Posted on 02/27/2015 6:10:49 PM PST by Daniel Clark
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.
-- Daniel Clark is a writer from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is the author and editor of a web publication called The Shinbone: The Frontier of the Free Press, where he also publishes a seasonal sports digest as The College Football Czar.
My 19 year old daughter and I had beef carpaccio for lunch. Raw beef...nom, nom. Go ahead and try to take our beef away. Better yet, try separating some good ole boys from their BBQ.
I read the headlline too quickly and thought they were making us eat babies.
Perhaps not yet.
Why is it that when another one of these ALPHABET GOVERNMENT AGENCY makes another announcement, that they will control something else in our daily lives, no one says anything about it? But when some civilian suggests that we do away with 90% of all these AGENCIES, the whole tribe of cockroaches climb out of their holes and OBJECT VEHEMENTLY? Isn’t it about time that WE, THE PEOPLE demand that they be done away with?
Get ready for SOYLENT GREEN.....
The agencies need to be done away with and the cockroaches need to be sprayed when they erupt. It would be an improved world.
> I read the headlline too quickly and thought they were making us eat babies.
Perhaps not yet.
What do you think deathpanels were invited by Obama for?
I don’t get it. How do several thousand fat, 50 IQ squishes in DC dictate to 300 million Americans what they will eat? They do realize, I hope, that Americans own enough ammo to shoot every DHS/ATF/IRS worm 564,832 times.
So where will you get your meat and fatty foods. They won’t put YOU in prison. They will demand that Costco stop selling it.
And they will comply because they don’t want a fight...they just want to make money.
Now, you can buy a share in a pig...but how long will that last? What happens to farmers who sell raw milk?
No,,,,the answer is to never let this get started.
Kill the roaches in their nests.
You may have it wrong on the “50 IQ”. Some years ago a competitor of mine (propane, heavily regulated) was beefing at a meeting about being tired of “fat, lazy beaurocrats”. I resonded, “Carey, I LOVE fat lazy beaurocrats. The ones that scare hell out of me are fresh, young folk, just out of college. Here they have landed a nice job, a nice office good salary, and he is eagar to earn it, every dime of it. Unfortunately the only thing he is allowed to “MAKE” are rules, rules that become an expensive pain in our ass.”
I am 82 going on 83, so I will not be here when the groceries you need are totally controlled and dispersed by the Super, Super WMart in your community. Your and your family dietary needs will be computer generated and converted into a two weeks supply of food for you and your family. You will go to the Government Grocery, ID yourself and pick up the bags/basket of what the government had determined you and yours need for the next two weeks. You may have the choice of one optional food item to add to your food allotment.
The cost of your food allotment will be deducted from your Earnings Account, into which your employer has deposited ALL of your government determined earnings from which your taxes, medical and retirement account allocations have been deducted and then from the balance of your Earnings Account will come the deductions for your groceries, your rent at the government housing. You will have a debit card to use for your transportation and clothing needs. Unless you are a member of the ELITE, that is all you will need to get by on. There will be government provided entertainment to which you will a certain number of tickets to use for attendance unless you become a forced participant in whatever the entertainment is that day.
You get the idea of what the Progressives are planning for you and all the plain, working class of humans and can probably add some of your own projections to this sad forecast.
Should ISIS be in control by then, you won’t have this to worry about because as a kafir, you will already be long gone.
In the early 1930’s, no one thought that Hitler/the Nazis would be exterminating the millions they did away with.
Time to go to bed.... good night... have a good day...
“The ones that scare hell out of me are fresh, young folk, just out of college.” = boots. They don’t survive long without lots of support and guidance around them.
Had an example of that recently during Libya’s civil war in 2011. Seventy-five percent of Libya’s army deserted. All Qaddhafi had left to defend his position was Libyan cadets (boots). The provincial militias beat the crap out of the cadets. Really sad watching these kids as they faced summary executions, prison or worse.
There’ll still be a black market of some sort, and an underground currency of some sort, because the free market is never entirely stifled, it just seeks the path of least resistance. Even in Cuba and North Korea.
> I don’t get it. How do several thousand fat, 50 IQ squishes in DC dictate to 300 million Americans what they will eat? They do realize, I hope, that Americans own enough ammo to shoot every DHS/ATF/IRS worm 564,832 times.
Way past due...
The Government can kiss my A$$.
Unless and until WE,THE PEOPLE demand our rights given to us by the constitution, these POLITICIANS will keep chipping away our rights, until we have no rights left. IT’S UP TO US, AND NOT THESE POLITICIANS, WHAT OUR RIGHTS ARE.
Nanny State PING!
Thanks for the ping!
If the government cared it would limit food stamp purchases to healthy foods.
So they don’t care.
Period.
Love the title: “Casus Belly” LOL!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.