Specifically, the objection is that government has a legitimate interest in protecting individuals in society from one another and may regulate or restrict choice for that reason in many ways. However, there is a crucial distinction between regulating behavior for the public good and doing so as extensively for the good of the individual. According to that view, the choice to consume irresponsible quantities of fast food is, however inadvisable, strictly a private matter of individual choice in which government authorities have absolutely no business interfering (Balko, 20__). In general, it is difficult to overcome the objections expressed by Balko, at least with respect to competent adults who pay for their own medical care directly or through health insurance. However, Zinczenko's concerns may prevail over the competing interests of personal choice and autonomy with respect to two classes of people: (1) adults making nutritional choices for minor children, and (2) individuals who rely on public resources for economic support or for their medical care. That is because the appropriate limit of personal autonomy to make nutritional choices that are known to affect human health adversely may be where the individual uses public funds to implement those choices or relies on public funds or resources for medical care necessitated by related health consequences.

Deeper Significance of Nutritional Choices

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There is substantial empirical literature detailing the manner in which obesity is sometimes a consequence of unconscious impulses, particularly in relation to maintaining emotional distance from others or of reacting to specific threats, such as in connection with long-term post traumatic responses to sexual violation. In other instances, obesity may be largely a function of a defensive (pre-emptive or reactive) response to social vulnerability or rejection (Orbach, 20__).
Even more fundamentally, standards and perceptions of body type and composition are intimately connected to social values and norms pertaining to attractiveness and sexual desirability (Orbach, 20__). Furthermore, those perceptions take on greater significance by virtue of their place within the power differential and the dynamics of gender superiority in society. At the simplest level, males enjoy much greater leeway with respect to deviating from the supposed ideal male physical prototype whereas females have considerably more difficulty avoiding serious consequences of being overweight completely outside of any health-related issues or concerns (Orbach, 20__).

Conclusion

As between the two different concerns of human health and the autonomy of the individual, the latter interest is more important than the former, at least as regards independent adults. However, even adults may rightfully relinquish certain autonomous rights as conditions of eligibility for public resources, at least with respect to choices that increase their reliance on those resources. Likewise, the rights of parents are rightfully less autonomous when it comes to choices that affect their minor children. Ultimately, issues of nutritional choices and obesity may involve much deeper concepts than human physical health. They may also represent important issues in connection with personal psychological impulses, social constructs about definitions of physical attractiveness, and even inter-gender relationships in society.