“Every obese adult started eating as a child.”

—As CEI’s prez Fred Smith will tell you. Over the holiday, our friend Sally Pipes at the Pacific Research Institute penned a Washington Post oped called “Brave New Diet” on the growing food police movement in America, pointing out some bugs in the “BMI” calculus and making other observations about sensible, healthy behavior. Indeed, a lot of us are overweight and don’t exercise. But as Sally says:

People make choices. And government should protect — not restrict — the freedom to make those choices so long as we’re not harming others.

While we may not always like the choices others might make, it is essential that we all have the freedom to choose for ourselves. Once we accept the idea that the Nanny State should step in when it’s “for our own good,” we’ve taken a very big step down the road to something like the scene painted in George Orwell’s “1984” — when citizens wake each day to mandatory exercise classes on the Telescreen.