Eat the Fat

Somewhere on the list of problems with socializing private matters--in this case, payment for health care--is that private conduct becomes a matter of public concern. Now, having driven the smokers off the patios and into the cold (and a minimum of 25 feet from the doors), the nannies and scolds are coming after our cheeseburgers and fries.

While the science behind second-hand smoke makes Intelligent Design look like Newtonian physics by comparison, we are at least arguing over true externalities. Perhaps my puffing on a Montecristo really does raise your chances of lung cancer. But my eating a steak with fried onions and creamed spinach beforehand cannot, will not, and does not do anything to you. Unless, that is, we beg the question by presuming that the bill for my heart surgery will be covered by your taxes.

This is an understandable viewpoint: when I am at the grocery checkout line and see someone using their Electronic Benefits Transfer card to buy brand-name products, it kind of irks me. But when I watch yuppies in tailored clothing leaving the Whole Foods with carts full of the same products that Shaw's sells for 25% less, I feel nothing but a jovially smug superiority. Your bad choices only cost me money when we agree to split the bill down the middle.

You can hide behind the argument for now that "it's all for their own good," with a little more than a hair of legitimacy. Most fat people would like to be thin, though when push comes to shove, they'd like to be eating a cheeseburger more than a salad. Still, many will welcome a little bit of help in making better choices. By the same token, banning smoking in grocery stores and shopping malls in hindsight looks quite reasonable. But look where that's gone.

It's true that fat people have health risks they could reduce. But they are hardly the only group. Who's to say, should a hard-right social conservative caucus come to power in some years, that flaky pseudo-science around the life expectancy of homosexuals won't be used to justify a punitive tax increase on single men over the age of 40? Will we all be required to show up at the local Health Office every morning for gym class? Once what goes into my body becomes your business, where does it stop?