Losing the Most Basic Right to Eat What We Want Can a local authority go too far? I would have to think they can. Take New York City for example. Former mayor Bloomberg tried to ban large sodas. He thought he knew what was better for us and by golly, he was going to make us conform to his choices, never mind what we wanted. If people wanted a big drink, they would have to spend even more money by getting two of the smaller sizes. It took a while and a law suit against the ban had to work its way through the New York State court system and it finally landed up in the New York State court of Appeals and the ban was defeated. What was Bloomberg thinking? Mayor Bill de Blasio has announced processed meats will be banned in the city. The famous New York City hot dog will no longer be allowed in the city along with other processed meats. This has to be incredibly insane. Does the mayor and city council think an occasional hot dog is bad for us and are they trying to protect us against hot dog evils? This is building off the expansion of meatless Mondays in New York city schools. Yes, that is correct, the children in New York City are deprived of their hamburgers and such on Mondays and even their pepperoni pizza. We are being ruled by madmen. Is this being done to protect people from the evils of meat? That is what is being said, but not in the way you think. The rationale is the meat is bad for the environment. This is just a way for some people to force their beliefs on others and in one of the most personal ways, using our diets. People have a fundamental right to eat what they want. If something is thought to be unhealthy by one group, they have no right to take that decision away from others who want that product. Before you know it, they will be making laws on how we have to dress, who we can see and talk to among many other things. We all know there is far too much plastic in the world. If one wanted to do the right thing, they would make a law doing away with all plastics, but this is not what is happening. We hear we have to do away with plastic straws and plastic bags. This is only a small part of the problem. Just look at the shelves in the supermarket and you will see many products are packed in plastic containers. Take water bottles for example, there are probably far more of them being used than even plastic bags, yet why aren’t they banned, could it be because there is a powerful lobby behind the water business? What about all those plastic sheets that wrap cases of food coming into the store, or all the plastic cups and utensils or the plastic products in our cars, what happens to them when the car is scrapped? Plastic is everywhere and until it is all banned, we are just fooling ourselves. Food bans are nothing new and have been employed by religious leaders throughout history. The Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican and Methodist churches banned meat on Fridays. Muslims are not allowed to eat pork or pork products. The same is true for Jews and the ban also includes other foods. Buddhists believe in doing no harm so that means a vegetarian dietary practice, but there is a branch which allows meat and fish if the animal is not slaughtered for consumption. Hindus do not eat eggs, fish, meat or poultry. I could go on, there are plenty of more religions which have food restrictions, but my point is do our political leaders think they are equal to our religious leaders and they should be allowed to determine what is good for us and what is not? When you look at things this way it seems what they are doing is absurd. Are they really saying we are too stupid to know what is good for us? I do not know how many people know this, it bothers me to think those politicians who work at the United Nations are making recommendations about our diets, but in 2007 the United Nations recommended that governments regulate what we can consume. These are the same people who go out into our restaurants where they gorge themselves paying for the food with the large salaries they are paid to accomplish absolutely nothing of importance. Some countries have taken these recommendations to heart such as Denmark, Iceland, Sweden and Switzerland which banned trans fats. I don’t necessarily think this is the same as banning foods, but when a government whether local or federal bans hot dogs, that gets my dander up. Trans fats should be banned and they are in some places in the United States already. The problem is you can go too far. California which banned trans fats along with New York City and Philadelphia wanted to be able to change the recipes used by food manufactures. We are the ones who should make the decision if something is unhealthy or not. While food banning is being done, is it just a gimmick politicians use to make it look like they care about us? Let me ask you this, what do you think about canned food? Notice no politician is saying anything about that and yet did you know 40 percent of canned foods tested by a California Health Organization were said to contain traceable levels of the chemical bisphenol A, also known as BPA and yet where is the outrage and the banning? Is a hot dog more dangerous than this, of course not? BPA has been linked in past research to birth defects and some cancers along with diabetes and heart disease. The organization had bought 250 cans of food over four months from stores in eleven different states. They were mostly purchased from supermarkets we would recognize. In California politicians are trying to ban the toys in McDonald happy meals. Santa Clara and San Francisco said toys were being offered with unhealthy food. San Francisco also banned people from bringing bottled water to a city event. It did not ban plastic bottles outright, they just made it harder for their citizens who would now have to buy drinks. Back to San Francisco. The city tried to ban the sale of goldfish because they said it was cruel, but that bill was defeated. Does the madness ever stop? I look around me and I see so many things that need to be fixed or improved and yet these politicians do nothing about them and take up the little time they show up to work with such nonsense it is unbelievable.
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