Doughnut shop bans children to allow customers to smoke

Doughnut shop bans children to allow customers to smoke

Winnipeg bylaw prohibits use of tobacco in public locations frequented by minors

By KRISTA FOSS

Saturday, January 5, 2002 – Print Edition, Page A4

WINNIPEG -- When she was refused service at a Winnipeg doughnut shop yesterday, Karen Jonasson's eyes widened then rolled upward.

"I don't believe this," the flustered woman said aloud before turning on her heel and making a quick exit.

Beside her were the two reasons Ms. Jonasson couldn't get coffee and a cruller to go -- her children, 7 and 8.

The busy mother had inadvertently waltzed into one of six Coffee Time locations in the city that have put puffing customers ahead of pint-sized ones in an effort to get around a new bylaw meant to ban smoking in places minors frequent.

The half-dozen doughnut shops and a handful of other restaurants and delicatessens in the city have chosen to ban children under the age of 18.

As a result, the location where Ms. Jonasson stopped yesterday had laid off three employees who are minors, according to the manager, Susan, who withheld her last name. One former employee will return in March when she turns 18.

Besides raising eyebrows, the clash over the antismoking bylaw that became effective Jan. 1 has raised concerns about infringement of human rights.

"The irony is that the bylaw was meant to protect children, not harm them. The way it is being applied has the exact opposite result," said David Matas, a Winnipeg immigration lawyer who works on human-rights issues. "Children are a vulnerable minority. But you can't discriminate against them simply because you want to make money."

Yet this is the crux of Winnipeg's great doughnut divide -- whether catering to smokers is better for business.

According to Susan, it is -- although under provincial guidelines half of her store has to be set aside for non-smoking adults.

"We tried to obey the bylaw for one day and we lost half our business," she said. "But now that we've allowed smoking and banned minors, our business has doubled today. We're getting calls from across the city."

Vern Ducharme, who helps manage four Winnipeg Tim Hortons stores -- all of which have been smoke-free for three years -- chuckled.

"It's absurd . . . kids live for doughnuts," said Mr. Ducharme, a smoker who doesn't indulge during work hours. "Our business hasn't been hurt by going smoke-free at all."

City councillor Mark Lubosch, who chairs the committee that pushed for a ban on smoking indoors, called the businesses choosing to ban children "laggards."

"Those businesses that are putting smokers ahead of youth are shortsighted and grossly irresponsible," he said. "They are putting profits ahead of employees and customers. This issue has always been about health."

For Ms. Jonasson, the idea that a place dedicated to jelly-filled confections would allow parents with children to use only the drive-through window is insulting.

"I will never come back here," she said outside the store. "There are plenty of places in this town where I can buy coffee with my kids -- and they're smoke-free, too."

But inside the Coffee Time, smokers puffed away, unrestrained and happy. "Viva la Coffee Time," one puffer shouted.

Then in the early 1970s, Dr. Robert C. Atkins converted the Canadian Air Force findings into the best-selling, most effective diet book ever published: The Diet Revolution. [95] [96] The eternal fact underlying Dr. Atkins' diet is that carbohydrates combined with poor aerobic fitness -- not calories, oils, or fat per se -- cause unsavory weight gain, heart disease, diabetes, hypoglycemia, and other health problems. For, the human body does not naturally metabolize concentrated carbohydrates. In fact, above certain modest quantities, carbohydrates are both poisonous and addicting to human beings.

Human beings are natural carnivores, not herbivores. Human beings are natural meat or protein eaters, not vegetarians or carbohydrate eaters. Human beings naturally metabolize proteins along with fats and oils. Thus, natural foods include meat, poultry, fish, cheese, nuts, butter, cream, eggs, low-starch vegetables, and high-fiber cereals. While corn, sweet fruits, potatoes, pastries, pastas, and breads are troubling foods for human metabolism. All concentrated carbohydrates are harmful above modest levels, especially the most concentrated, purest form of carbohydrate -- sugar in all its forms, including fructose, honey, and corn-syrup sweeteners. ...Sugar, a heavily government-subsidized industry, is subtly the most addicting, toxic, and deleterious drug known to afflict the human body...and mind.

Sugar is the crack cocaine of the carbohydrate drugs. Sugar is by far the biggest killing substance among human beings today. Such concentrated carbohydrates lie at the root of most eating disorders, discipline problems, concentration deficiencies, moodiness, unhappiness, depression, sloth, poor performance, and criminal behavior. Indeed, without exaggeration, the most insidiously harmful of child abusers and drug pushers are parents who addict their defenseless children with sugar in all its forms.

Those are facts: facts now, facts before, facts forever. Sitting in that ice-cream parlor, you realize why Americans today are increasingly throwing away their health and happiness. You realize they are increasingly mutilating their bodies and trashing their minds through endless upside-down "health" diets, government-subsidized nutritional frauds, bogus low-fat school lunch programs, and dishonest government-backed, survey-type pseudo science. Those frauds along with the FDA armed bureaucrats maliciously work to harm the physical and mental health of all Americans and their children.

In the 1970s and 1980s, increasing numbers of people directly or indirectly recognized the universal, objective facts about diet and health. Development and sales of sugar-free food and drinks escalated. But, in the early 1990s, sugar-free foods began vanishing in favor of meaningless low-fat, low-cholesterol, organic "natural" foods -- politically correct foods. Mega-size, fat-free, sugar-laden cookies, brownies, snacks, and drinks are sold as health foods while the most benign and effective of the nonsugar sweeteners -- cyclamates -- are dishonestly banned by power-crazed FDA bureaucrats...and the harmless sugar-substitute saccharine is irrationally labelled as cancer-causing by the FDA, leaving only dubious NutraSweet® unscathed.

Today, as the public obsession with irrational food consumption and bogus fat-free diets grows, the per capita intake of toxic carbohydrates soars. Indeed, consumption of sugar and carbohydrates is now accelerating as people are deceived with illusions generated by the government, FDA, and bogus health advocates. Their sickening deceptions dupe people into believing they are eating healthier by eating low-cholesterol, low-fat carbohydrates. In the meantime, they and their children are increasing their carbohydrate intakes and addictions. Thus, they grow fatter while irreversibly damaging their metabolic systems, leading to glandular harm, uncontrolled fatness, and mounting unhappiness. -- Neo-Tech Worldwide

[ 95 ] In later years, Dr. Atkins sadly surrendered to the politically correct establishment, grew stout again, and leaned toward bogus fad diets.

[ 96 ] A modified, improved version of Dr. Atkin's diet was published in 1995: The Zone, Barry Sears, Harper Collins.

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