Should The Government Have To Say In Our Diets?

On a yearly basis 18 million dollars are spent on school lunches for schools all over America. And taxpayers, are the ones paying for part of that. Government is trying to get the United States to eat healthier, but in the end money is being wasted and people are not happy about it. Overall the government should not be regulating what we eat.

Most people say that the government’s role, in our diets, is the key for a healthier life. While others may argue that it is freedom of choice to eat whatever we want. However depending on the point of view, the government’s role in shaping what we consume is either a compulsory intervention or a blatant interference on American free will. Even though we hear a good argument on the government controlling our diets, most research show that the involvement of the government on our diets has shown little to no results.

Even if it is detrimental to society - it is exactly that - a societal issue, not a governmental one. The federal government should not have a say in how we live if the purpose of government is to protect the way of life of all people. Whether every person should believe that we should be careful of what we eat does not matter. The government should allow people to make their own choices. The government controlling what we eat would act as a gateway, or catalyst, towards the government controlling every aspect of humanity. This would leave us with little, if any, free will. Soon the government would begin to control how much electricity we can use in a day because of increasing argument for saving the environment, or even as far as controlling the way we dress because this leads to crime and/or violence. It can be seen that everything can have valid convincing reasons so that once we accept one aspect of control, the diet would stop us from disagreeing in some way to other ideas, increasing the governments control over us. They may seem valid and useful at first, but then we will end up with no free will at

Everyone loves the idea of a government that truly cares about him or her. Especially a government that would go so far as to layout a healthy diet plan to insure the health of your children and to battle childhood obesity. It is great that the government is concerned about adolescent obesity and the nutrition students receive at school. However, the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) Food and Nutrition Guidelines provide more problems for schools and they need to be eradicated, as well as repealing the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act.

However, unlike the view of David Zinczenko, Radley Balko, a senior editor at Reason and author of “What You Eat Is Your Business”, takes a strong clear stance that Americans are to blame for their own actions and health. Balko illustrates that the government is spending millions of dollars on changing the distribution food, such as what is being sold in school cafeterias and calling obesity a nationwide health crisis. He expands this idea by stating, “A society where everyone is responsible for everyone else’s well-being is a society more apt to accept government restrictions” (159). Basically, he believes this is a misguided resolution in the fact that government should not be concerned with intervening and restricting the food options for the entire population, but should be with individuals harboring responsibility for their own health.

Radley Balko, the once editor of the Huffington Post, argues in his essay “What You Eat Is Your Business,” that personal responsibility is necessary when it comes to the food you ingest and your health. Balko goes into detail about how the government should not have a hand in what consumers eat or where they eat by discussing initiatives the government has put in place. Anti-obesity initiatives such as the request for more food labels and the restriction of junk food in vending machines at schools are becoming more popular and causing the American population to not take responsibility for their own health choices. American’s well-being has become an issue of “public health” instead of being an individual concern.

After reading Balko’s essay, “What You Eat is Your Business” Balko argues that should not be government business to determine what people can eat. He argument that “all agitating for a panoply of government anti-obesity initiatives, including prohibiting junk food in school vending machines, federal funding for new bike trails and sidewalks, more demanding labels on foodstuffs, restrictive food marketing to children, and prodding for industry into more “responsible” behavior” which the author argue that is “bringing government between you and your waistline. He claims that “This is the wrong way to fight obesity. Instead of manipulating or intervening in the array of food options available to American consumers, our government ought to be working to foster a sense of responsibility in and ownership of our own health and well-being. Basically, he is saying that we need less public intervention and more personal’s responsibility.

The production and consumption of food has had an impact in Americans. According to a "The Washington Post" article, How a national food policy could save millions of American lives, the food industry affects Americans in economic, health and environmental aspects. This problem has not been resolved by the government. Government representatives and officials have spoken about ways to fix it but they have not come to an agreed solution for the damages caused by the food system. Some of the damages are income inequality, obesity, climate change, greenhouse gas emission, diabetes, other chronic diseases, and more. The American government is in conflict. They acknowledge the problems and say they will do something about it, but truly, they

This may be true for some but currently you are forcing everyone to eat the same thing. The things we learn now will carry with us through our whole life and creating unhealthy, bad habits now will affect us long term. One of the first issues related to eating unhealthy food long term is that it will cause obesity and weight issues among children in West and across America. We have an obesity epidemic compared to any other

First of all, changing the school's lunch menu would make it more expensive. You can buy a bag of chips for 99 cent on the other hand you have a salad that is almost two dollars. If you go to the store and get a bag of chips it's cheaper than buying a salad or anything healthy for you. Poor people don't have the money. Junk food is cheaper than healthy food that's why the world has obese people.

Regulating what the government should control and what they should not was one of the main arguments our founding fathers had to deal with when creating our nation, and to this day this regulation is one of the biggest issues in society. Yet, I doubt our founding fathers thought about the idea that the food industry could one day somewhat control our government, which is what we are now facing. Marion Nestles’ arguments in the book Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health deal with how large food companies and government intertwine with one another. She uses many logical appeals and credible sources to make the audience understand the problem with this intermingling. In The Politics of Food author Geoffrey

On the other hand, you may be thinking, “$3.75-$4.75 is cheap for a school lunch”, “Who would pay for it?”, or “If it’s good enough for school standards, then it MUST be healthy”. $3.75-$4.75 is not cheap with the economy failing and families having to stretch their dollars. About a year ago, the lunch was $2.50. If a student bought a $4.75 lunch every day for a month, about thirty days, the total would be $142.50. Multiply that by twelve months and it is $1,710 a YEAR. Compared to the $900 a year with the $2.50 meal, lunch prices ARE pretty darn expensive. Secondly, if enhanced foods and lunch system were implemented, some might say it would take a huge amount of money to actually start the project. However, if tax dollars are enough to pay for billion dollar roads, then it’s enough to start a respectable lunch system. A portion of the tax dollars could be used instead of it all going to highway and road construction. Finally, the food may fit school standards, but it may not be such a good choice. Most people eat 2,000 to 2,500 calories a day, depending on their needs. How healthy could a tortilla with beans, or a piece of meat slapped between two slices of bread, be? Not to mention the amounts of saturated fat, trans fat, and salt! If you checked the

The fact is that in our country, any government intrusion looks undesirable. We are so used to making free choice and to having access to everything we need and want that we have already forgotten the value and usefulness of the government control. No, that does not mean that the government must control everything and everyone. What I mean here is that the government control should be balanced with the freedom of choice. Unfortunately, plentiful foods do not lead to improved health conditions. We cannot always make a relevant choice. Our hurried lifestyles make us extremely fast, and eating is not an exception. We eat fast, but fast does not always mean useful. I believe, and in this essay I argue that the government must have a say in our

“The United States is the only nation besides Australia that refuses to embrace the right to food” (Chilton). The country that prides itself on valuing and protecting human rights has been denying one of the simplest forms of rights. In 2007, food insecurity, the technical term for lacking access to enough quality food, affected 11.1% of the US population (Chilton). Chilton also claims that the US spends more than $50 billion per year on nutrition assistance programs, but there has been little change in overall rates of food insecurity since the annual measurement began in 1995. America is truly hungry and since healthy food is a right, our country needs to find new, effective resolutions to decrease food insecurity.

What if you were forced to eat foods you don’t like to eat, because of its look or smell, but it is all you have. We will focus on what it takes to be a healthy in the eyes of the government, also what classifies as fatting/"bad for you" or in other words unhealthy. Why does the officials in our government put restrictions on school foods? Is it fair, what are they hoping to achieve by applying the restrictions on schools.