Chicago tried banning it. Now California wants to do the same. But what’s so controversial about foie gras, the fattened liver of a duck or goose that many diners consider a delicacy?

“Foie gras is universally cruel,” says animal rights activist and founder of the Animal Protection and Rescue League Bryan Pease.

Pease led the fight against foie gras in California, which often got ugly and scary , but he feels that it was all worth it now that the ban on the production of the food product will go into effect this summer.

“This isn’t a product that anyone thinks should be consumed, really,” says Pease, “except for a small group of chefs and promoters.”

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May’s biggest busybodies are taking it to poker players and teen tanners, but the nation’s top nag has lovers of pink-in-the-middle burgers seeing red.

In a stunning blow to all that is juicy and delicious, the Tar Heel state actually prohibits restaurants from serving rare or medium-rare hamburgers. (And if this crime against meat freedom seems especially un-American, keep in mind that it comes from the same state that once banned Old Glory at public rallies.)

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According to a nonprofit watchdog organization, Corporate Accountability International, Ronald McDonald is an enemy of the state. The grassroots group has assembled 550 health professionals and organizations to denounce the famous clown, the icon of not only the restaurant corporation, but also numerous children’s charities such as Ronald McDonald House.

Ronald McDonald is under fire over a claim that his existence is marketing poor eating habits to children. The organization charges that the fast food giant the clown represents is driving a health epidemic. This accusation comes only months after a mother filed a lawsuit against McDonald’s, asserting that the corporation was “…getting into my kids’ heads without my permission and actually changing what my kids want to eat.” This parent, and we might use that term loosely, was supported by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), which has been involved in the mandates to add calorie labeling on menus and to remove soda and snack foods from school cafeteria menus. The mother claimed that Happy Meals with toys inside them were too inviting for her kids. This suggests that she could not manage to actually say, “NO,” to them, or take the car keys away from them, when they told her they wanted to eat at McDonald’s. Her goal in her lawsuit: “…I want McDonald’s to stop interfering with my family.” So, let’s get this straight: Ronald McDonald is controlling your kids’ thoughts? Neil Cavuto couldn’t understand this either.

In the mid 1950’s, a social psychology concept called “locus of control” was identified as an important topic in the field of understanding behavior. “Locus of control” concerns the extent to which individuals believe they can control circumstances that affect them. Those with internal locus of control generally believe that events in their lives come about primarily by their own actions, while those with external locus of control tend to attribute their behavior to people, situations, and entities outside of themselves.

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First Lady Michelle Obama hopes to curb childhood obesity by teaching children about nutrition and exercise. “There’s no expert on this planet who says that the government telling people what to do actually does any good with this issue,” she says.

But local government officials around the country have already adopted a more forceful tact, whether it’s New York’s salt assault, San Francisco’s frown at Happy Meals or, most recently, South LA’s all-out ban on new fast-food restaurants.

Reason.tv spoke with Los Angeles City Councilman Bernard Parks, one of the architects behind the ban, who argues that “in order to force choice into the market, we have to limit one that is overconcentrated and attract others that provide other options.”

Reason Magazine editor in chief Matt Welch is skeptical of “the idea that you can create more choices by reducing choices,” and fitness consultant and documentary filmmaker Chazz Weaver—who ate McDonald’s for 30 days and lost body fat—points out that consumers can eat fast food in moderation and still stay healthy. Reason.tv also spoke with the co-owner of The Burger Stand in South Los Angeles about why he thinks that banning new fast-food restaurants is bad for business and bad for his community.

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This summer armed government agents raided Rawesome Foods, a Venice, California health food co-op. What were the agents after? Unpasteurized milk, it turns out.

Raw milk raids are happening all over the United States. The Food and Drug Administration warns that raw milk consumption can cause health problems, but a growing community of raw foods enthusiasts are ignoring government recommendations and claiming that they are getting tastier, more nutritious food by going raw.

Reason.tv visited Rawesome to examine the circumstances of the raid and discovered that this particular raw foods case stretches across county lines and involves at least five separate government agencies, despite the fact that not a single member of Rawesome has complained or been harmed by the raw foods. In fact, members have to sign a contract stating that they understand and accept the risks of consuming raw foods before they are allowed to step inside.

If members of a private club sign a waiver stating that they want to drink a certain type of milk, why is the government getting involved? As Jarel Winterhawk, a manager at Rawesome, puts it, “This is America. How are you going to tell me what I can and cannot eat?”

Though no charges have yet resulted from the raid, Rawesome is threated with shutdown due to the involvement of yet another government agency, Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety, and the club’s raw goat milk supplier, Healthy Family Farms, has had its dairy license suspended.

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One of the more extreme proposals floated early in the national health care debate was the idea of taxing soda and other sugary beverages. That trial balloon was almost immediately shot down by the American public, but the Obama administration is attempting to achieve, by subterfuge, soda taxes and a lot of other ways to micromanage our lives in the name of public health—whether or not ObamaCare passes. The mechanism is buried in last year’s $862-billion-and-counting stimulus bill, and works by diverting hundreds of millions of dollars that should be promoting economic growth to instead pay lobbyists to push for higher taxes and nanny-state controls over our lives.

It’s on pages 66 and 67 on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which created a $1 billion “Prevention and Wellness Fund.” Of that, $650 million went to Kathleen Sebelius’s Department of Health and Human Services and has been used to start a new program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) called “Communities Putting Prevention to Work” (CPPW).

Where does that giant pot of grant funding under the CPPW go? What it calls “MAPPS Interventions for Communities Putting Prevention to Work.” MAPPS stands for “Media, Access, Point of decision information, Price, and Social support/services.” In other words, strategies for changing our behavior, for social engineering on a large-scale, and, it seems, circumventing the normal democratic process. In a 14-page guidance for grant applicants, the CDC details tactics that grant applicants should include in their plans. It includes “counter-advertising” against targeted products, complete tobacco usage bans, limiting “unhealthy food availability” (the really bad stuff like “whole milk, sugar sweetened beverages, high-fat snacks”), and of course taxes (or in CDC lingo: “changing relative prices of healthy vs. unhealthy items”).

A supplemental document explains in more detail what the targets are, including restricting availability of soft drinks “in homes, schools, work sites, and communities.”

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Unfortunately, items like this don’t really surprise us anymore:

There shall be no cupcakes. No chocolate cake and no carrot cake. According to New York City’s latest regulations, not even zucchini bread makes the cut.

In an effort to limit how much sugar and fat students put in their bellies at school, the Education Department has effectively banned most bake sales, the lucrative if not quite healthy fund-raising tool for generations of teams and clubs.

The change is part of a new wellness policy that also limits what can be sold in vending machines and student-run stores, which use profits to help finance activities like pep rallies and proms. The elaborate rules were outlined in a three-page memo issued at the end of June, but in the new school year, principals and parents are just beginning to, well, digest them.

Read the whole dreadful thing here. Special pull quote:

“Schools are supposed to be a place where we establish a model environment, and the last thing kids need is an extra source of pointless calories.”