If you don’t eat your veggies and exercise, the government may (eventually) make you

Sandy Szwarc talks at length about health legislation in her blog Junkfood Science, so if you read her stuff regularly, none of this will come as a surprise. The Board of Supervisors in San Francisco has voted in favor of “good health” legislation that will ban the sale of cigarettes in drug stores and require restaurants to post nutritional information on their menus. And, in addition to this latest legislation, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom wants to charge a “penalty fee,” if you will, to locations that sell sugary soda to its customers.

“What’s next from City Hall?” asks Heather Knight of the San Francisco Chronicle. “A mandate to eat your broccoli and hit the treadmill 30 minutes every day?”

It seems plausible if the legislation keeps rolling.

As the first city to provide universal health care to its residents, San Francisco has built a reputation for being “healthy” and “progressive.” But some residents are getting fed up with the increasing legislation for the sake of “health.”

“Next, it’ll be if you’re fat and eating sugar, you’ll get a ticket,” scoffed Chris Carillo, a 41-year-old software engineer who lives in Polk Gulch. “There’s crime on the streets, homeless people congregating, a lot of grime. I’d rather see [the council] concentrate on that.”

But others see the legislation as simply a way of making people more aware of the decisions they are making. Says Mitch Katz, director of S.F.’s Department of Public Health:

“We’re not dictating individual behavior – it isn’t a nanny state. What we’re trying to do is make the world a place where it’s easier to be healthy … if you want to have the triple cheeseburger after you see it has 1,400 calories in it, order the triple cheeseburger.”

The endless debate about “health” legislation like this is whether or not it is useful and/or effective. Is it just a violation of people’s right to choose what they put into their bodies? If it isn’t now, how far until it becomes that? Or, does legislation like this help people make better decisions for themselves, as some people quoted in the article claim?

Discuss!