No choice

As if the government isn't already in our business enough, now Los Angeles is banning fast food restaurants in low income areas because people are getting too fat. "'What's next — security guards at the door saying 'You're overweight, you can't have a cheeseburger'?" Casana said'"

The problem isn't fast food. Most fast food restaurants offer healthy choices, but that only works if you actually choose them. And it really isn't fast food, per se. Eat too much, exercise too little and you get fatter. Of course, certain foods help aid in weight loss and work better with your system, but they are also costly.

The French have a diet heavy in cholesterol, carbohydrates and fat and yet overall they are fairly slim -- and they have plenty of fast food restaurants -- but the French keep moving. They walk more.

Exercise is part of the solution, but the real solution is education. Instead of banning fast food restaurants, how about teaching food economics and backing it up by teaching people how to cook healthy, low cost meals? How about making organic produce and meat less expensive? How about, instead of factories for farms, we go back to growing food organically and raising food animals organically? How about, instead of feeding chickens, cows, pigs, sheep, etc. on corn and slaughterhouse remains (refeeding/mechanized and subsidized cannibalism) we let them roam freely and let them graze on grass and eat hay and bugs and all the natural things they used to eat before farms became factories?

Or better yet, how about legislators minding their own business and sticks to governing the things they were elected to govern, like gas prices, taxes, poverty and jobs -- to name a few?

Let's face it. We now live longer lives and have a higher quality of living and yet we are poorer than we ever have been before. I have nothing against restaurants and like to eat out on occasion -- let someone else do the cooking -- but I know how to prepare healthy, low cost meals on a budget. I've been doing it most of my life. I know how to cook. I know how to shop. I learn something new about food all the time because I read and research.

This is America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, and yet the government intrudes more and more into our everyday lives, telling us what we can and cannot do. I do not remember electing anyone to be my mother or my father or even my grandparents. I do not need a guardian and I do not need a babysitter. If I want to make a bad choice, I am willing to live with the consequences. That is my right. But more and more I find the government taking away my choices and dictating what they think is right for me without ever getting to know me, and people shrug and let it happen. Even when a government dictates for the people's own good, it is still dictating and a benevolent dictator is still a dictator. Before we know it, we will have fewer freedoms. This is where it starts and this is where it must end. Education is the answer, not control.

I saw Super Size Me and I know what Morgan Spurlock wanted to show, but he got the wrong end of the stick. Anything done to excess is going to be harmful -- even pleasant things. Ever read The Magic Fish-Bone by Charles Dickens?

Spurlock ate at McDonald's for every meal and it didn't look like he was exercising that much -- or even walking -- just eating. It isn't necessary to super size everything, especially not a large drink that is composed most of sugar. I'll bet if someone ate every meal at McDonald's for a year and made better food choices the outcome would have been different, especially if they exercised.

You can eat a healthy diet and still gain weight if you don't move around, get some exercise, walk at least 10,000 steps a day. The Amish eat a high fat, high carbohydrate, high cholesterol diet and few of them are overweight. Could it have something to do with all the physical labor and walking (Amish walk 20,000+ steps a day)? It's not about diet and health, or even food choices, it's about control and the government wants to control every aspect of our lives. What's worse is that people think the government cares for them. I do not think that is the motivation for government intervention in food choices. Just like drugs and guns and anything that can be overtly harmful, if people want something, they will find a way to get it -- even if they have to go across town.

Banning fast food restaurants won't make a difference in the end, but this sets a precedent. If we allow the government to take an inch, they'll take more than a mile; they will take everything away and the only choice will be no choice. Government run restaurants, government chosen menus, government guided lives -- Big Brother is already here. Think while you can, thought crimes are already being enacted.

That is all. Disperse.