New York Diary

This takes the cake.

New York has just passed a ban on trans fats. I'm having philosophical troubles as a result.

I'm all for a reasonable amount of health-consciousness, but I just can't quite stomach the idea of the government dictating what I am allowed to eat when I go out. (I can't stomach it! Get it? I'm so funny.) In a nation formed with deference to Liberty and Freedom--instead of, say, universal health care (not that the welfare state is a bad model, mind you, but it is a different model)--this strikes me as quite an intrusion.

And it's different even from the oft-maligned no-smoking-in-public-establishments laws (with which, frankly, I have no problem). We ban smoking in commercial establishments because we are worried about how one person's carcinogen will affect another person's lungs. This is an extension, albeit a very great extension, of the ban on murder: sure, it limits your freedoms, but it does so in order to protect that guy standing next to you. The same concept informs all sorts of socially responsible legislation: pollution laws, public drunkenness laws, gun laws at a stretch. We limit what you can do because we are worried about the harm it will cause others.

But no amount of stretching makes it reasonable to ban me from publicly eating foods that are bad for me. If I like my flans nice and fluffy (that is, made with shortening) instead of densely rock-like (made with trans fat-free butter), I kind of think that should be my call.

There are all sorts of things a health-conscious legislature can do to make sure that I'm not accidentally jeopardizing my own well-being when I bite into my flan, too. It could force all restaurants to publish ingredients lists. It could run a public campaign explaining the dangers of trans fats and telling us which foods contain them. It could give tax breaks to restaurants that don't serve trans fats, or could institute a sin tax on those who do. I'd stand by any of those moves as well within the prerogative of the government (even if, separate from that issue, I might find some of them a bit silly). In fact, enabling the transfer of information really seems like an ideal government project, allowing me to make my own choices in that much more confident a way.

But banning the public serving of, say, Crisco-laced biscuits? Oh, come on. That sounds awfully like a Big Daddy State to me.

There is, of course, some real public justification for this move. Obesity in America is a true problem. Moreover, your health issues very well might affect me: if you have a heart attack and are on Medicare, or welfare, or Family Health Plus (New York's free health insurance for anybody who is 1. uninsured and 2. too rich for Medicaid), then my tax dollars are subsidizing your hospital stay. Your good health is good for my wallet.

But somehow, I think that basic universal health care is compatible with the preservation of a person's ability to do what she wants when it causes neither mental nor bodily harm to another.

Maybe what I mean is this: a higher financial cost to me--that is, slightly higher taxes--seem a worthy price to pay for the assurance that I mostly get to be in charge of my own decisions in life. It's one of the most desirable government expenditures I can think of, in fact. If your gastronomic choices had a 40% chance of giving me cancer, or if they predictably caused me serious mental anguish, then I'd say "legislate them away!" without much hesitation. But there is an essential tradeoff between the individual and the community. If the communal costs of this bit of individual choice are mostly financial, then I have to say that we privilege a person's ability to eat what they enjoy, cooked how they enjoy it.

I'm generally in favor of ensuring collective welfare through our governments--and I think, as a result, that things like Social Security and universal health care are broadly good. But, what can I say, I do detect in myself some strong libertarian tendencies when it comes to messing with the menus of my favorite restaurants. I maintain, perhaps ridiculously, that this is not a double standard.

posted by Skay @ 10:44 AM