The FDA's New Food Regulations

In what can only be seen as another shallow attempt by the government to do something which feels good rather than what is substantial, the Food and Drug Administration has proposed that restaurants include calorie counts on their menus by 2012. After all, you already get that information, courtesy of the FDA, on prepackaged foods you prepare or eat at home. Why not have the restaurants do it too?

Oh, let's see: maybe because your health is your job? Could it be that what you eat is your responsibility? Yes, yes, we know the obvious and vacuous reply to that: because those bad old food companies won't offer the information without being forced. Heaven forbid that the American people force it themselves by demanding it on their own, if that's so important to them.

But, you must understand, the government can't have citizens going around looking out for themselves now, can it? Because, of course, they might begin to see something which Washington, and even Lansing and Detroit and Wayne County (albeit to lesser degrees) don't want you to see. You might begin to realize that you're a big boy, you're a big girl, and you can make your own choices in these and other personal areas. You may begin to think that, horror of horrors, you simply do not need government to the depth and degree which government says we need it.

Yet the longer we accept such pandering, the less chance of our becoming truly independent human beings. What really can be said is good for us when we are not able to see it for ourselves?