Let Them Eat Cake: Student submits essay on eating

Jacob Byers/Comp. and Rhet II AP

I’m guessing you’re overweight. If you’re obese, I’m not surprised. But don’t feel bad, well, maybe you should, but you are not alone.Possibly) You, along with over 60 percent of Americans, are part of an epidemic.

Don’t blame me. It isn’t my fault. It isn’t food’s fault. It isn’t the government’s fault. It is your fault. And you have the freedom to live that way or change. No one has the responsibility, or right, to make you change, much less take care of you.

A fat tax raises the price on unhealthy food in an ATTEMPT to keep people healthy and at a lower risk of disease (specifically heart disease). This means the government thinks I don’t have the capacity to make my own decisions and live my life as I want to. As a person with a metabolism on steroids, yes, I am indeed lucky; I live with the philosophy of the worse it is for me, the more I want of it. Even with the outrageous amounts of junk I eat, I manage to remain healthy. Don’t punish me for liking food that tastes good by “trying to help me.”

Fat taxes impose on people’s right to choose their own lifestyles. But the constitution reads, “We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union should force everyone to be healthy,” right? Wrong. It actually says to “promote the general Welfare.” Therefore, the government has every right to suggest, persuade, and encourage us to eat a healthy diet and exercise, but a fat tax oversteps that boundary. They already require us to wear safety belts and tax cigarettes like it’s their job, and imposing a fat tax would increase their already Svengali-like control.

Let’s imagine they do somehow manage to pass this disastrous tax; it would just raise the prices of Twinkies, pop and other delicious snack food, right? Not if it was implemented like it is in Denmark. They added a tax to butter, cheese, pizza, meat, oil, processed food and MILK. It does seem that something is indeed rotten in the state of Denmark. That or I misinterpreted the “got milk?” posters in school. That must mean we need to force mothers to stop making their kids drink milk because it is going to make them fat. How have we been so deviously lied to for so long? Also, meat, my main source of protein, would cost me even more money. How else are we supposed to build big, strong muscles? I was taught that in order to grow up with big, strong muscles I needed protein, which comes from meat. It seems I was a desperately misled child. Furthermore, aren’t there worse things that they need to worry about? I understand red meat is not the healthiest food around, but, if I were one to worry, I would stop drinking my 2-liters of Mountain Dew long before I stopped eating red meat.

Now, between the two outcomes: the tax working and reducing consumption of fatty foods or it not working at all, I believe that it having very little effect is the much more likely. However, let’s look at the first situation. Hooray! People aren’t fat anymore! Everything is good now … or not. People stop eating these foods due to ANOTHER tax, hurting the profits on a lot of food companies, resulting in job loss, and continuing to add to the terrible economic conditions. It is simple. Taxes kill jobs and prevent growth, so, right now, implementing yet another tax would be extremely detrimental no matter the “benefit.”

Or the situation that seems inevitable to me: consumption of unhealthy food is hardly affected, if at all. “Like a fat kid loves cake” is a common phrase for good reasons. Unhealthy foods taste good; people like to eat it a lot, become overweight and continue to eat (too much) of it because it tastes good. The siren’s song of that Twinkie will overpower the added cost. This means the government would just be taking more money out of our pockets without a purpose. It was designed to dissuade consumption of unhealthy food, no dissuasion occurred, but the government still gets money (and probably wastes it). Neither possible outcome is good, so why even contemplate implementing the tax?

Food alone does not make anyone fat. If you exercise enough, you can burn off every bit of what you eat and not become overweight. The epidemic is more complex than just foods high in saturated fat. So, unless the government plans on regulating everything we do, they cannot control the epidemic. But remember, no one makes you be overweight either.
You have the freedom to do as you please, and you need to appreciate that.

Go eat a Twinkie. At you OWN risk, of course.

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