Helping Obesity with Government

A couple weeks ago I went to a presentation by Jessica Berg, a law professor from Case Western Reserve University, who talked about legislating obesity, meaning how government policies can help reduce obesity.  Some of the ideas they talked about were having kids run at school more, healthy lunch programs, suggestions of downsizing meals, printing the number of calories bigger, making stairs look more attractive and such.  I think it's a good intention, but I do think you're assuming that some central authority knows what each individual needs better than the individual knows.  A term that I learned in American Heritage, a class I TA for, is spontaneous order.  The idea of 'spontaneous order' was used a lot by the free market economist F. Hayek.  That is the idea that having many individuals make their own decisions is best since the individuals know their own circumstances.  It's hard for me to believe that possibly expensive government regulations will know how to help people better than people know for themselves how to plan according to their own needs.  But let me know what you think!  I'd love to see your comments : )