It's only a matter of time before the food police control our lives

I've told you before that it's coming: the banning of certain foods, the regulation of what can be served in restaurants, the taxation of people based on weight...the world-wide attempt to eradicate obesity.

What impels me to doom and gloom on this front? It's the 10th International Conference on Obesity at which sweeping statements are being made about what should be done:

[Australia's Monash University professor Paul Zimmet, chair of the 10th International Congress on Obesity] said the problem needed urgent solutions – not just widespread changes to diet and exercise but the rethinking of national policies on urban and social planning, agriculture policy, education, transport and other areas.

"Urgent solutions" and "other areas". Looks pretty much like you just don't realize what's happening to you, and that the highly knowledgable folks at the Obesity Conference care more about you than you do about yourself. Well, it's plain as day! It's intuitively obvious to the most casual observer! It's manifestly axiomatic to even the meanest intellect! If you really had consideration for yourself and your family you wouldn't have let yourself go like this! You must have somebody else take over your life for you and spoon feed you just healthy, low-fat, low-sodium, low-cholesterol, low-calorie, high-fiber, high-vitamin content foods. Everyone around you knows that it would be for your own good.

...and more! In an email discussion, a friend from Florida quipped about a national program to reduce the public health bill involving fasting to "balance your national dietary account."

I decided to run with that notion:

I can see it now: each of us has our National Dietary Account voucher book...or since everything is electronic now, a card like a long distance calling card that we fill up with ration points every month. If you run out before the end of the month, well, then, you've been a little glutton, haven't you? Time for you to curb those anti-civic-duty cravings of yours, eh?

Little dramas happen on a daily basis: some people lose their NDA cards and have to go through a long and humiliating process to get a temporary card before they're re-issued permanent cards in three months. So many people despise the re-authorization process so much that they gladly submit to a subcutaneous chip implanted in the backs of their hands.

The black market in NDA cards is rampant; but the efforts of the CEA -- the Card Enforcement Administration -- are stemming the tide of stolen and counterfeit NDA cards slowly but surely. While the number of deaths from wrong-house no-knock card raids has gone up, the number of cards recovered has also increased.

But everybody knows that they're really doing their part to combat obesity, vitamin deficiency, protein glut, salt abuse, sugar addiction, carbohydrate dependency, and butter-choked arteries.

It's fortunate that we have the government handling all of these dietary details because the supply of food has decreased drastically in recent years. I think that it was shortly after the government reversed its agricultural policies and placed price ceilings on all foods to make it affordable for everyone that the supplies started to dwindle. The executions of 50 of the most prominent agri-business leaders slowed the downward spiral of food availability for a short time, but it's still hard to find fresh vegetables. And the collective farms haven't quite made up the difference, though the government promises that that will change within 10 years...