The Pros And Cons Of Food Control

Sixty-nine percent of people in the U.S. are overweight. But does that mean the government should control restaurants by severely taxing sugary drinks or limiting the amount of calories a buyer can buy? This has been a very controversial and heated topic. While there are many opinions about whether or not the government should help control people’s diets, the cons of food control clearly outweigh the pros. Government control is an ineffective way to limit the food people buy. It affects those without weight problems just as much as those with weight problems, and it rarely makes change, worsening the issue when it does. Food Control, an unfair government act, hampers the rights of the people, fails to serve its original purpose, and may actually worsen the situation. At first look, government control seems to have some advantages. As obesity rates rise, we need to help limit how much overweight people eat. The government should also deserve control because it costs them more money if people don’t eat healthy, as the government …show more content…
Food control affects those not in the target group, while leaving the overweight unaffected, writes Michael Marlow: “Another government favorite, taxing sugary drinks, does more to shore up government coffers than to reduce obesity. A few studies examined the impact of increasing sugary drinks taxes by 20 percent or more. They find that higher taxes do reduce obesity, but the effect is rather limited. Interestingly, soda taxes mostly cause people without weight problems to cut back their consumption, even though they are not the intended targets of the policy.” Also, the government is prone to lobbyists. In one case, Congress declared pizza a vegetable because of pressure from lobbyists. They blocked attempts from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to replace pizza with something healthier, claiming pizza contains tomato paste, making it a