Katherine Mangu-Ward has an important piece in The Washington Post debunking the some of the food activists' most treasured food myths, including:
1. People in poor neighborhoods lack access to fresh fruits and vegetables.
2. Advertising forces people to make unhealthy choices.
3. Eating healthy is too expensive.
4. People need more information about what they eat.
5. There are too many fast-food restaurants in low-income neighborhoods.
We should all greet this information (and the many studies Mangu-Ward cites) as good news. What a relief to know people have access to good food and that it isn't expensive and that advertisements don't really sway people to eat bad food. But of course, this news will be met with anything but applause by the food activists.
Why? Because promoting the idea of helplessness is the bread and butter for the food nannies. They promote the idea that it's all just too hard, to expensive, to time-consuming. They want a culture of dependency that will demand big government programs to solve their problems.
Self control? Personal responsibility? Where's the money in that?