June 7, 2011 4:50PM # Don’t Tread on My Plate By [Walter Olson](https://www.cato.org/people/walter-olson) --- SHARE Last week First Lady Michelle Obama and the U.S. Department of Agriculture unveiled [“Choose​My​Plate​.gov](http://www.choosemyplate.gov/),” an updating of the federal government’s ongoing efforts to lecture us on how to eat. While the idea of nutrition recommendations from Washington, D.C. isn’t itself new, the past couple of years have seen a lurch toward a more coercive approach, especially under the Obama administration, under pressure from a burgeoning “food policy” movement, as I explain in a [new *Daily Caller* op-ed](http://dailycaller.com/2011/06/03/back-off-its-my-plate/): > All sorts of nannyish and coercive ideas are emerging from that \[movement\] nowadays: proposals at the FDA to limit [salt content](http://overlawyered.com/tag/salt/feed) in processed foods; mandatory [calorie labeling](http://overlawyered.com/2010/04/federal-calorie-labeling-mandate-contd/feed), which poses a significant burden on many smaller food vendors and restaurants; new mandates on [food served in local schools](https://www.cato.org/raw-onions-served-as-snack-in-d-c-schools/); [advertising bans](http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/2011/05/25/food-advertising-industries-fight-regulations/); and on a local level efforts to ban things like [Happy Meals at McDonald’s](https://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=12641). No wonder many parents, local officials and [skeptics in Congress](http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/house-gop-pushes-back-against-health-measures-affecting-school-lunches-tobacco/2011/06/01/AG0jUjGH_story.html) are beginning to say: Back off, guv. It’s *my* plate. The fact is that the federal government’s dietary advice has changed often through the years—the *Washington Post* had a great [feature](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/health/food-pyramid/) on past federal dietary guidelines, under which sweets and even butter held their place as food groups—and that government’s recommendations have regularly proved wrong and even damaging, a point that Steve Malanga elaborates on in [this *City Journal* piece](http://www.city-journal.org/2011/21_2_government-health-guidelines.html) (“Following the government’s nutritional advice can make you fat and sick.”) Yesterday, C‑SPAN’s *Washington Journal* had me on opposite Maya Rockeymoore of the group [Leadership for Healthy Communities](http://www.leadershipforhealthycommunities.org/content/view/7/12/) to discuss issues that ranged from the school lunch program to whether Washington should serve as an “arbiter” of contending dietary claims, an idea I didn’t much care for. You can [watch here](http://www.c-span.org/Events/Washington-Journal-for-Monday-June-6/10737422045-3/). ##### Related Tags [General](https://www.cato.org/general), [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics), [Regulation](https://www.cato.org/regulatory-studies) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).