Health

with one national factory and one warehouse covering multiple states. That means things can spend weeks from the time they're manufactured, shipped across the country to that warehouse, shipped to the store, and sit on the shelf until you pick it up and take it home with you. That applies to just about anything we love to eat: cookies, crackers, pastries, chips, candies. All contain trans fats to keep them from going rancid 2 weeks after they leave the factory and trans fats are killing us. And let's face it, other snacks and goodies pale in comparison unless we have the time and ambition to make them ourselves out of things that will make us as fat but won't kill us as efficiently.

Nobody is going to legislate junk food out of existence. Taxing it isn't going to work, either, it will just piss a lot of people off. A better idea would be to break up the near monopolies and encourage regional manufacture. Our potato chips and dips might be a few days old instead of a couple of months old, fattening but not inherently sickening. People who try to live on junk food would be obese and unhealthy. Most people would eat the stuff occasionally and be just fine.

I don't believe in infantilizing other people because they make choices I wouldn't make. Being punitive won't work, look at the drug war. I'd rather do harm reduction to make those choices less injurious.