How wonderful it would be if we all ate more healthfully, exercised regularly and slept sufficiently to promote good health.
While it’s true that even some people who work hard to maintain their health can still be struck by dread diseases, on average, people who have good nutrition and exercise habits live longer and have better health.
But there are things worse than even poor health, and one of them is an overbearing federal government that believes it can impose almost any policy on the American people – so long as it is presumed to be in our best interests.
Recently, the U.S. Senate approved a bill that would set extremely precise rules for the food that may be served in America’s public school cafeterias.
For instance, it would set very particular standards for the type of pizza that lunchrooms may serve. Traditional crusts would be a “no-no.” Instead, schools would have to cook whole wheat crusts. They also would be required to top their pizzas with low-fat mozzarella rather than the regular kind.
Now, those might well be sensible ways to make pizza more healthful, but it is impossible to believe that the wise framers of our country’s Constitution believed for one moment that members of Congress had the authority – much less the expertise – to dictate the ingredients of school lunches. The Constitution simply delegates no such power to Washington.
The dictation of school policies by Congress is especially offensive when you remember that most spending on education comes not from Washington but from state and local governments.
Yet by providing a relatively small share of education dollars, the federal government feels perfectly entitled to set a broad range of school policies that really should be local matters.
Boosting the health of schoolchildren is obviously a desirable thing to do.
Doing that through unconstitutional federal meddling is not.