Opinion

It's a free country

First one won't hurt you, kid...

At Sisters High School in the lunch room, there is a brilliant picture of a giant bottle of Coke nestled in a bed of ice against a warm red background, refreshingly dappled with condensation.

Compressors buzz, chilling the caffeinated sugar stimulant.

As if our teenagers needed stimulants.

But even if the brew is habit-forming and causes chubbiness or hyperactivity, perhaps our children should be the ones to choose.

After all, it's a free country.

That giant bottle stands opposite the kitchen, it's there at lunch when their habitually poor diet has the starvation reflex in full gear and low blood sugar has feelings of self-worth bouncing off the floor like a yo-yo.

Some might say the kids are not making a free choice in that situation. But they are as free as anyone. We are all manipulated by sex, starvation and hope. It is so pervasive we don't see it or hear it on a conscious level any more. But it's there, in statistics of obesity and diabetes that are nearly epidemic in our country.

We evolved to crave high sugar, high fat food over tens of thousands of years during which starvation was the norm and such food was scarce and valuable to the species.

Those who now pluck these strings of compulsion are most effective letting us think we act of our own free will. The Backstreet Boys and Walt Disney got us in the door, but no one held a gun to our head, we simply wanted a double cheese and bacon burger, extra-large fries and super jumbo cola.

After all...it's a free country.

Not everybody wants a vegiburger, not everybody is obese. Those who crave fat foods or sugar more than others, while their arteries clog and pancreas explodes, they probably just need to exercise a bit more willpower, exercise their free will, they just need to exercise.

Tobacco is not addictive because nicotine is so foreign to our bodies. It is addictive because nicotine so closely mimics chemical mechanisms by which evolution directed our ancestral behavior so the species could survive.

Tobacco companies now leverage their research into these mechanisms and are buying food processors. It's easier for consumers not to smoke than not eat.

But it's not the job of those corporations which satisfy our desires to raise questions about whether their product is good for us, or good for society. That is the job of parents, of educators. It's our job.

About three years ago, Coke offered the Sisters School District $50,000 to be the exclusive provider of vending machines (the district declined, and other products are available, too).

Exclusive contracts allow vendors to "brand" our children. Coke and Pepsi know that if they can brand our children young, they may have customers for life worth tens of thousands of dollars each.

If they can get to those kids in school, in a captive environment, by bribing hard-up school districts with cash or score boards and penny per bottle commissions, well....

It's a free country.

Next to the giant bottle on the Coke machine, there is a picture of three attractive teens. Average-looking kids don't sell Coke. Two knock back a swallow while the third, alluring youth offers a bottle to the room. There is promise in his smile, if danger in his eyes.

The formula for Coke is a "trade secret." Once it contained cocaine. Maybe what's in that bottle now still makes us thirsty for another. How would we know?

The freedom to have "trade secrets" has trumped freedom of information, but without information, we cannot make free decisions about what we eat and breathe.

The teens on the Coke machine promise fun, peer approval and satisfaction. They don't warn of diabetes, lack of concentration and obesity. That message is offered somewhere else in school, but probably not as effectively.

And the student body fund gets $6 to $8 for every case sold.

We are not completely logical beings, always doing the right thing, not even always doing what we think we want. Neither are we simply biological beings.

But we are becoming a society of manipulated consumers. Schools should educate our children to these manipulations, not collude with the manipulators.

Ads on TV suggest we ask our doctor for prescription drugs. Health insurance costs skyrocket because insanely expensive drugs are covered by patents protected by campaign contributions to compliant senators. Advertised drugs even allow us to reduce blood fat caused by drinking so much Coke and eating so many cheeseburgers.

Perhaps this is the inevitable result of an economy based on freedom of the individual consumer, an economy that has generated the highest standard of living the world has ever known.

But if we are being manipulated, if facts are being withheld, we may need to ask if our desires are really our own.

If it is hard to believe this is the apex of our destiny, it is also hard to think of a time or place when we've had more freedom to change.