It's For The Kids ... But Which Kids?

The American Thinker has a good read about how the government's war on obesity is affecting kids. Here's a sample of the article, written by William Sullivan:

“It is now accepted far and wide that fat people are a menace to their own personal health, and to the American progressive, they are a menace to society as they seek to communalize health care delivery in this country. So progressives unconsciously offer their socialistic panacea. They advise that the government be given control to influence individual choice in order to quell the obesity 'epidemic' via specified taxation upon unhealthy foods, while subsidizing healthy foods, health education, and fitness programs.

“That may be all well and good to ensure that adults begin altering their lifestyles to reflect the state's health standards, but children are another story.”

The article, which I recommend that you read here, goes on to discuss recent cases in which authorities have taken extremely obese children away from their homes. Not only are the children temporarily separated from their families, but their parents often come under social condemnation.

We're constantly told that nanny-state measures are “for the kids,” but obese kids and their families will be harmed by the state's overreaching war against obesity. 

(Hat tip to Tell the Food Police, Back Off ~ Ronald McDonald Stays)

Let's Not Dough-verreact

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recently released a report on a 2009 e-coli outbreak caused by ready-to-bake cookie dough (perhaps some of the overeager bakers confused 'ready-to-bake' for 'ready-to-eat'). Apparently, it was untreated flour rather than eggs that made about 80 people sick.

According to TheAtlantic.com, "The report released by the CDC arrived at two important conclusions: One is that companies that manufacture cookie dough should reformulate their product and make it as safe to eat as a ready-to-eat product. And two, that consumers need more effective education about the hazards of consuming unbaked products."

"More effective education," huh? My mom taught me not to eat raw cookie dough when I was a kid (I may have had my fingers in the bowl at the time). Must every unfortunate incident become an occasion for more government "education"? I don't have much confidence that the government can give people common sense. As this editorial in the Kansas City Star argues, even with better consumer education, "chances are a lot of people will live dangerously and sample the stuff anyway."

(Photo: aresauburn™/Flickr)

Top 10 Posts of 2011

Starting a blog is such an early-2000s thing to do, but this was nevertheless the first year for Get the State Off My Plate--a new, independent voice covering the bustling intersection of food and politics (and sometimes culture).

This year, we've covered food deserts, fast-food research, fat-tax schemes, food-insecure puppets, the Obama's food consumption and presumption, government-sanctioned microwaves, Olive Garden outrages, food punditry, pie charts, and the acceptability of applying mayonnaise on hot dogs. And then there's the different food wars: the War on Happy Meals, the War on Salt, the War on Soda, the War on Raw Milk, the War on Chocolate Milk, the War on Fries, the War on Fat People, and the War on Hot Dogs.

Without further ado, here are the top 10 posts in terms of pageviews:

1. Swanson Meals (July 14)
2. Fight For Your Chocolate Milk Rights (Nov. 27)
3. Obama's Cooked (Oct. 10)
4. Well Played, Ronald (Dec. 1)
5. "Imminent Danger" (Nov. 29)
6. 45 Czars—This Is What Democracy Looks Like? (Oct. 10)
7. My Plea to the Makers of Zoi Yogurt (July 5)
8. Fat Tax: A Rotten Idea from Denmark (Oct. 5)
9. New Fast-Food Studies Reveal No-Brainers (Oct. 30)
10. Bravery In A Bowl (Nov. 28)

Next year should be very interesting with the presidential election and all that it brings ... stay tuned.

P.S. In the spirit of year-end list-making, here are a few other lists we recommend:

Fast Food Maven's Fast Food Winners and Fast Food Flops of 2011
The Obama Administration’s Top 10 Foolish Quotes of 2011
10 Best Internet Tributes to Ron Swanson
The Embarrassing Songs That Got Stuck In Our Head in 2011

Season's Warnings

Stop the presses: People drink sugary beverages during the holidays! And restaurants capitalize on this seasonal behavior. Yes, it's scary and true. Fortunately, CBSnews.com has investigated the sugar content of holiday-themed coffee drinks and has the "surprising results".



Actually, there's not much to investigate since the calories have to be printed all over everything now. But hey, it's still good to know these puff-piece "reporters" are looking out for us.

Snap, Crack, Pop

You know what one of the differences between cocaine and sugary cereal is?

If you overdose on cocaine, you can die. If you overdose on cereal, you can diet.


Might as well face it, you're addicted to loops (photo: flickr/Zanastardust)

This is common sense, right? And yet, in his latest blog post, New York Times' food crusader Mark Bittman writes that "a growing body of research suggests that foods sweetened with sugar or high-fructose corn syrup can be as addictive as nicotine or cocaine." The story which Bittman links to in The Daily Mail blares the headline, "Are cupcakes as addictive as cocaine?" Phrasing this as a question and using words like "suggests" allows these journalists to sound skeptical and somewhat objective while still advancing a sensational notion. (The Daily Mail story does include a dissenting quote from someone with the American Beverage Association to provide the minimum amount of balance.)

In the good old days, the food police would label stuff they didn't like as junk food. Now they want us to equate less-than-healthy eats with illegal drugs.

Further down in his post, Bittman frets about the aggressive lobbying and marketing behind the big cereal brands. I don't doubt that he's sincerely concerned about the health of kids, but he seems to overlook the role of parents in moderating what kids eat. No amount of lobbying or advertising can force parents to buy bad cereal, and if you take away your kids' Froot Loops and replace them with something healthier, they may whine but they won't need to detox at the Promises clinic or commit crimes to keep feeding their habit.

But this isn't really about parenting. It's about liberals' desire to control the public's dietary and media intake. They want to control which products hit the marketplace. Control can be very addicting, after all.

Regulating Inactivity

The Blaze has a video essay up that explores whether the government can actually force people to eat their veggies and join Weight Watchers under Obamacare. In essence, that is a question that the Supreme Court is expected to take up next spring. The scary thing is that there is actually a judicial precedent for this concept, which relates to the Constitution's Commerce Clause.

It's an interesting and educational video that's worth 15 of your minutes.

Quick Bites: Don't Feed the Demons

• Obese people should be demonized the way smokers have been demonized, even though obesity is usually the result of more than one factor and is fundamentally different than smoking. This demonization of fatness would be basically okay since there is money at stake. That's the boiled-down version of the argument made by Shannon Brownlee of the New America Foundation (a liberal think tank) in Time Magazine. She actually uses the word "demonize."  



"Maybe it’s time to be at least a little more willing to similarly demonize excess poundage," writes Shannon Browlee in Time (photo from zazzle.com)


Brownlee also seems to lament that no one has yet come up with a fat equivalent to secondhand smoke, but I'm sure the food police will eventually come up with something to facilitate the type of good-for-you bullying she envisions.

• Now let's switch to talking about a think thank that I like. Media Research Center's Brent Bozell has a spot-on column called "Hollywood's Soda-Pop Statism" that points how out many celebrities/elite types have a Puritanical stance about which foods their kids can eat but are anything-goes when it comes to everything else they do with their bodies.
• When you're in the military, the state is definitely on your plate. It must be tough, but at least they've tried to build a better, longer-lasting sandwich for troops in the field.

Well Played, Ronald

Despite the city's attempts to ban it, the Happy Meal remains a San Francisco treat. Read this SF Weekly blog post to learn how McDonald's is using a loophole to continue selling the meals with toys. It's an amusing read that shows why bureaucrats are never going to be able to save your kids for you.



Who's smilin' now? (photo: mylot.com)

 Another lesson here is that trying to take away people's freedoms usually backfires. When government tries to impede business through such overreaching regulation, companies will naturally look for loopholes to keep making money and will often find them. A company does not become as big as McDonald's without knowing how to take care of business.

(P.S. Feel free to chime in to our discussion about this on Facebook. For National Review's take on the matter, click here.)

"Imminent Danger"

From Slate: “Ohio officials are standing by their decision to remove an eight-year-old boy from his family's home last month because they considered his mother's inability to get the child's ballooning weight under control a form of medical neglect, the Associated Press reports … Tipping the scales at over 200 pounds, the third-grader more than triples the 60 pounds that government growth charts deem a healthy weight for boys his age. He is at risk for diseases like diabetes, heart disease, hypertension and high blood pressure.

 

“After monitoring the family for more than a year and a half, case workers last month deemed the boy to be in imminent danger.”

This incident is unfortunate (for the child and his family) and unsettling (because of the precedent this may set, especially when considering how eager progressives have always been to reach past parental authority and have more direct influence on other people's children).

The health of a child is not to be taken lightly (no pun intended) but, as I've asked before, where does this end? Will the government someday decide to intervene when kids weigh 200 lbs.? 180 lbs.? Will they monitor what food families eat? What if the "officials" get the kid in better shape and return him to his family and he gets fat again? It seems that the state's attempts to save such kids could cause collateral damage to families and to the concept of personal responsibility.

(Emphasis mine)

Bravery In A Bowl

You can call 'em greasy but there's one thing you can't say about KFC: that they're afraid of the food police. In fact, ticking off the food cops and food snobs seems to have become part of their business model, judging by menu items like the Double Down or the newest, limited-time gimmick Cheesy Bacon Bowl.

 
No word yet on whether the KFC-like Obama Fried Chicken restaurant in China is serving the new bowl.
 
I haven't tried the bowl nor do I necessarily recommend it, but I'm on board now with putting Colonel Sanders on a postage stamp. 

Fight For Your Chocolate Milk Rights

Around the country, chocolate milk is being bullied out of schools. But students and even some parents are fighting the chocolate-banning powers that be.



(Credit: Time.com)

Students in the Tahoma (WA) School District have launched a petition asking the school board to put chocolate milk back on the cafeteria menu.

Fairfax (VA) County Schools took away chocolate milk earlier this year, but, as The Daily Mail reports, the district “received a slew of letters from nutritional and special interest groups that said their decision was rash and that they had robbed students of not only a tasty drink but also the vitamins and minerals essential for their healthy bone and muscle growth.” The district solved the problem by getting its milk suppliers to provide a lower-fat chocolate milk without high-fructose corn syrup.

When the anti-sugar hysteria dies down and common sense kicks in, most people realize that chocolate milk is better than no milk at all.

Quick Bites: Thanksgiving Edition

• Relax, America: the terrorist threat is over. How do I know? Because Homeland Security now has nothing better to do than make turkey-frying safety videos. Apparently ...

 

• Here's another turkey-frying video for your Thanksgiving safety and enjoyment. This one, at least, stars William Shatner and comes from State Farm rather than "the State." Watch "the Shat" before you put that turkey in the vat!

• Daily Caller: The food grinches who want to steal Thanksgiving
• NewsBusters: Media Still Stuffed with Food Police Message
• National Review: This Is Not Lincoln’s Thanksgiving: The Era of Food Dependence
• Did you know that turducken recently turned 31 years old? 

Your Soda-Fighting Tax Dollars at Work

Via Heritage.org:

Obama Administration Uses Stimulus Money to Support Ads Attacking Soda

As part of President Obama’s economic stimulus, the federal government has doled out $230 million for communities to combat obesity rather than create jobs or boost the economy. In many cases, the funds are being used to attack American-made products like Coke and Pepsi.

Advertisements undermining soft drinks can be found in cities from coast to coast … (Click here to read the rest of the article.)

Oh, the sugar, the fat, the humanity. Maybe we'll see some anti-egg nog ads just in time for the holidays.

The Latest Pizza Sauce Controversy

On Monday, Congress released the final version of an agriculture spending bill that rejects new school-lunch standards proposed by the Agriculture Department. Look at how the AP, supposedly one of the more objective media outlets, is reporting it:

Who needs leafy greens and carrots when pizza and french fries will do? In an effort many 9-year-olds will cheer, Congress wants pizza and french fries to stay on school lunch lines and is fighting the Obama administration's efforts to take unhealthy foods out of schools ... The bill also would allow tomato paste on pizzas to be counted as a vegetable, as it is now. USDA had wanted to only count a half-cup of tomato paste or more as a vegetable, and a serving of pizza has less than that.

Many other media outlets are picking up the 'Congress says pizza is a vegetable' angle and bringing up the childhood obesity epidemic. Let's keep in mind that Congress is not forcing schools to serve fries or pizza, and that there is little to no evidence that school lunches are behind the epidemic. And is all pizza really the same? Doesn't the type of crust used, and the amount of cheese used, et cetera, make a difference?

Margo Wootan of the Center for Science in the Public Interest told The Hill,

"It’s a shame that Congress seems more interested in protecting industry than protecting children’s health.” I'm not sure I buy into the premise, but I think it would be nice to see the federal government trying to protect industry for a change instead of driving it into the ground, along with the economy.

Quick Bites: Want Fries/Waffles/Cereal With That?

• 411mania.com has a good column up summarizing what the federal food police have been up to in the last few years, especially in the arena of sugary cereal.
• Here's another good read: "Federal Food Police Against Business and Science" by Steven Malanga of the Manhattan Institute.
• Well, this is going to provoke the fry-haters: McD's has brazenly launched a web promotion centered around their fries. (Note, however, how small the serving is.)
• Food symbolism is all over the Republican Presidential race. Cain has been tagged as the Pizza Man, and now Huntsman says Romney is "running for the Waffle House" (it's a flip-flop joke, you see).
•  Irish Times reports: "The Government is considering introducing a ban on fast-food outlets near schools, following the publication of a report on obesity in nine-year-olds." Pointlessness knows no borders.
• Walter Russell Mead has been writing a very thoughtful blog series on the disintegration of what he calls "the blue social model." I'm not sure what his politics are (I'm guessing center-left or slightly libertarian) but I think this line from his recent post succinctly captures the mentality of the food police and the larger liberal-elitist movement: "Money and power for the government enable the upper middle class good government types to dream up new schemes to help us all live better lives and give government the resources for the various social, ecological and cultural transformations on the ever-expandable goo-goo to-do list that range from a global carbon tax to fair trade coffee cooperatives and the war on saturated fat. All these programs (some useful in the Via Meadia view, others much less so) require a transfer of funds and authority from society at large to well-socialized, well-credentialed and well-intentioned upper middle class types who get six figure salaries to make sure the rest of us behave in accordance with their rapidly evolving notions of correct behavior."

La Vida Locavore

When a guy like Mark Bittman says that locavorism is not an elitist plot, you know that it is. In case you haven't heard of locavorism, so-called locavores believe it’s best to eat foods grown within about 100 miles of wherever you live because it’s supposedly more environmentally friendly than shipping food around.

Obviously, the widespread adoption of locavorism would limit almost everyone’s food choices in some way and would kill off a whole industry (think of all the businesses that ship food around). Sure, it's reasonable to say that a state like California should export more food than it imports, but not every state is as agriculturally abundant. If locavorism were the norm, most Americans wouldn’t be able to enjoy avocados. And that would be a tragedy.

As The Center for Consumer Freedom (a foodmakers’ advocacy group) notes, Bittman’s recent blog post “strays from the typical (long-debunked) argument that locavorism is eco-friendlier, instead claiming that ‘when imports stop we won’t have the food to replace them.’ This is blatant fear-mongering … what’s the likelihood that importation will just ‘stop’?”

Bittman asks “wouldn’t you prefer to eat food that came from, say, your state, or one nearby? Or at least from within our national borders? Food you can touch, grown at farms you can visit?” To me, broccoli is broccoli; why would I care about the farm it was grown on? Locavores seem to want to go back to a simpler time when people grew their own food on their own land. Like environmentalism, the hunger for local food is also a hunger for connection and authenticity, with a side of self-importance. If the source of your food is important to you, fine. But trying to make it important for everyone would be kind of like an elitist plot.

"Daily Show" Dogs on PCRM

The Daily Show and the Huffington Post lean to the left, to say the least. But even they are skeptical of the hot-dogs-are-as-deadly-as-cigarettes campaign put on by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), which HuffPo describes as "a pseudoscientific vegan advocacy group."

A short Daily Show highlight clip can be seen below.

In other hot dog news, Occupiers in San Diego threw bodily fluids on a hot dog vendor's cart after the vendor stopped giving out free food and drinks.

(By sheer coincidence, I had a Ball Park® Angus Beef Frank for dinner tonight. I'm not an addict, I swear.)

Super Tax Me

(Getty Images)

McDonald's recently gave in to public-sector pressure and cut the amount of french fries in their Happy Meals. Now they want the government to return the favor and cut taxes, especially for businesses.

McDonald's Corp. CEO Jim Skinner tells UK's Telegraph: 

"We pay some of the highest [corporate] taxes around the world. There needs to be some levelling."

Asked about federal borrowing, he said: "It's not a good story… the government has to spend less. We have to grow the economy, grow GDP… and you have to be able to do it in an organic way and not through borrowings and increasing debt."

McDonald's army of blue-collar customers need more clarity on core issues, such as healthcare, he said. "Until all of that is all defined and certain… we're going to continue to have a fragile environment for consumer confidence."

Less government spending? I’ll drink a Shamrock Shake to that, and I don’t even like their shakes.

Quick Bites: McRib-ovore's Dilemma, 75% Less Salty

• Where would we all be without food police and food snobs? Without those know-it-alls, we'd never know that fruit snacks and McRibs are not equivalent to, respectively, real fruit and real pork ribs. Now that McDonald's has brought back their popular McRib nationally as a limited-time promo, author/leading food snob Michael Pollan has helpfully suggested that the FTC expose the sandwich's true nature to the unsuspecting populace. "Doesn't the word 'rib' mean anything?" Pollan said to CBS News. If there's no rib, he said, "why hasn't the FTC taken an interest in this question?" Um, maybe because even the FTC knows that "Mc" in front of the name of a product is generally understood to denote that it is fake, faux, or processed.
• Just so you know, the American Public Health Association is not extremist when it comes to salt. An extreme group would demand to remove 100% of salt from the food supply. The APHA only wants the FDA to reduce salt by 75%, which sounds totally realistic to me.
• Here's a great use of jelly beans. 
• "Tacos Is Brain Food" and other Fast Food Fails

New Fast-Food Studies Reveal No-Brainers

Amazingly, two studies released this week found that fast food cannot force you to eat it. 

A 30-year study of Massachusetts adults found that those "who live close to fast food restaurants may not weigh any more than the rest of us," contradicting the results of earlier, more limited studies on the relationship between obesity and proximity to fast-food restaurants.

A new UC Davis study found that "fast food alone cannot be blamed for high obesity rates among people with low incomes ... The research calls into question stereotypes that have led some cities in Southern California to cite obesity when passing laws limiting or banning new fast-food restaurants in poorer communities." (This study also found that guys are more likely to eat out than women. Duh!)

Rawesome Raid Was a Year in the Making

The LA Times has done a follow-up story on the Rawesome Foods raid that occured this summer in Venice, CA. It turns out that 10 law enforcement and regulatory agencies including the FDA and the LAPD spent a year on an undercover investigation of the raw-food store.

A law professor quoted in the story says "It may sound like overkill. But from the agencies' perspective, they want to show they can do their version of a major case. They don't want to lose it." In other words, bureaucrats want to feel important and make their authority felt. To non-bureaucrats, it looks ridiculous to run an armed raid on a food store as if it were a drug lab.

"But attorneys for the defendants believe the investigation and raid on Rawesome was overkill. They said regulators could have made their point with citations and fines. Using undercover agents and hidden surveillance cameras to put farmers and health-food advocates behind bars was a reach, they said.

"'It's a tremendous misuse of resources and a waste of time,' said Matthew Bromund, the attorney representing Palmer and her farm. 'The kind of investigation that was done in this case is similar to what you see in a violent criminal enterprise, something the mob would be involved in.'"

For the glut of agencies in our bloated government, raw means war.