It looks like California takes the term “nanny state” a bit too literally.
In an effort to fight childhood obesity, a bill in The Golden State would restrict restaurants to offering water or unflavored milk as the default option with children’s meals. Although parents would be able to request and purchase an alternative, dining establishments would be fined up to $500 dollars for advertising sugary drinks as part of a youngster’s bundle. The proposal recently passed the State Assembly, and now heads to Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk for his review, where he will likely sign it into law.
“Kids’ meals shouldn’t come with a side order of diabetes, obesity, or cardiovascular disease,” said Democratic Assemblyman Kevin McCarty.
And parenting shouldn’t come with a large dose of government interference.
Senate Bill 1192 cites several morose statistics around rising obesity rates in California and a laundry list of health conditions that result from poor nutrition. Those include “type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, certain cancers, asthma, low self-esteem, depression, and other debilitating diseases.”
California Democrats aren’t wrong on the basic facts. Those who consume 1-2 sugary drinks per day are 26 percent more at risk of developing type 2 diabetes than those who only indulge occasionally, according to Harvard University’s School of Public Health. It goes without saying that obesity begets a slew of serious complications, so a high-calorie beverage naturally carries some potential risks.
So does processed food. And red meat. And alcohol.
Most kids’ meals are found at fast food establishments—McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Taco Bell, the like—where a soda is merely the accessory to a pile of processed food. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more added sugars are found in the edible fare than the drinkable. Following California’s train of thought, perhaps local governments will next mandate which side dishes restaurants may offer children.
Fries with a Happy Meal? Change that to a salad.
Ironically, the bill comes after California recently killed the soda tax, a measure that disincentivized sugary drink purchases. Beverage giants (Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, et. al) strong-armed the state’s legislature into complying by threatening a ballot initiative that would have made it highly cumbersome to raise local and state taxes. In that context, this new proposal to monitor children’s meals seems like a feeble attempt to regain lost ground.
But it isn’t the first bill to scrutinize kids’ dietary habits, with Baltimore passing a similar law on sugary drinks in July. The fixation with policing nutrition stems from a well-intentioned but misguided desire to save us from ourselves—the same rationality behind tobacco, marijuana, and booze regulation. These substances are toxic, the thinking goes, so individuals must be placed within confines set by the state. In that vein, sugar might soon land on the list of controlled substances.
According to a study led by a team of researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, that’s the right idea. “A growing body of scientific evidence is showing that fructose can trigger processes that lead to liver toxicity and a host of other chronic diseases. A little is not a problem, but a lot kills — slowly,” argue Robert Lustig, Laura Schmidt, and Claire Brindis in the journal Nature. Regulation is the answer, they say, suggesting stricter licensing requirements on vending machines and an age limit (17, to be exact) on purchasing sodas.
By that logic, the government exists to break any self-destructive behavior, which it obviously cannot do. Consuming more than 18 ounces of beef, lamb, or pork per week is associated with increased cases of colon cancer—should we legislate a cap on individual red meat purchases? Too much time spent in front of the computer damages the brain—should we enshrine legal limits on Internet access?
Perhaps most fittingly, a recent study in the medical journal Lancet concludes that no amount of alcohol consumption is safe. Should the government require restaurants to make unflavored milk the default happy hour beverage for adults? It’s alcohol-free and sugar-free!
Republican Assemblyman Matthew Harper sees the writing on the wall. “Seriously, like, what’s next?” he asked. “Are we going to insist that you have to have kale in your salad unless you specifically ask otherwise?”
If these laws continue to pass en vogue, that might not be far off.
Billy Binion (@billybinion) is a freelance journalist as well as Editorial Director of AllSides.com.
