As I've mentioned before, childhood obesity is often used as the reason why government should step in and regulate food choices. Of course, this makes little sense, since a healthy lunch is not going to do much for kids who pick up unhealthy habits at home. As Iain Murray writes in Stealing You Blind, (excerpted and adapted here for National Review), "The real beneficiaries of such programs are not the children, who don’t want them, but the bureaucrats who are employed to check the schools’ progress, tabulate and file results, produce 'performance indicators,' issue reports, and, most important, demand more funding."
Of course, it's good to strive for a healthy lifestyle and it's only right to be concerned about the well-being of kids. But that makes us more susceptible to accepting government meddling in those areas of life. Parents have to step up at some point and stop letting bureaucrats and busybodies intrude on their turf.
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