Photo: the_moog

I saw the movie Super Size Me, and it did a really good job of illustrating just how toxic and deadly fast food is. Even without seeing that movie, any reasonably observant person has discovered that eating fast food is highly risky behavior, especially if it is done more than once a month or two.

Yet, there actually are people objecting to San Francisco's law banning fast food "meals" which are served with toys. It's just astonishing. And, it's not just the right bloggers hoping for payoffs from a sleazy industry. The usually sensible Jonathan Turley responded with a bizarre tirade in his blog. The oddest part is where he actually tried to claim that the law is "unconstitutional." (bolding mine)

For many years, advocates attempted to use tort law to curtail fast-food as a defective product or a nuisance. Like others, I was critical of the use of tort law in those cases. Now, there seems a push to simply try to outlaw such food. Yet, it is hard to see how they can satisfy even the rational basis test under constitutional law. After all, other low nutrition food will be available in a city famous for its Ghirardelli’s chocolate. They are simply targeting those chains which give away toys.

It is incredibly easy to see that the law has a rational basis. Keeping corporations from using toys to bribe children into eating toxic garbage is highly rational.

Keeping children from become obese diabetics before they are even 15 years old seems reasonable to me. Silly me.

If parents really want their children to have toys and toxic fast food, they can always buy the two separately. So the parental choice argument evaporates upon reasonable examination. If anything, getting rid of the crappy meals will make it easier to reject demands from bratty children demanding these monstrosities.

Americans really do have way too strong of an attachment to the crap that is foisted on us by the fast food corporations. Super Size Me did mention how the fast food companies use sugar, salt, and fat to get people addicted to their swill. The level of hostility and irrationality being targeted at SF reminds me of the desperate rantings of smokers who want to block laws protecting the breathing rights of those of us who don't smoke.