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Thousands of years ago, food was eaten to survive. A lot has happened in recent decades. Corporations, in all their greed, have turned eating into a national pastime by making food that actually tastes good.

But today, food is even more than a pastime – it’s a national treasure. Food is a psychologist to many, an employer to some and an avenue to power for a few.

To put it more honestly, a bunch of people have eaten like pigs, gotten fat, and hired lawyers. The lawyers have filed asinine lawsuits against corporations for selling their clients food. This skullduggery naturally has gathered the attention of elitist politicians who have passed legislation to regulate (and now we arrive at that awe-inspiring term) “corporate America.”

In 2002, a lawsuit was filed on behalf of a few obese teenagers that charged that McDonald’s was responsible for making them fat. The mother of the plaintiff confessed, “(I had) always believed that McDonald’s was healthy for my son.”

Earlier this year, filmmaker-buffoon Morgan Spurlock revealed, in an insightful new documentary called “Super Size Me,” that gorging violently on a fast food diet and staying sedentary are not good life choices. And so, by some twisted logic, fast food is the problem – not the life choices.

Just last week, news arrived that British lawmakers plan to ban junk food advertisements from the airwaves before 9 p.m. But Health Secretary Dr. John Reid is taking the fight against obesity one step further. He will threaten food manufacturers and advertisers with new legislation should they refuse to comply with a voluntary code, which will involve new food-labeling methods.

Of course, I have nothing against fat people. I happen to be pitifully overweight myself. And I do recognize that there are some good reasons to be so. There is a convincing dignity in the corpulent stomach of a seasoned politician and an unmistakable authority in the rich belly of a mob boss.

But for those of us who use these images as excuses rather than ideals, we have to rethink our lifestyles and do something about it.

And by something, I don’t mean eating more, lying about knowing the consequences of eating more, and filing egregious lawsuits to take the place of making money legitimately. As legitimately, for example, as McDonald’s.

It is difficult to pass judgment on the fatsoes who continue to file lawsuits against fast food chains because they fall into so many different categories. Some, I suspect, are decent-but-somewhat-opportunistic Americans who are lured by the promises of slimy lawyers. Others though are simply wicked, self-loathing masochistic parasites. And perhaps a few of them have spoiled brains and can’t really be blamed for making spoiled decisions.

But it is all too easy to pass judgment on lawyers because they are not clinically insane, and their motives are crystal clear. They’re after money, and they’ll do anything to get it. Enormous successes in lawsuits against cigarette companies have given them the incentive. Self-abusive clients have given them their victims. America has given them the opportunity.

Then there are the politicians – like Democratic New York State Assemblyman Felix Ortiz who proposed in 2003 six “anti-obesity” bills that would, according to the Washington Post, “tax not only fatty foods but also modern icons of sedentary living – movie tickets, video games and DVD rentals – and use the resulting $50 million for nutrition and exercise programs.”

Ortiz and fellow democrats hope to solve the problem of obesity by sticking their painfully visible hand into the harmonious transactions of the free market. Perhaps they take example from the low obesity rates in Kolyma and Auschwitz.

And these are liberals! The same people who declare with such moral confidence that the importance of free choice is enough to ditch the millennia-old institution of marriage as a contract between man and woman turn around and argue that free choice is not enough to justify a simple trade between money and food.

The same people who contend that abortion is a matter of personal choice come to the opposite conclusion when dealing with the far less medically and morally controversial relationship between restaurant and customer.

Why is there this vast disparity in standards? In short, because there exists among liberals a knee-jerk reaction against corporate America. If corporate America stood to benefit from gay marriage or abortion, be assured that liberals would oppose them with the same passion with which they support them now.

They hate corporate America because it tells the successes of capitalism.

Fortunately, help is on its way. So far, 12 states have passed laws to stop frivolous lawsuits against the food industry that have to do with weight gain – and several other states are considering similar laws.

But this help is accompanied by a sad realization – that common sense is dead in America; that people need to be told what it means to be free; that the greed of lawyers and the power-lust of politicians can conquer even the greatest systems of government; and that Americans just don’t get that they can’t eat their Big Macs, have it, and have yours too.

Hovannisian is a second-year history and philosophy student. E-mail him at ghovannisian@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.