Arnold has vetoed a Senate Bill that would force California fast food restaurants to put nutrition information on their menu boards so that hapless, unaccountable morons can “avoid” obesity. Someone actually said this and meant it:

The menu labeling bill could have helped Californians avoid obesity, heart disease, and many other deadly diet-related diseases…

So now, the story is that menu nutrition labeling will help people avoid getting fat! So menu nutrition info can persuade them to order the triple burger and shake (at 1500 calories) instead of the quadruple burger and shake and fries (at 2300 calories)? A person who is in a fast food food joint has already decided that he does not value his health above instant gratification, and in fact, for those who are frequent guests of fast food joints, ultimate laziness supercedes long-term health. And that is a choice made by that individual. So let’s stop the silly notion that people are fat because of someone or something else.

In generations prior to ours, people had no available nutritional information on the foods they bought. And the majority of the population was not fat. That’s because they cooked and ate fresh foods. Now, we have nutritional info available on every package we buy; we can google for nutritional info on our own and get useful information immediately; and we are constantly being saturated with Nanny State decrees that are put in place to “keep us healthy.” Yet the populace gets more obese.

Still we are supposed to believe that if you grant the State the power to force food companies to throw every bit of information available at the feet of their consumers (at a great cost to the producers), people will somehow rise out of their stupor and make all the right decisions, do all the right things, and fatness will disappear and everyone will experience BMI Utopia.

What a crock of shit this all is.