Hold On Tight to Your Burgers, or At Least Chew Fast

William Saletan is on the case in the new "War On Junk Food". I'd like to point out that, while I was aiming at humor with Cheeseburger in Purgatory (and note that the pictured food in Saletan's article is a cheeseburer), my tone was light, but the substance was heavy. That is, I was really serious about the threat. Given their druthers, the nanny-staters will ban junk food, and the comparison to drugs will fuel the fire. At least some of the folks over at Reason are fairly sanguine about all this (Nick Gillespie, I believe, among them). Their point being that this will amount to overreach, i.e. people will revolt when they come for our cheeseburgers. I hope they are right, but I am personally a bit more antsy. In spite of ample evidence that marijuana is no worse than, and quite likely more benign than, alcohol, it remains banned and people are being locked up every day for possession. If evidence doesn't really matter, then even specious evidence, such as some of this speculation about "food addiction" can be a powerful weapon in the hands of the demagogues.