In Pajamas Media, Dalrymple cites one study that shows that sugary drinks make children fatter and a second study that shows that withdrawing those drinks doesn’t make fat children thinner, suggesting that the answer to the above question is yes.
Then he turns to government efforts to combat childhood obesity through regulation:
[H]ow harmful does something have to be, and how immediate the harm, before the government has the right and indeed the duty to step in? It is a question of judgment rather than of principle…
In the last analysis, life is a bit of a risk.
Read it here