(This essay is a satire.)

Time for us to evaluate our health, then get behind mandating things that would serve us all.  After all, we're only as healthy as the government tells us we are — and we've been taught over the past two years that people are just plain stupid about their health.  So the government needs to continue making sure we're all on the road to optimal wellness.  Am I right?

First off, let's mandate that nobody have a bodyweight inconsistent with the optimal BMI for his health.  I mean, it's the overweight people who die of COVID, get Type 2 diabetes, suffer from high cholesterol and heart problems, and consume all those health care dollars, am I right?

So let's mandate that we take the NIH's BMI chart and start testing everyone against it.  Nobody can have a BMI over 30, period.  Those who do will be "eligible" to go to mandatory fat camp, where they'll be put on a strict spa diet and given an exercise regimen to follow, as well.  They'll be allowed to leave fat camp when they hit that 30 BMI, provided they're continuing to show progress toward 25 with regular testing.  If their progress stalls...well, we can just boost them back to camp for a while.

What?  You, who identifies as she/her and are the size of Whoopi Goldberg, think losing that much weight loss is impossible?  Nah!  Your future health depends on it.

Stacey Abrams, thou voluminous wench, get thee to fat camp forthwith!  You're not just endangering yourself, but you're also consuming far more than you ought to of the now-scanter resources around us.  Forget about that delicious double-fried chicken breast sandwich with special sauce and slaw on a homemade bun, with some sweet tea to wash it down!  That's well over 1,200 calories, which should be your full daily allowance!

Nope, no more of the chicken and waffles you love, either.  Your government will mandate a diet of cottage cheese, canned fruit cup, oatmeal, and plain steamed vegetables until you lose the weight.  Period.

Next, let's tackle lifestyle.  We need to have a government mandate against smoking and drinking.  Both will kill you eventually.  And don't mention that other smoked stuff, either.  There are way too many carcinogens in pot.  You want it, you'd better do edibles — oh, wait!  Those are not on your diet, so sorry...

Image: Fried chicken (edited) by lifeforstock.  Freepik license.

We can mandate that bars serve only healthful beverages, right?  Kombucha, anyone?  Herb tea?  If your BMI is under 25, you can even have a smoothie!  Yeah, that's the ticket!  You'll thank us someday when you're done batting your head into the brick wall at the back of the bar.

How about mandating that nobody drive a gas car or have a gas stove or heat anymore?  It's our patriotic duty, after all.

Yeah, that electric vehicle will cost you upwards of $60,000, plus the ever-ballooning cost of charging it (and the cost to hook up your charging station, of course), but we have a few subsidies available.  Y eah, you drive distances a lot and will have to stop every couple hundred miles and charge it for some hours, but mass transit will soon take you from S.F. to L.A. on a speedy tra...oh, wait!  That didn't happen?  My bad!

What?  Winters are cold, and that electric heat pump you have to install doesn't work when there's a brownout or downed lines, and your solar panels aren't generating because it's snowing?  Geez, whaddaya want?  Perfection?  Our solar and wind farms are gonna produce only so much power.  Get with it; go buy some extra quilts!

Don't forget, with the coming food shortages due to the solar minimum that's arriving — which will lower the average temperature of the Earth by a couple of degrees Fahrenheit and make a lot of crops fail — it's your patriotic duty to consume less.  Sure, the dropping CO2 levels from consuming fewer fossil fuels are exacerbating the problems, along with the release of water to keep alive those two delta smelts rather than irrigating the farms.  I mean, you can't have everything!  We must plow forward and make the Earth a better place, right?  Right?

Sorry, I didn't hear what you just said.  I was too busy yelling at my neighbor for walking around without a mask while unvaccinated.