Lay Off the Fatties.

• Author: Oliver, J. Eric
• Position: Letter to the editor

Thanks to Jacob Sullum for his thoughtful review of my book Fat Politics ("Lay Off the Fatties," November). Although I disagreed with a few characterizations and points of emphasis (e.g., uterine cancer deaths rates are extremely low), I appreciate his effort to capture the spirit of the book.

I was, however, bemused to hear that I have an "anti-market instinct"--must come from a gene I inherited from my mother. You can question the utility of the market and still not support government intrusion; this debate is more complicated than such a false dichotomy.

This touches on a very interesting question that I tried to get at in the book: Does an overabundance of choice inhibit freedom, and if so what can you do about it? Psychologist Barry Schwartz's excellent book The Paradox of Choice is pretty convincing on the first point (as is the fact that most Americans are fatter than they want to be), but the answer to the second is far less clear. While I would agree with Sullum that government is generally a terrible arbiter of these matters (which are only compounded by the pathologies of bureaucracy), I don't think those...