Carnal Reason

Food calories are so pervasively and inexpensively available in our environment that they should be regarded as a pollutant. Just as an asthmatic can’t help but inhale pollutants in the air all around him, we Americans cannot help but ingest the calories present in the environment all around us.

John G. Sotos, The Washington Post

Food should be regarded as a pollutant. I am hard pressed to recall something as idiotic said with a straight face. And what is this “we Americans” crap? Speak for yourself, fool. I am perfectly capable of deciding what to eat.

Dr. Sotos has a dismal opinion of his fellow citizens. They exist at the level of infants, incapable of deciding what to put into their own mouths. What (if anything) are these ineffectual beings capable of? Can they be trusted to vote, or to drive cars? Can they be trusted not to soil themselves? Did you remember to wipe?

Don’t worry your little head, the doctor has a prescription for you. He and other responsible adults will manipulate food prices. The plan practically explains itself:

A program for tradable emission allowances could target foods with a high caloric density, that is, foods with a high number of calories per ounce. These foods are more likely to produce weight gain than foods with a low density of calories. It’s easier to eat 1,000 calories in dessert than in vegetables, because the calories in dessert are concentrated.A food’s caloric density generally depends on its water and fat content. Dry, fatty foods have the highest caloric density, because water has weight but no calories and because fat has more calories per ounce than proteins and carbohydrates. For example, butter, which is fatty and dry, has 195 calories per ounce. Frozen spinach has seven calories per ounce.

A specific example illustrates how tradable emission allowances could work. Suppose the calorie-emission allowance is set to 100 calories for each ounce of food emitted into the environment (i.e., sold). A four-ounce food item having more than 400 calories could not, therefore, be sold unless “calorie credits” were purchased to cover the excess calories. So a standard four-ounce stick of butter, containing 780 calories, could not enter the marketplace until the butter producer acquired 380 additional calorie-credits from someone having credits to sell.

On the other hand, the producer of a four-ounce block of frozen spinach would emit only 28 calories into the environment and could sell the unused 372 calorie-credits to the butter producer.

Did you get all that? It’s a little tricky, and no one really expects you to understand. No matter. Just sit back and relax. The doctor knows what’s best for you. Bend over, please.

Posted on April 11th, 2006 by pwyll
Filed under: nanny state