1) there is no memetic equivalent of “sugar => calories => fat and ugly”, indeed rather the opposite because of its association with the Atkins diet.

2) farming is a job everyone seems to support even though it’s a small part of the economy, and meat is a cash crop (or am I misremembering?)

> The state knows best.

All true except that. We’ve all got our own examples, when I was at school the (UK) government’s poster-child for “drugs are bad” was a girl who actually overdosed on H2O, yet all the people who I should’ve been able to trust to be honest were blaming MDMA.

It was a jab at authoritarianism. I think that people should be able to consume what they want. I'm okay with warnings and public health campaigns to a degree, but heavy sin taxes go too far. If these sin taxes were there to actually offset the cost to society, then I might consider them, but they almost never do that. At first, maybe, but eventually every sin tax just turns into additional funding for the government.