IMV the general foolishness of paternalism is made disgusting by the fact that daddy (or mommy, whatever) is insane.

Kessler the man of government recognizes that the old idea of personal responsibility undercuts the case for governmental regulation, which at least in theory is designed to prevent harm being done to one party by another. So Kessler the man of science enlists Kessler the man of pudge to testify to the helplessness a fat person feels. The blame can still be shifted. All those fat Americans may not be victims of screwy metabolisms or genetics, Kessler says, but we can still think of them as helpless victims. And where there's a victim, a victimizer must be found.

The primary victimizer is, of course, the American food industry. Kessler believes that the products it offers its customers are irresistible. This is a common view and getting commoner. As our Baby Boomers age, the famous ardor they once felt for sexual intercourse has been transferred to food, which at their time of life is more easily attainable and requires less fuss. Kessler's tortured encounters with one foodstuff after another are described in a prose that is nearly Jackie Collins-like in its sensual intensity. Embarrassed readers may wonder whether they shouldn't just leave the room. Here is the author at a Panera Bread outlet, encountering a shapely little thing called a "cinnamon crunch bagel."

The topping gave the bagel a crunchy sweetness, which contrasts nicely with the soft interior. The aroma of cinnamon was pleasant and persistent, and the vanilla chips offered appealing bursts of flavor. As I chewed, the bagel was quickly transformed into a moist wad in my mouth, with the crunch becoming finer as it dissolved. It was easy to chew and to swallow and its sweetness lingered yet didn't overwhelm the other flavors. Well lubricated by its fat content and mixed with my saliva, the wad of bagel melted perfectly in my mouth.

Hungry yet? "Panera," he concludes, "had figured out how to put the fat, sugar, and other flavor enhancements together to provide exactly the sensory experience I wanted."

You'd think he'd be grateful. Instead he's offended. Never before in history, he says, has food been this tasty, this available, this seductive. Worst of all, that flavor, that texture--they're premeditated. Citing advertising and personal testimony, much of it anonymous, Kessler goes to great lengths to prove what nobody could have doubted: The food industry tries very hard to make products that customers will like. This is the way market transactions are supposed to work, but Kessler believes that when food is at issue, the process is sinister and manipulative--just as it is with SUVs, tobacco, and other products that progressives hope to regulate in making our lives better. "The food industry is the manipulator of the consumers' minds and desires," he says, and it's been so successful it's rendered its customers powerless to resist.

How could this be? Are we not men, human beings endowed with a will, free citizens of a self-governing country? Well, not exactly. At this point, in The End of Over-eating, Kessler the man of science returns. For it is not only the food industry that is doing the victimizing. The dark forces of capital are in cahoots with the natural forces of evolution and biology to force the American population into obesity. Kessler has embraced the fashionable reductionism that most popular science writers succumb to these days. And no wonder. Reductionism is the metaphysics of our intellectuals. Somehow they have convinced themselves that the most accurate way of accounting for reality is to reduce everything that happens to its physical processes: Neurons dart, chemicals percolate, synapses bristle, and--presto--you've got the Sistine Chapel and the Bhagavad Gita, the Little Sisters of the Poor and the bombing of Hiroshima, Rosalyn Tureck playing the Goldberg Variations and an American consumer going limp watching an ad for a Triple Stack Baconator from Wendy's. Reductionism gives off an air of scientific rigor. With Kessler it makes his case for regulation appear more impressive and, what amounts to the same thing, more complicated than it really is.

The high profile failures of governments world wide to do anything sensible about climate concerns is a symptom of this same disease. Paternalism isn't just foolish and insane, it's ineffective, and that is its fatal defect. You can dismiss my squick about the ickiness of the behavior and those who do it, but you'll have rather a more difficult time explaining away the fact that it fails to accomplish anything useful.