Posted on 12/02/2004 3:38:24 PM PST by Still Thinking
Food cops who think your weight is their business are bent on slimming Americans down by any means necessary. That includes happily ignoring such commonplaces as evidence, logic, and common sense. Reaching deep into their toolbox to hammer companies that advertise food to children, they're now invoking the "precautionary principle" -- a bizarre theory that insists everything should be banned until it's proved absolutely safe.
Susan Linn, two-time speaker at the obesity-lawsuit-pushing Public Health Advocacy Institute (PHAI) and dedicated opponent of all forms of advertising, recently told Obesity Policy Report: "I think that we need to take a leaf from the environmental movement and think about the precautionary principle." As Wellesley professor Robert Paarlberg has noted in The Wall Street Journal, the precautionary principle insists that:
...powerful new technologies should be kept under wraps until tested for unexpected or unknown risks as well. Never mind that testing for something unknown is logically impossible (the only way to avoid a completely unknown risk is never to do anything for the first time).
It's not terribly surprising that activists who want to ban all advertising to children would rely on the precautionary principle. After all, there's no evidence that food advertising causes childhood obesity. In February, the Kaiser Family Foundation released an exhaustive analysis of the subject that purportedly found a link between food advertising and childhood obesity. The only problem: Not one out of forty studies examined by the Foundation could actually make this conclusion. In fact, Kaiser admitted that television watching might not cause obesity at all, saying: "Being obese may cause children to engage in more sedentary (and isolated) activities, including watching more television." Even Kelly "Big Brother" Brownell admits "there is only circumstantial evidence that the ads cause poor eating."
Of course, evidence has never been Linn's strong suit. She complained at PHAI's 2003 conference: "Rampant commercialism, in and of itself, is unhealthful, and the food industry contributed to that." Linn has dedicated herself to complaining about marketing to young children -- though that doesn't stop the "ventriloquist/psychologist" from using puppets to get across her anti-corporate ideology. She's also worked with Ralph Nader's Commercial Alert for at least five years.
Linn would do well to listen to former Federal Trade Commission chairman Timothy Muris, who points out: "Today's kids actually watch less television than previous generations and have many more commercial-free choices." And while Linn complains that ads "contribute to family stress and the food children ask for," Muris states what every parent knows: "There's lots of things government can do, but I don't think government can prevent children from nagging their parents."
Recognizing that physical activity levels are far more important than advertising, Muris noted: "Our dogs and cats are fat and it's not because they're watching too much advertising." He went on to insist:
A ban on advertising is impractical, ineffective, and illegal ... It's impractical because, although kids see many food ads on children's programming, most ads they see air on programs that are not directed to them. The FTC's 1978 proposal to ban advertising on programs for which young children comprised at least 30% of the audience would have affected only one program -- the now iconic "Captain Kangaroo."
These scumbag parasitic elitists don't give a rat's fanny about how fat or slim we are. They are more interested in their own agendas of power and money and how much they can improve their lives even if it makes our lives miserable; which they undoubtedly will.
If they want people to slim down, obese people should be made to pay higher premiums and co-pays. That would do more good than this.
< sarcasm > Now, wait a minute! It says right here in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution that Congress may Pass Laws Requiring or Banning the Consumption of Certain Foodstuffs Depending on Whether or Not Somebody "Feels" It's Important to Invade the Nutritional Decision-Making and Chocolate-vs-Vanilla Decision-Making Processes of the General Population! < /sarcasm >
Well, we can safely blame the goons who dedcided on the "Food Pyramid" more than 20 years ago for the rise in American obesity.
And they didn't test it first either.
The government..
You mean the revised pyramid that advocated enormous numbers of helpings of carb-heavy foods?
Like 8-11 servings per-day of BREAD, rice, pasta? When most will be choosing mainly 100 cal/slice bread? 1,100 cal/day.
That recommended up to 26 (meaning most people will choose the top number) total servings of food per day? And usually grossly underestimate what an 'official serving' looks like on a plate?
Many of whom assume that what they see on a plate in a "family restaurant" is "one serving"?
I'm overweight, but it is becasue of what & how much I choose to eat; not because "the Devil (television) made me do it".
Eating causes obesity. Let's ban eating.
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