Over a recent lunch of fries, onion rings and burgers, a friend brought up the fact that some Americans are pushing to remove free toy giveaways with unhealthy fast food meals.
In San Francisco, a law which would go into effect in December of next year will prohibit toy give-aways in children's fast-food meals that have more than 640 milligrams of sodium, 600 calories or 35 per cent of their calories from fat. The idea is that by giving away or advertising toys with these meals, children are encouraged to consume unhealthy foods.
It was ironic given our lunch fare, but we began a discussion about healthy eating choices and whether or not the government should interfere in people’s independent choices. After all, shouldn’t parents be the ones deciding where and what kids eat?
In school cafeterias, the same discussion rages on, particularly in light of the need to raise money for projects. Should we provide apples and granola bars for snacks, or should we continue to sell chocolate bars, chips and pop as guaranteed money-makers? One thing’s for sure - if you walk a kid into a cafeteria and ask him what he wants, he’s unlikely to pick out an apple in favour of a chocolate bar or a licorice stick.
Adults tend to think they should have control over most decisions involving children. But we adults prove every day that we can’t make the best decisions for ourselves either, defaulting to frozen foods or fast food meals or by smoking and drinking, or by cutting ourselves that extra piece of pie when we know we really have had enough. During Halloween, I had a group of trick-or-treaters come to the door. After I gave the kids their candy, the mother held her bag out too – which tells you something about just how health-savvy adults can be.
It doesn’t help that so much of what we purchase at the store is loaded with sodium – pick up a can of soup and check out how much one portion covers of your daily recommended intake of salt if you really want to make your heart stop quickly.
So do we want to have a nanny state where the government makes our decisions for us? Or are humans smart enough and capable enough to make their own decisions? One friend of mine jokingly says he doesn’t believe in freedom of choice, except in allowing him to freely purchase alcohol. But given a recent study that alcohol is more damaging to society than heroin or cocaine, maybe that should be the next thing of which the government should start taking control, putting pictures of diseased livers on cartons of beer, as has been its direction with cigarettes.
Our health care costs are skyrocketing, and even the staunchest public health care defendants must know that we, as taxpayers, can’t sustain the system and the onslaught of rising rates of heart disease and diabetes, due to poor eating, lack of exercise and other lifestyle choices. Like it or not, we need the government to hold our hands and baby-step us back into healthy living. If we’re really lucky, maybe our government representatives will walk us all the way back to an existence living in caves where we had to hunt and gather berries for our food.
As the saying goes, making healthy choices the easiest choices is the only way to go. If we care about our future health and protecting the public purse from bleeding out for health care, we need to make it as difficult as possible for kids – and adults - to buy the chocolate bars or the licorice sticks and as easy as possible to pick up the apple instead.