissuaded you from buying a steak or a pound of ground round during the
past year. How much less might you
consume on an annual basis if a punitive meat tax were imposed? Add to that the inevitable new regulatory
burdens on food producers.
Big-government thugs have already intimidated many of them into reducing
the amount of salt in their products, including Heinz ketchup and Olive Garden
restaurants. Think of the possibilities
if the food fascists set their sights on red meat.
Beef raviolis could soon be as thin as Necco wafers. Beef
vegetable soup might have roughly the same meat content as “pork n’
beans.” If McDonalds still exists,
you’ll find yourself ordering a “Royale with cheese,” because it’s not a
quarter-pound anymore. Before you know
it, you’ll have adopted a “plant-based diet,” without having taken a single
conscious step in that direction.
If you’re still having trouble imagining what that
would be like, keep in mind that a place already exists in which governmental
authority figures require “behavioral change” of the grown people who inhabit
their domain. It’s called prison.
The Shinbone: The
Frontier of the Free Press