California’s new state motto might as well be “Does this dress make me look
fat?” No other state comes close to California’s aesthetic obsession, which has
birthed innumerable diet and fitness fads and made the gym into the equivalent
of a state church. Considered on its merits, it’s a largely unobjectionable
trend—laudable, even, for its emphasis on self-improvement. But when wed to two
of California’s more unfortunate proclivities—a reflexive, nearly primitive
worship of all things “natural” (usually evangelized by someone carrying an
iPhone) and an insatiable appetite among government officials for meddling in
the most minuscule aspects of everyday life—it spells trouble.
It should come as no surprise, then, that the City Council in Los Angeles,
the state’s epicenter of vanity, recently made headlines by expanding its
portfolio to include citywide dietary management. Last month, the body unanimously voted
to approve a
resolution exhorting Angelinos to
participate in “meatless Mondays,” a weekly exercise in herbivorousness
justified on multiple grounds: from combating obesity (which cynics might note
is a malady afflicting some of the council members) to reducing carbon
footprints to preventing animal cruelty (apparently tolerable the other six
days of the week). It was as if council members dared one another to see how
many liberal erogenous zones they could stimulate with a single initiative.
Happily, “meatless Mondays” are only a legislative suggestion for now. But
given California’s fixation on micromanaging how its citizens eat, it isn’t
hard to imagine a day when such an edict could carry the force of law. Consider
all the ways in which California lawmakers have already invaded their
constituents’ pantries. Earlier this year, the state implemented a ban on the
production and sale offoie gras, the delicacy made from the fattened livers of ducks or geese.
Animal-rights groups sold the ban based on concerns about the abusive treatment
of the birds used in the process, despite no evidence of any such abuses in
California. The prohibition has led to a foodie revolt, with many restaurants
circumventing the law (which doesn’t actually ban distribution) by
offering the delicacy as a “complimentary” side dish—a practice that PETA is
now challenging
in court.
In 2005, California attorney general (now state treasurer) Bill Lockyer led
a one-man crusade against fast-food establishments and snack-food producers,
suing them in an effort to mandate warning labels on products such as potato
chips that included the chemical acrylamide, which can be a carcinogen in high
doses. Lockyer himself later conceded that the chemical was basically
harmlessin junk food, but he won his
fight. In 2008, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a billoutlawing the use of trans fats in state-run restaurants, followed shortly
thereafter by landmark legislation mandating that restaurant chains publish nutritional information on their
menus.
Local government isn’t much better. Bureaucrats at the Los Angeles Unified
School District attempted to jettison
snack food from student lunches and
replace it with designer fare, such as pad thai and quinoa salads—only to see
food costs spike, sales plunge, and students toss uneaten meals in
the trash. In Santa
Clara County and the
City of San Francisco, elected officials banned
McDonald’s from including toys with Happy Meals, reasoning that the baubles
represented a predatory inducement toward junk food consumption. In 2010, Los
Angeles city councilwoman Jan Perry (now a mayoral aspirant) spearheaded a
successful effort to ban new standalone fast-food establishments in
impoverished South Los Angeles,proclaiming: “This is not an attempt to control people as to what they can put into
their mouths. This is an attempt to diversify their food options.” Diversity
through scarcity?
Golden State residents, ever contradictory, may vote for more heavy-handed
government by electing (and reelecting) officials who approve “meatless
Mondays” resolutions. But as a practical matter, most Californians reject this
frivolity. Sometimes this takes the form of clever end-runs around regulation,
such as the complimentary foie gras or McDonald’s selling Happy Meals toys
separately for a tiny
fee donated to charity. And
sometimes, Californians do resist at the ballot box. In
November, voters solidly rejected Proposition 37, a measure that sought to scare the public into mandating the labeling of
genetically modified food. Election Day also saw voters in the Northern
California city of Richmond and the Southern California city of El Monte defeat
proposed sin taxes on soda by
landslide margins.
Those votes can surely be attributed, at least in part, to California’s
live-and-let-live ethos. But apart from concerns about government’s
encroachment on individual liberty, people are getting fed up with the
governing class’s incomprehensible priorities. Los Angeles City Council members
who found time to grandstand about the evils of meat consumption did so while
presiding over a city on the precipice of bankruptcy. Lawmakers in Sacramento fret about calorie counts as California is
wracked by an ongoing public-finance crisis and sinking
to the bottom of nearly every measure
of effective public policy. Perhaps they should spend more time focusing on the
checkbook and less on the cupboard.
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