I’ve been saying for a while (mostly under my breath, to no one in particular) that there’s nothing about the coming fight over fatty food that is substantively different from the tobacco wars. It may be just a matter of time before those poor, desperate, addicted souls huddle outside office buildings scarfing down greasy potato chips next to the cigarette smokers.

The only difference is that most people still have an instinctive responsibilitarian streak, you might call it, that finds any attempt to blame others for individuals’ obesity repulsive. But a steady diet of junk science and a subtle shift in discourse will change that soon enough. The folks at the Center for Consumer Freedom (formerly the Guest Choice Network) have been following this for a while.

Here’s a perfect example — headline: “Burgers are as addictive as heroin: study.”

Yeah. Right. Apparently, some lab rats got upset when their little pieces of burger were taken away. They also professed a sudden fondness for Lou Reed and the movie “Trainspotting.”

Meanwhile, the entire premise of a July 15 story in the Chicago Tribune bodes ill for those who think people should be free to eat what they want and held responsible for their own choices.

The front-page story by Andrew Martin (incidentally, a journalism instructor of mine at Columbia), headlined “Obesity woes eating at fast-food chains,” says the burger slingers are shaking in their boots about new FDA regulations and the onslaught of obesity-related class-action suits. That part is true enough, but the rest of the story is filled with contradictions.

Martin writes:

The super-size approach has come under increasing fire from nutrition experts, Wall Street analysts and lawyers concerned about the food industry’s role in the obesity epidemic.

But while manufacturers promote “lite,” “low cholesterol” or “heart healthy” products, fast-food and casual restaurants are confronted with the reality that their customers still crave sugar and fat … many are still relying on a decades-old formula: abundant food at bargain prices.

Apparently, the restaurants’ problem is that they serve the kind of food their customers like to eat. That’s a problem most restaurants would love to have.

But, you see, it’s really a no-win situation, according to Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition and food studies at New York University:

They’re caught in a cycle that nobody feels like they can get out of. If people eat less, it’s bad for business. The whole point of the food industry is to get people to eat more, not less.

Really? I thought the whole point was to make money. Amazingly, people like to get more for less. Wait until they hear about this at Wal-Mart!

Martin goes on to list Huddle House restaurants, Krispy Kreme doughnuts, Culver’s and McDonald’s new McGriddles as the latest culprits in the conspiracy to fatten up hungry, hungry hippo Americans. But how could that be? According to a poll that’s all done up pretty with a bunch of pie charts accompanying the story, Americans are fed up with fast food.

Sixty-eight percent of them are sick of the poor nutritional value of fast food, while 64 percent are famished for healthier items on menus. Hmmm …

I guess that’s why Pizza Hut now not only offers a pizza with cheese that’s baked into the crust, but a golden ring of cheese on top of the crust as well.

What could possibly explain this difference between people’s expressed opinions and their revealed preferences? Obviously, people are being brainwashed into wanting sugary, fatty foods. What else could explain it? Certainly, not something so mundane as biology. Oops!

Thus spake Jim Hill, director for the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of Colorado:

We have this innate preference for sweet, fat things. And sweet, fat things are the cheapest thing on the planet to produce.

Whoa! Just how could we level the playing field here? Those poor fruits and grains and veggies are getting such a raw deal. To paraphrase the Beatles, “Taxes are all you need.”

There’s no question that obesity poses serious health problems, as does cigarette smoking. But where are we willing to draw the line when it comes to how unelected legislators, aka the plaintiffs bar, dictates the way we live our lives? Where will we draw the line that politicians simply cannot cross?

“The government will never tell me what I can put in my mouth!” you say. Good for you, but aren’t most drugs taken by mouth? Aren’t cigarettes smoked by mouth?

The sad truth is that the line has already been crossed — by politicians and by the public at large. The mental gorge that allows for this kind of tyranannyism, I’ll dub it, has been bridged.

The game has already been lost. The only question now is how badly the forces of freedom will get beat. The final score in that fight is one thing the nannies are more than glad to super size.