Health Police Expands Mandate: Continue To Target The Poor (4)
August 16th, 2008 Posted in Sightings (All), Sightings: Social EngineeringButton Pushed: News item (30 July 2008) in Globe and Mail reports that LA “City officials are putting South Los Angeles on a diet. The City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to place a moratorium on new fast food restaurants in an impoverished swath of the city with a proliferation of such eateries and above average rates of obesity.”
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“Why is it that those who believe they know how to fix the world so often know nothing of the real world?” - Hippokrites
If you’re not a poor bloke, and most readers of this probably are not, imagine being poor—or remember when you were. If your imagination needs help, go slumming. Get some jeans that need washing out of the laundry and head down to a working class neighbourhood—or if you have the nerve (and think you can ‘pass’) go to a neighbourhood where a high percentage of folk actually aspire to be working class. Observe what the residents are doing or infer it from the local business. You’ll see bars, liquor stores, fast-food chains, and convenience stores whose primary sales items are cigarettes and so-called junk food. You won’t see upscale restaurants, bistros, speciality wine shops, or gourmet food boutiques.
Now ask yourself what small pleasures, what ‘vices’, you think mean a lot to the people who live there? The answer is the same ‘vices’ most of us have and have to pay for: eating out, drink and perhaps drugs. And then ask yourself what percentage of your salary you devote to these things and what percentage of your salary you would have to use to pay for these pleasures if you ate at McDonalds rather than at some upscale eatery, drank draft rather than some vintage wine, still smoked cigarettes as your drug of choice rather than 12 year old scotch or prescription meds to sleep, relax or—if you’re not too pure—a few lines of coke.
For the average guy or gal who lives on an income somewhere down below that of middle class, who lives somewhere near the edge, who can’t afford indulging expensive tastes, the small pleasures of skipping preparation of dinner and having a burger followed by a few beer and a couple of smokes in the local watering hole with friends is very important. Then it’s nice to go home, settle in on the sofa, turn on the tube, and munch on some BBQ chips while watching some non-educational entertainment. (This certainly was important to me while growing up, and in fact it still is—even though I’ve now managed to climb up into the middle class and do sometimes indulge in the more pricey variations of these basic ‘vices’.) So what the hell is wrong with any of this?
Well, apparently the social engineers in the middle class want to change this ‘unhealthy’ life-style by legislation. They know what is best for the poor and ignorant slobs who actually like greasy cheeseburgers and who consider having a beer and a smoke with friends small pleasures to which they are entitled to enjoy without paying through the nose. So they introduce ‘reforms’ to make life difficult, more expensive, and allegedly healthier for their less affluent fellow citizens—who in their judgement aren’t mature enough to make ‘lifestyle’ decisions for themselves. This is paternalism raised to Nth degree.
Drinking to excess and smoking are indisputably bad for your health, but is having a few drinks or smoking a sin? Obviously they are considered to be so by Crusaders For Virtue who try to kerb drinking and smoking by making these ‘sins’ extremely expensive through absurd levels of taxation. Such taxes are aptly nicknamed “sin taxes”. Sometimes they are called “luxury taxes”. It is worthwhile to consider the definitions of ‘sin’ and ‘luxury’.
A sin is nothing more than a breach of some dogmatic religious commandment. Different religions have very, very different commandments. You need the dough, so you work six day weeks. The fundamentalist Christian who works on Sunday is sinning. The orthodox Jew who works on Saturday is sinning. Both see the members of the other religion as sinning and would like to have all business suspended on—well, either Saturday or Sunday, depending on their religion’s dogma. The fact is that most ‘sins’ do not have anything to do with morality. Oh yes, some few do, such as the sin of killing another human being, but they are in the minority. Certainly drinking and smoking aren’t real moral issues, but they are considered sins by many religions—and I think it is this underlying fundamentalism that led to prohibition and the recent demonization of smokers. However, such paternalistic social engineers rarely admit to having a quasi-religious basis to their activities. The usual rationalization is alleged concern for the physical—not spiritual—health of people who are assumed not to have the competence to make their own decisions.
A luxury is something one can do without, and still survive, but gives one pleasure. Still it is a slippery word to define concretely, for it is almost entirely relative. We all need food and water and shelter to survive, but beyond that absolute baseline, things get sticky. Even the most rundown one-room apartment in an American ghetto housing project would be considered luxurious by the average Nigerian. And I don’t think you’d find many CEOs who consider dining out at MacDonald’s a luxury, but—and this is an important point—it is for many a harried single mother working two jobs and needing a break from preparing meals for her kids. So should luxuries be specially taxed? The middle class probably wouldn’t object if there was a special tax on CEO purchases of private jets. And if the luxury tax doesn’t affect them adversely, and they can feel good inside that it is reducing ‘sin’, they don’t mind either. If you drink (as a ‘luxury’) and your income means you can easily absorb the ridiculous ‘sin tax’ on booze, you have no serious objection to it—although you may whine about how much that vintage wine costs when you could have picked it up for half the price last time you were in France.
The fact is that luxuries are actually essential—an oxymoronic fact if ever there was one. Essential to all of us are a few non-essentials to make life worth living. And when these luxuries are denied people, they suffer. But ‘luxuries’ and ‘sins’ are rarely denied to those who have enough money, for they can just absorb the extra cost or inconvenience. Increased ‘sin taxes’ annoy the hell out of me, but I now have the ability to still indulge in my modest naughty luxuries without going into debt. But what about the guy (no different from me in his addictions to some modest and admittedly unhealthy ‘luxuries’ like over-indulging in a smoky pub with friends), but who actually can’t afford the price of pack of smokes or a few pints of beer, because cigarettes prices have gone through the roof (and smoking is even now banned in bars), and even the price of a bottle of domestic beer has become outrageous. (Any alcoholic drink served in a bar is consistently twice—and often thrice—off-the-shelf prices). Even a middle-class guy like me hesitates to go out for a social night at a pub.
But the sanctimonious and self-righteous Crusaders For Virtue are relentless in their efforts to reform everyone in the Holy name of Public Health. It doesn’t seem to bother them that these reforms disproportionately make life less endurable for the people they paternalistically believe need it most and who they think are incapable of making their own ‘life style’ decisions.
The latest target of the Holy Warriors marching under a banner of Health is food. One should have seen it coming. One of the primary phobias of those with time on their hands (and, ironically, excellent medical care at hand) is fear of illness. They are the people who keep Health Food stores in business, trying one snake oil after another in the hope of outwitting the Grim Reaper, and who religiously read the latest dubious epidemiological ‘link’ between some food (or even food container) with good or bad health. This neurosis deserves longer consideration than I can do here, but the result is that what we eat has been added to the reformer agenda, one which had previously only included booze and cigarettes and recreational drugs.
Transfats (and whoever heard of them five years ago?) somehow have become a hot item, and have now been banned in New York restaurants. (It doesn’t matter to the reformers that the scientific evidence used to justify treating transfats as dangerous is—to put it mildly—questionable.) Then so-called ‘junk food’ came under attack with those so concerned about everyone’s health calling for a special tax (sin? luxury?) on—of all things!—the killer potato chip!
Onward Christian Soldiers! Fast food, now there is a worthy target! The Big Mac as killer! The box office success of the film Supersize Me is ample evidence that the middle class public is more than willing to swallow anything that suggests we aren’t immortal because corporate interests are poisoning us with, among other edibles, ‘fast’ food. It’s a mildly entertaining flick, but science or even responsible journalism it isn’t. But it made such an impression on the general public that serious scientists even tried to replicate that quick deterioration of the film-maker’s health he claimed to have suffered from conducting his ‘experiment’ of dining exclusively under the Golden Arches for a month. Not surprisingly, no evidence has been found of anything specifically bad for your health about MacDonald’s food—or that of any ‘fast food’.
(However, there is—but just by my standards—something bad about MacDonald’s: I think their burgers taste like cardboard and the rationing of condiments pisses me off. They even manage to make a cup of coffee that is so weak and lukewarm you might as well be drinking the old dishwater you used to clean your coffee maker. But this, of course, has nothing to do with the food being unhealthy. I just think it tastes far worse than that at other fast food joints. It’s a matter of personal preference.)
Also, it should be pointed out that the phrase ‘fast food’ is more than a little ambiguous. You want really fast food? Well, raw fruit and veggies are as quick as you can get. Target them!
Of course I know the phrase is usually meant to refer to restaurants that don’t make you wait too long to be fed and offer less expensive meals and usually a more limited menu. But what matters about dining at these places is what matters about dining at any restaurant: what you choose to order and eat—and how much. Who is getting better nutrition in the following scenarios? The guy dining at New York City’s DB Bistro Moderne on their speciality: a $50 burger, made with sirloin steak, a filling of boned short ribs braised in red wine, foie gras, and preserved black truffles accompanied by a $75 bottle of vintage wine followed by crème brûlée for dessert? Or the fellow in MacDonald’s having a “Fillet-O-Fish” sandwich with a “Snack Size Fruit & Walnut Salad” washed down with an orange juice followed by an oatmeal-raisin cookie for dessert? (And walking out with change from a ten spot.) I will say one thing about DB Bistro Moderne: it is a ‘slow food restaurant’. Apparently you have to wait at least a month to even get a reservation. You can squeeze a meal at MacDonald’s into a half-hour lunch break.
There is nothing about ‘fast’ food that is inherently different from ‘slow’ food in terms of nutritional value. It just costs less and is more convenient—and, yes, is often made from cheaper ingredients and with less care and doesn’t—usually—taste as good. Well, you usually get what you pay for. But you should have the right to get what you can afford to pay for.
Apparently this is no longer the case in the poorer neighbourhoods of Los Angeles—and I’m sure this idea will catch on. The social engineers focusing on other people’s health aren’t satisfied with fixing respiratory disease by banning smoking and taxing cigarettes through the roof, or fixing the problems associated with alcohol abuse by similar outrageous taxation and restrictions on where you can indulge in the sin of quaffing a cold beer, they are now going to fix the health issues associated with obesity by only allowing more upscale eateries to open in the poor neighbourhoods. Right. Now the guy coming off his ten hour shift at a minimum wage job is going to stop by the new Surf ‘n Turf restaurant and drop thirty bucks to consume a meal that is probably less healthy and far more fattening (albeit probably more tasty) than his traditional burger with a side-order of pre-processed deep-fried shrimp?
That “impoverished swath” of L.A. is going to be more impoverished (literally and figuratively) because of this latest idiotic crusade of all those social reformers who obviously really believe they know what is best for their less financially well-off fellow citizens. I doubt the residents of L.A.’s poorer neighbourhoods will lose weight—except from their wallets. I also doubt they appreciate this meddling concern with their health.
One has to wonder what issue will be targeted next by the Health Vice Squad. One thing is for certain, the people who will be injured aren’t going to be those doing the shooting: instead they will be the ones who happen to be caught holding the latest target just because, well, they find it appealing.
-D. D’Sinope
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