Reason Foundation

Recent Research and Commentary

Does Your Body Belong to You?

Food nannies want the government to control your diet.

July 29, 2011

A. Barton Hinkle

“What will it take,” asked New York Times writer Mark Bittman last Sunday, “to get Americans to change our eating habits?” This is a subject of great concern to progressives today. As A. Barton Hinkle explains, many of them are deeply distressed that—despite incessant lecturing on the subject—too many of their fellow citizens continue to eat what they like, rather than what progressives think they should eat.

McDonald's to Kids: Apple Slices For All, Whether or Not You Want Them

McDonald’s nudges kids to eat more fruit, fewer fries after being given a good shove by regulators

July 26, 2011

Katherine Mangu-Ward

Starting in 2012, all McDonald's Happy Meals will include apple slices (and a very tiny serving of fries), a move McDonald's claims was "absolutely not" motivated by ever-mounting pressure from regulators to do something about America's hordes of chubby children. Senior Editor Katherine Mangu-Ward is skeptical.

Nanny State Propaganda

How long before the government places graphic warning labels on junk food?

June 29, 2011

A. Barton Hinkle

The logic of Washington’s graphic new cigarette warning labels holds that government should frighten people away from consumer goods that impose social costs. But as A. Barton Hinkle observes, if we apply that consistently, then there is no reason federal regulators should not adorn junk food packaging with garish photos of morbidly obese corpses, cutaways of clogged ateries, or glistening mounds of fatty tissue hacked out of cadavers.

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