Leave us alone to enjoy our simple pleasures - and sins
...Putting aside the creepy implication that our lives only have value insofar as our impact on the government's bottom line, it tends to be only those who do not have the platform of a position in academia, the media, or politics who find their lifestyles' under fire.

A few years ago the Australian Medical Association suggested that obesity cost the healthcare system $1.2 billion a year. But that wasn't headline-making enough, so they instead declared that "Factoring in lost productivity, obesity cost Australian society and governments $21 billion".

Oddly, no one ever counts up the "billions" in lost productivity from inner-city workers ducking out for a coffee once or twice a day. Add it up and your typical office worker might spend a week each year on the boss's time enjoying a product that can cause everything from increased blood pressure to anxiety to anaemia.

Don't hold your breath waiting for a scare story about how the Big Barista industry is wreaking havoc with health and productivity.

The same blind spot applies to food. Rich curries, salty artisanal smallgoods, and restaurant meals cooked in truckloads of butter and duck fat are not only delicious but often just as unhealthy as a Big Mac value meal.

Yet these sorts of meals never come under fire from the health police. Instead these dishes, and the chefs who create them, are celebrated. Often Sydneysiders will queue like Soviet-era Muscovites to taste them. It is the culinary equivalent of the snobbery that thinks a tribal tattoo is deeply meaningful, artistic, and spiritual - provided the wearer has no actual connection to the tribe in question. ...