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The devil's food cake made me do it
Absent corporate manipulation, the theory goes, we'd all be eating carrots and carob

Theodore Dalrymple
National Post

...Yet the move will reinforce all those who believe something not entirely flattering to the common man and that, in fact, undermines the philosophical basis of democracy itself: that large companies successfully manipulate us at will. If we are obese, it is because they make us eat fat; if we have lung disease, it is because they make us smoke cigarettes; if we are drunken, it is because they make us drink alcohol. If we vote for X, is it therefore not because X's party apparatus has manipulated our minds? Surely it would be better to have philosopher kings who were intelligent enough to be free of such extraneous influences, who decided for us what habits were healthy, what foods were nutritious, which rulers were best?

At the same time, of course, the common man can do no wrong: He is, at heart, the creature in whom Rousseau believed, that is to say the good savage whose innate decency was subverted by social influences such as giant food companies. Left to his own devices, the denizen of hamburger restaurants would eat fresh carrots and brown rice, his natural choices. He wouldn't want the horrible muck provided by fast food chains and processed food companies.

This picture is of a world in which humanity as a whole is good, but is so innocent that it is diverted from the paths of righteousness by a few evilly disposed persons such as the directors of food companies. Were it not for them, we should all be thin as rakes and fit as fleas. Alas, reality is less flattering to our self-esteem....