Reduce Calories on Pizza and Burgers; British Government Demands
Many people who know my ideologue when it comes to government might think I will be against what the British government is demanding from their private restaurants that sell high calorie food. You might believe this piece will be informing you about how wrong it is for a government to tell any private company what they can sell and not sell.
Well you would be wrong.
The Public Health England (PHE) has issued draft guidelines to recommend calorie limits for regularly consumed items including sandwiches, pizza, burgers, cooking sauces, pies, soups, and processed meats, the Daily Telegraph reports.
Currently these limits would not be mandatory but the British government has warned that if the private restaurants do not follow these guidelines they would be prepared to legislate them and make them law.
The British government have come up with these calorie limits in direct response to the childhood obesity problem in Britain, which is becoming worse. PHE has presented data showing the proportion of children leaving primary school classed as ‘severely obese’ having risen to 4.2%, from 3.2% in 2006/7.
The PHE chief nutritionist, Dr Alison Tedstone was quoted in the article stating:
“We know that just having healthy options on the menu won’t change the nation’s habits — we need the default option to have fewer calories. The default options for pizzas are margherita and pepperoni pizzas, so we need them to get healthier.”
As I stated many people who listen to my radio show Live with Renk, would think I would be absolutely against what the British government is doing. I am not.
Why am I not against this, because the British government has a single payer health system. That means the government, which in a democracy means the people, must pay for everyone’s health care. That being said we know that obesity causes many health problems, health problems that must be paid with other citizen’s tax dollars.
It would be unfair to make one person who lives a healthy lifestyle to pay for another person who does not live a healthy lifestyle. Sounds fair to me, how about you?
That is one of the problems with a single payer healthcare system in which the Democratic Party advocates for.
If someone else pay’s for your bad choices in life then they get to dictate to you what you must and must not do, in this case the choice of food you can eat and not eat.
Think of it like a parent child relationship, in your home who sets the rules, the parents who pay the bills or the children who do not?
It is a simple as that. I want to be an adult who pays for himself and his family which then means I get to make the rules and decisions when it comes to the family. If I cannot pay for the necessities in life and I ask the taxpayer to do so, then I must follow their rules and be grateful they are paying for my existence and necessities.
Do you?