The United States is over 17 trillion dollars in debt, the national unemployment rate is over seven percent, and one-sixth of the American population is on food stamps. But fixing those problems is just so hard! So, some courageous politicians have decided to spend time and money dictating what we should be allowed to eat. They do this in the name of “keeping us healthy.”

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced a plan to ban trans fats because they are a “threat to people’s health.”

The FDA is moving forward with this power-grab despite the fact that the amount of trans fats in the average American’s diet has declined rapidly in the last decade.

The food industry will be required to gradually phase out trans fats. Once they have been completely phased out, anyone who wants to use trans fats will be forced to get special permission from the FDA.

The FDA’s deputy commissioner for foods, Michael Taylor, said, “We want to do it in a way that doesn’t unduly disrupt markets.”

As of right now, the exact timeline for the phase-out has not been decided on.

Michael Jacobson, the director of the advocacy group Center for Science, said, “Six months or a year should be more than enough time, especially considering that companies have had a decade to figure out what to do… [The ban is] one of the most important lifesaving actions the FDA could take.”

The FDA claims that trans fats are horrible for your heart — worse than saturated fat — and can contribute to heart diseases.

This is true… But when did it become the government’s job to control what we eat? Have we become a complete nanny state?

Smoking can cause lung cancer — so why don’t we ban cigarettes? Too much sugar often leads to diabetes — let’s go ahead and ban sugar, too! Alcohol can contribute to liver failure — ban it!

You get my point. The government simply cannot ban everything that is a “threat to people’s health.”

America is supposed to be the Land of the Free. If people want to make poor food choices, they should be allowed to. Of course, it is unfair to make the rest of us pay for their heart disease and diabetes. This is why ObamaCare (the biggest government power-grab in a generation) must be overturned immediately. In a free country, government cannot dictate lifestyle choices, nor can it become the overprotective mommy and daddy of its citizens.

Freedom means having the right to make bad choices and then deal with the consequences ourselves.