What You Eat Is Your Business By Radley Balko Summary

What You Eat Is Your Business: Americans, Personal Responsibility, and Food America, we know it as the land of the free, but the rest of the world knows seemingly knows it as the land of the unhealthy. In the year 2016, the CDC Reported that about 36% of Americans is obese. We as Americans have abused our freedoms on what we eat and how we live our lives, because we chose to ignore the responsibilities that come with these freedoms. Our ignorance does not come without a price, in the article “What You Eat Is Your Business”, the author, Radley Balko, addresses how our nation’s government is responding too this seemingly avoidable epidemic. In the article, Balko outlines how the government has seen the obesity problem and decided to take matters into their own hands. From schools banning junk food in vending machines all the way up to President Bush allowing for a $200 million budget specifically to combat obesity. Some might see how this is a good endeavor; the government isolating a problem and working toward fixing it. On the contrary Balko argues that this is far from a good thing.
The government has taken so much control over our nutritional lives that we as a people do not know how to take responsibility for our own health and wellness. As a people we have become apathetic toward our health and very dependent on the government to handle everything for us. With the introduction of the Affordable Care Act in 2009, government officials had successfully completed their task of achieving government-funded health care, and this wasn’t just President Obama’s idea. Since the Bush administration, there has been a push toward what Balko describes as socialism. Our nation’s leaders, and others, seem to think that our personal wellness and health should be deemed “public health” rather than the individual’s