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The Politics of the F.D.A.
A fight over posting calorie counts for popcorn is just one example of the clash between the White House and the agency charged with protecting public health. Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg, the F.D.A. commissioner, was forced to scrap plans to have calorie counts posted for foods served in movie theaters and on airplanes after a phone call from the White House deputy chief of staff in 2010. From the article: "White House officials describe
their disagreements with the F.D.A. as part of the normal, constructive give-and-take over policy that has never undermined the agency’s mission.
'Under President Obama’s leadership, the Food and Drug Administration has new authority and resources to help stop kids from smoking, protect our food supply and approve more affordable prescription drugs,' said the White House press secretary, Jay Carney.
The administration also views the agency’s hostility to its oversight as hopelessly naïve, given a 24-hour news cycle and a ferocious political environment that punishes any misstep.
'They want a world that doesn’t exist anymore,' an administration official said."
...it's the RIGHT that's anti-science. Pay no attention. Move along.
The inhaler propellant ban and the morning-after-pill-without-prescription ban have both been stupid decisions, coming from each side of this conflict. The FDA tends to over-regulate, and the administration tends to override them on the wrong decisions.
...and WTF is the tech angle here?
...what in the world would the downside of having the energy content for movie snacks posted? It's not as if it would be prohibitely difficult or expensive to calculate for the vendors. Even McDonalds are doing it, and their meals are a lot more complex than "1 part dried corn, 1 part oil". The only possible reason is that people might not buy as much of it if they realised how fat it made them. But boosting your sales based on a lack of health information seems rather evil, and surely isn't something that movie theaters would do, right?
Right?
Isn't the summary supposed to clue you in as much as possible on what the story is about? Posting calorie counts? (I presume they mean "energy content".) Who was going to post it? The FDA on their website? The theatres? Forced by the FDA? What does the White House care?
In general, the Republicans are anti-science and the Democrats are not anti-science.
But does that mean that every single person to the right of Obama is more anti-science than every single person to the left of Obama? No, it does not.
I'm with the FDA on this one. Why not post more information?
“I never have and never will approve a new drug to an individual, but only to a large pharmaceutical firm with unlimited finances.”
-Dr. Richard J. Crout,
Director, Bureau of Drugs, FDA
Source: Quoted in The Spotlight, January 18, 1982
Obviously, as seen in other issues (i.e. ACTA) the MPAA has the president in their pocket. Isn't it true that movie theaters make all their money on concessions, because they give nearly all of the money from ticket sales to the studios? If you post calories then people buy less popcorn, so you reduce concession sales. If the movie theaters can't stay in business selling concessions, will more of the ticket price have to be kept by the theater, thus reducing the profits of the MPAA members?
You don't have an unimpinged right to choose if you're prevented from getting all the facts, fuckwit. This is an attempt to let consumers have the facts SO THEY CAN MAKE INFORMED CHOICES.
You are entitled to your own opinions. You are *not* entitled to your own facts.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Mandatory nutrient labelling for dirt. Won't anyone think of the children with pica?
Set your phasers on "funky"!
Who gives a shit about the calorie count in movie theater popcorn? I mean really, that's what our government is harping on? Sure it's nasty unhealthy and if you eat a big bucket your going to feel like throwing up from all the grease, but that's part of the magic of the movies. I get to go to a movie maybe every 3 or 4 months because they are expensive, and who has the time with 3 jobs, but when I do I want my damn popcorn, and I don't need the government trying to guilt trip me about it. I'd love to see a poll of people walking into a theater that asks everyone whether they think the movie food is fattening. I'll bet you even with the poorly educated half illiterate mass of humanity in an average theater the answer would be yes by a gigantic margin. Do we really think a bunch of regulation and mandates are necessary to somehow push us from the 90 percent who think it's obesity in a bucket to 92%?
If the government really wants to get rid of a large swath of fat people then maybe they should only let welfare recipients buy fruits, vegetables, skim milk, and whole bread with welfare. I'm not saying starve people, my family when I was a child survived for a short while on welfare, I'm saying give them what a family that eats sensibly buys, in fact the best way to do this would be to just have government stores that stock only nutritional items where welfare can be used. It would also get rid of the jerks in the store trying to get me to pay them cash for them paying for my basket of groceries on their welfare cards.
It's a fucking shame that in America we feed welfare recipients till they are so morbidly obese that it creates a huge barrier that they can't get over to actually get back into the workforce. At the same time the government that is stuffing people obese tells me I'm a bad miserable horrible human for paying 6.50 for a big bucket of grease with my own money.
Counter argument, currently, at least in my experience (so anecdotal/etc.), when I have asked for the nutritional information such as caloric counts they were unable/unwilling to give it to me. I don't think it's anything but basic sanity to post information regarding the food we eat. What is in it, how much is in it (e.g. calories, grams of fat, protein, etc.). That's not a nanny state, that's simply labeling things with what they contain.
A free market only works if the consumer is making informed decisions about what they are buying. Adding calorie/nutrition information to food products gives them that information. Publishing reports about Foxconn workers committing suicides also helps consumers be informed.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
how can the choice be truly free if you don't have access to information about your choice? And how is legislating access to information impinging on your freedom? You can still eat a 1500kcal popcorn bucket if you so choose, nobody is forcing you to look at the nutritional information label.
It's just like if all food also had a carbon impact value as part of its labeling, you could still easily decide to buy fresh fruit from out of season imported from halfway around the world, or buy that coffee table you like so much made from rainforest wood, you just would be fully aware of the ramifications of your choice.
Or are you saying that having the information available infringes your right to be ignorant? in that case do you really believe your choice is free when you don't know if it's right/wrong for you/society (regardless if you want to choose right or wrong)? and what about the right of people that actually *do* want to make informed choices and so need the carbon/environmental/calorie data, shouldn't their rights be protected?
-- the cake is a lie
Nobody takes away the choice from you. Quite the opposite: you are given an opportunity to make informed decision.
Say you have two different buckets of popcorn.
In one case they just look different (buckets, not popcorn). The only way for you to choose is to either go for the prettier bucket or try both and choose based on taste.
In another case both buckets have additional info like nutrition info and ingredients. So now, you can still choose prettier bucket or try both and choose based on taste. However, now you can also choose based on nutrition and ingredients, deciding which one is best for you. For example, now, based on nutrition info you can assess how big of a bucket you need.
Personally, this is how I choose pretty much everything at the supermarket: I look at ingredients. If something looks suspicious, I don't but it.
Why am I robed of that choice at the movie theater?
May Peace Prevail On Earth
"But it's the issue that the "Government" is forcing businesses to reveal calorie count in the name of trying to create a more healthy society, and thus subtly impinging on a person's ability to make a choice for good or ill."
The government forcing businesses to make information available is impinging on someone's ability to make an informed choice?
I can't tell if you a) are supremely ironic and also supremely subtle b) don't read what you write or c) normally write for Fox news.
It seems what you really want is the right to be ignorant of the consequences of your sinning before you do the deed. No one is telling you that you can't buy and eat as much popcorn as you want. What's being done is informing you of what that will mean for your health in an objective way. You don't have a right to avoid facing facts, though you are free to oppose laws that make you face facts, but at least then face the fact that you are trying to avoid facing facts. Hmm... I think I see the problem here.
Without better information (although that is subjective, is calorie count the only information needed to make an informed decision?) then you have a "nanny" state the keeps you ignorant to control your actions.
You could make an argument that no information is better than government selected information, but I'd guess in practice you'd find that the FDA mandates information that is helpful for understanding the health consequences of your choices. If they don't, then you change the institution, not hide all information or let those who are selling you the product control the information.
There is one argument that you could make, because humans are so strange, but it would require some experiments: people may eat more popcorn perceiving that the nutrition information has somehow blessed their choice. (Perhaps some sort of known danger is considered less harmful than unknown danger effect?) I would want to see some hard data.
Because - gasp - hard cider might be construed to be good for you (it has impressive vitamin A & C):
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100417145238AApTCOo
Really... why can't I choose my beer based on tast+health?
There are medical researchers finding that high sugar intake fosters cancer growth, finding this to be particularly evident in those who have cancer. Will the FDA ever label sugar appropriately? Nope. There's even less a chance they'll do this with corn syrup, given the corn lobbyists.
Speaking of corn, imagine having a corn allergy. Actually, it's not necessarily corn per se, but expressions of certain genetic modifications and some of the molds that grow on corn. But basically every processed food has corn derivatives in it. You name it, it's derived from corn. Citric acid (a common preservative used in just about everything), ascorbic acid, microcrystaline cellulose, xanthan gum (a common thickener, derived from an organism grown on corn), fructose, dextrose, "natural flavors", MSG, etc. And they're added to everything from table salt to orange juice. (Why the hell they would need to add corn-derived citric acid to orange juice beats the hell out of me.) And if you search the web for "corn allergy", you'll get the impression that a corn allergy isn't incredibly rare, and there are communities of people who work really hard to figure out which food products aren't treated with corn products. Imagine being unable to buy CHICKEN without being at risk. That's right, almost all chicken sold in grocery stores has corn-based additives. A corn allergy may be rare, but the sheer ubiquity of corn products makes it so that absolutely everyone with a corn allergy in the U.S. will suffer. Nevertheless, the FDA flatly refuses to even create a legal definition of corn, let alone require products to mention it on the label. Even organic farmers spray their produce with corn derivatives as a sort of non-toxic enrivonmentally friendly pest deterrent.
If you have a corn allergy, you are royally fucked.
We will always have the right to eat whatever loaded calorie crap we want (I know I love my taco bell burrito despite it being so many calories), but if just 5% of people will choose to consume less after seeing the whopping calorie count of a tub of buttery popcorn that can be a ton of money saved by our government trying to cover people who don't may not have healthcare and ultimately are a drain on the taxes we all pay.
You can still eat a 1500kcal popcorn bucket if you so choose, nobody is forcing you to look at the nutritional information label.
More importantly: you can still eat a 1500kcal popcorn bucket even if you do choose to look at the nutritional information.
(As a side note, totally irrelevant to anything you said, all of which I basically agree with: please learn what a "comma splice" is and how to avoid it.)
It's the expansion of the "Nanny" state. Essentially, the government trying to intimidate or coerce people into making a healthy decision for their own good. Yes, posting the calorie count is an objective act. People are free to read the number and then decide for themselves. But it's the issue that the "Government" is forcing businesses to reveal calorie count in the name of trying to create a more healthy society, and thus subtly impinging on a person's ability to make a choice for good or ill.
Personally I view it as protecting the right to sin. We have to have free choice, which means we have to have the right to be able to freely choose what is wrong for both us and society. If we take away the right to choose what's wrong for us, then we begin to remove what makes us unique and individual. Doesn't mean we're immune to the consequences, but we must have the ability to choose. Like abortion: no matter how horrific the practice may be in its extremes, or how morally abhorrent the practice may be, we MUST allow women the right to choose. Otherwise we run the risk of creating a benevolent tyranny that seeks to protect us from ourselves--and a benevolent tyranny is still tyranny.
I think you might be going a little extreme here. Posted calories being held up to the same level as a woman's right to choose?
Really, I don't think there's a problem to letting people know, if they want to, what is in the food they are eating. They don't have to read the nutrition information on the package if they don't want too. Plus, all the pre-packaged snacks at the theater have that information already.
I really don't think posting how much fat and sodium is in your snack is approaching anywhere near benevolent tyranny.
We can stand around and argue the merits of labeling requirements and food regulation all day long. There are an endless series of tradeoffs I don't much know shit about and therefore will refrain from offering an opinion.
What is not acceptable about the FDA are labeling requirements that allow knowingly factually incorrect information to be stamped on food labels. Tweaking serving size so that trans fat content is below the .5 threshold and therefore always reads zero should in my view be considered a criminal act.
If the argument is knowledge of whats in our shit will negativly effect sales and you can somehow establish this (leaked memos, admissions..etc) to be the case then I would be happy to see all such fucktards regulated into bankrupcy.
If the argument is cost benefit about the practical implications of labeling custom or frequently changing items then external input from politicians representing the public seems like a credible activity.
"You are entitled to your own opinions"
Not in any professional world I know of that requires licensing.
Example: Medicine. If you're not qualified to give medical advice, you're not entitled to any opinion. You don't even have the title in the first place which would give you legal authority to that opinion.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I live in New York where all chains are required to post calories, and it's fantastic! It makes it so easy to choose the correct portions. However food producers are definitely cranking up the salt to compensate now. You can't add sugar or fat without adding calories, but you can add salt.
I respectfully disagree. People who live longer cost the state a lot more. Sure there may be more short term costs, but long term it's a total win when you consider what we spend on Medicare and Social Security
HINT: That's approximately 40% of the Federal budget and going up every year.
Bullshit. If there is actual market demand for this type of information on snacks, etc., then it's up to the consumers NOT TO BUY THEM until they find the snacks that do post this information, or until the companies figure out what the people are looking for.
As usual, this has nothing to do with the government and obviously government isn't authorised to do any of it, but that's how you sell out your freedoms every day, day in, day out, and once you sell out your freedoms on anything, the rest is peanuts.
You can't handle the truth.
The A in FDA stands for Administration. If you do not want them to administer the areas of food and drugs, just shut them down already.
The difference isn't whether you have the facts. The difference is whether you need to look up the calorie content of a serving of popcorn versus requiring the vendor of popcorn to post the calorie content. If you care you could probably get a pretty good idea with about 10 seconds of searching. Nothing prevents you from getting the facts.
I used to work for a medical device manufacturer. After having worked for a defense contractor, I thought I'd seen the worst so far as beaurocracy and pointless paperwork, and politics. What a rude awakening! The FDA is the king of all the above. At least half the cost of bringing a medical device to market? Satisfying FDA testing procedures to get their "approval". Of course with a wink and a nod and some well-placed cash incentives, you can lie and cheat your way through it all and market your shitty device anyway. Memo to America: The FDA doesn't give a rat's ASS about your health and safety, all they care about is getting their payoffs from Big Pharma, and maintaining their power over a large chunk of what goes on in this country. What we really need, Obama? Major-league reform of the FDA, starting with packing the entire organization with C4 and blasting it to kingdom come, then rebuilding it from the ground up with non-crooked people who aren't all on the take. Then maybe we get safe, cheaper drugs, and safe food to eat, instead of medicine only for the rich, and things like the supplement industry being threatened constantly because Big Pharma doesn't like the competition (after all, can't have all us uppity poor people being healthy, now can we?).
No that would be a fat tax. The requirement to post calorie count means an informed decision. People should be refusing to put things in their body if they aren't provided that information. All the FDA needs to do is run a publicity campaign highlighting peoples need to know these things. They don't need to legislate to get what they want irregardless of what the "white house" wants. This reminds me of an article I read where a spectator was watching an attempt to update water treatment specification after instances of contamination. The person tried to inform share holders the contaminated water was within the "tighter" specification and was told spectators were not allowed to contribute.
It seems to me that ignorance is inversely proportional to the ability to make a conscious, self-determined choice. The more information I have about a given set of options, the less I'm able to make a choice based solely on my own preferences. Instead, I'm hampered by the knowledge that one particular option is better for me than others as determined by sources outside my control, and therefore (perhaps against my personal inclination) I'm going to lean towards the option that is better for me.
In this particular instance regarding calorie count, I'm aware due to education and awareness campaigns that more calories without moderation are a bad thing, both for me and for society. Morally, I know that I should reduce calorie intake to a moderate amount that is healthy for me. Moreover, the government and social scientists are aware that providing me with objective data that clearly states the best way to take care of myself is going to incentivize me to make the right choice. By capitalizing on these memes and trends, and posting calorie counts plus other nutritional data that is factual and accurate, the government and society is trying to push me to make the right choice both for society and myself. While the data may be factually, statistically, and scientifically accurate, the way and method in which it is introduced to me is biased. I already know that the Triple Baconator is bad for me, but by showing me calorie count, I'm going to make a further emotional connection that the Baconator is bad, read information that verifies that it is bad, and further convince myself that I should eat a salad instead. At that point, my will to choose is weakened, and I'm probably going to go with the salad.
The point I am trying to make is that by increasing the amount of data available for consumers to read, thus reducing ignorance as close to nil as possible, we are actually eroding the ability of people to make conscious, self-determined choices based on what they prefer. Instead, it influences people to choose the "correct" option (correct meaning that the data says that option A is more optimal than option B, and only idiots would prefer a less-optimal solution). And if we choose the "correct" option every time, how long before that becomes the only option?
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
Because you're not actually choosing anything. You're simply sorting for the optimal combination to meet a given need, given the input of data. You're going to use that nutritional information, combined with the ambient data you've already collected and processed about what's healthy for you and what isn't, and you're going to arrive at the best, most optimal product that balances your desire against the mandate to remain healthy.
If you took away all that information and were left with the two buckets, then it's _you_ who has to deal with the uncertainties and make the choice, and then discover the consequences. To me, what you've described is the desire to reduce uncertainty so that you can make the correct choice.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
"Give and take over". What a wonderful description.
The FDA has been at war with the supplement industry for over 50 years. So we only have second class nutrients in many vitamins and vitamin formulas that suck. The FDA, pharma's industrial whore, has been seething and conspiring to usurp and overthrow the DSHEA since 1994.
The RDAs are whacked out lies in many cases. This clearly true for vitamin C and D3, probably many more including several "near vitamins".
As usual, you are a retard.
...is that it's NONE of the government's FUCKING BUSINESS what I desire to put into MY OWN FUCKING BODY!
Right, right, everyone's got Internet access and smartphones.
Don't be an idiot.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
You, sir, are fucking retarded.
Nobody's going to ask for that information, not get it, and then decide "You know, I'm starving and my kids are pitching a fit, I'm going to drive around to six different restaurants until I find one that gives me the facts".
No, all you (and the others) can see is OMG GOVERNMENT MAKING PEOPLE DO STUFF == NANNY STATE. It's convenient that you can turn your brains off like that whenever you don't want to argue something on the merits, but it makes you look awfully stupid.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
There's a word you should understand; it's called "context".
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
No, you are retarded because you have already given up your actual important freedoms to life, liberty, property and even pursuit of happiness, everything is being taken away from you by the government because you have given up the actual idea that there is a LAW above the government, which enumerates precisely what the government is allowed to do.
Instead you have given up, given it these sweeping powers to do whatever it wants to do and then maybe you are even surprised: how come the POTUS doesn't give a shit and doesn't ask Congress for declaration of war before starting one, how come POTUS decided that he has all the rights to kill US citizens without a trial, how come you can now be indefinitely detained by your military without access to a lawyer, without any way even to tell anybody where you are.
You think you are getting something from government when you give up your actual freedoms?
Calorie count?
You deserve every bit of it.
You can't handle the truth.
You're equating GETTING NUTRITIONAL DATA to a slow slide to DICTATORSHIP?
Are you capable of not shitting your pants on a daily basis? You really make me wonder here. Do you have any major facial deformities? All your teeth? Do you make people squeal like a pig for weekend fun?
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Assuming you know what they're actually putting in it. Are they using real butter or a substitute? Which substitute? Was it popped in oil? What sort of oil? etc....
Is 1563649 a prime number?
Bullshit. If there is actual market demand for this type of information on snacks, etc., then it's up to the consumers NOT TO BUY THEM until they find the snacks that do post this information, or until the companies figure out what the people are looking for.
As usual, this has nothing to do with the government and obviously government isn't authorised to do any of it, but that's how you sell out your freedoms every day, day in, day out, and once you sell out your freedoms on anything, the rest is peanuts.
What freedoms are being sold here exactly? Freedom to not know what's in the mystery popcorn you're eating?
WHAT FREEDOM?
Tell me something, go look in the Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution of USA, where the fuck does it say that the gov't can dictate to the companies HOW TO RUN BUSINESS?
That's the freedom - freedom to do business without being interfered by the government, freedom to you own property, freedom for people to not be forced by government to do business in a way that government dictates, and instead do business as it is supposed to be done - by market choosing voluntarily to buy or not to buy products.
The most important part is not even this specific case, it's the entire principle, and it's absolutely true, and it's been shown for hundreds of years now - the moment you close your eyes (or even wildly cheer) about government doing something that it is UNAUTHORISED BY CONTRACT to do, by the law that is above the government, you are done.
You are done. There will be nothing that they will not do and you will have nothing to say about it. Obama came out with this nonsense on: 'activist judges', when he heard they may overturn his treasonous idea of this insurance mandate, well it's the same thing, but it doesn't really matter anymore, does it? Because before you even get any of this forced insurance you already have all the benefits of extrajudicial killing and imprisonment by the POTUS, no judge, no jury, he is everything, including being an executioner.
What difference does it make, I guess, if he also forces some businesses to put whatever labels on their products. Obviously that's the carrot he is buying you with, while he is beating you into a pulp with his stick.
You can't handle the truth.
I'm not being given any more of a choice to sin (eat popcorn) or not (eat . . . less popcorn?) if the FDA doesn't have the theater print nutrition facts on the popcorn bag. There's nothing inherently good or bad about nutrition facts. Unless you believe that they should be removed from ALL food products, your argument is completely invalid.
FDA is not a most favored department for this administration. Not that it isn't important or approved of, it just doesn't get the nearly free reign that a department like the EPA gets. EPA regulatory efforts are almost totally in line with this administrations goals; the FDA is chasing relatively less "important" ones so they get reined in more often.
Pardon while I re-don my catalytic convertor breathing mask so I don't exhale CO2 into our precious environment.
if they love the free market let's give it to them, strictly protected.
anyone concealing or failing to disclose or resisting disclosure of health information or potential risks of a product they sell gets the death penalty, the CEO and board of directors automatic death penalty because it's their job to know about their products, any employees who failed to whistle-blow also get the death penalty, any lawyers who obstructed the final release of the information - death penalty
in addition, any sort of collusion between companies who are competing- no appeals do not pass go do not collect $200, instead the people collect your heads, every executive and the board, as well as any other employees who know
let's free the shit out of the market, just like we freed the shit out of Iraq and Afghanistan
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
I care more about ingredients. Calorie counts are mostly useless to me. If you tell me something's first ingredient is corn syrup I'm going to assume it's high in calories, low in nutritional value and not good for me. With popcorn, I want to know if they are using real butter or something else. Because you know what, I want real butter damn it! Don't kill me slowly with poly unsaturated fats. The lipid hypothesis is slowly being shown to be false and saturated fats have long been demonized when they are now being found to be good for you (and conversely poly and mono unsaturated fats not so good). Google "French paradox" for starters.
I respectfully disagree. People who live longer cost the state a lot more.
DEATH AT BIRTH! It's the only way to be maximally efficient! (Thanks Jonathan Swift.)
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Oh, you're one of those people (and I use the term loosely) who think it's all about economic freedom (i.e. the freedoms of the 1%) and give not a tinker's damn about civil rights.
Kill yourself.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Why don't we have nutritional content labels on beer, wine, and other forms of Alcohol? Alcohol has calories; even if they're devoid of any other nutritional value, it still packs a lot of calories. It seems bizarre to me that, of the two bottles required to fix one's rum and coke, only the coke bottle will be labeled with caloric information.
There is no such thing as 'civil rights', there are only human rights, and what you, single celled amoeba call 'civil rights' is a mix of entitlements and obligations. Obligations are placed upon some by the threat of gov't violence so that the majority is given their bread and circuses at the expense of the real productive part of society.
As to 'killing self', well, that suggestion should only come from those, who are willing to set an example, so go ahead.
You can't handle the truth.
Denial Denialism?
Where does that get fun?
When you turn it into the Nile De-nihilism and accidentally start a literary movement about re-instantiating a dried-up river in a post-apocalyptic world?
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
How the fuck am I selling my freedom by demanding from the manufacturer info on the shit they sell?
May Peace Prevail On Earth
Because you are not doing it in the market but instead with the force of government, you are selling your freedoms to the government if you expect it to do things for you that it is unauthorised to do.
I know this is not the white house point, but calories is almost a useless information for people looking to loose weight.
For instance, paper has a lot of calories, but nobody will get fat at eating paper. For a more edible example, walnuts have more calories than soda. Does anyone really think that walnuts increase obesity better than soda?
The right information we should have on label is the glycemic index
I'm not sure I agree with it, but here's the issue.
I like the Bloomin' Onion ® from Outback Steakhouse. I don't eat it very often--the last time I had it was a little over a year ago. It's horribly unhealthy, but also quite tasty. It's a nice nosh with beer.
The argument, of course, is that by printing calorie counts and exposing unhealthy foods, you're giving people information in order to make healthier choices. Those people who would like to eat healthy have no way of knowing that the Bloomin' Onion isn't particularly healthy. After all, onions are a vegetable, right? Vegetables are good for you!
However, you could also argue that those who wish to eat healthier foods can go become informed. There are plenty of books and magazine articles and on-line information available. So adding calorie counts to a menu isn't for those people who want to eat healthier because they're taking steps to do just that. Instead, it is to inform those people who don't really think about it.
If I go to a restaurant and order a chocolate cake, I'm going to see a calorie count which tells me how unhealthy it is. However, eating chocolate has other beneficial psychological effects. Why doesn't the government include this information--how happy is this chocolate cake going to make me? I can't make this kind of judgement when all I'm getting is one side of the story.
'They want a world that doesn’t exist anymore,'
No, they want a world that isn't this neoliberal war-mongering kleptocracy cooked up by BushCo and cheerfully continued by the Obama Admin. You know -a world where there's a sense of common decency and a vibrant social contract between people, and not this dog-eat-dog psychopathic me-first Randian horsecrap we've been force fed since Reagan.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
That might have been the case a few decades ago but, nowadays, it is quite easy to check beforehand. Most chains tend to have the information online. If they don't you're free to complain and choose not to patronize them. I for one do not go to any restaurant that doesn't post a full list of allergens on their website because I don't want accidentally find out that there was something I can't eat in the food (trip to the ER? Not thank you!).
Now, I don't think it's that big a deal if restaurants were mandated to post this information. Most of them do it anyway and it seems like good business to me. For one thing, they wouldn't lose the custom of people like me. But even if they don't, the choice is still yours: if you're starving and you don't want to drive, then you've made your decision and, apparently, you don't value this information all that much.
If you trust what the FDA does or says you are fool, very few people bother to read the labeling on the food let alone the information over fat, sugar, ect. This is a waste of time and effort on the white houses part. What they do not tell you is if the butter flavoring causing any heath problems, (movie theaters) in which you do not see a label for. There is obviously real butter then the crazy man made formulas they say is butter flavor.
As far as airplane food I would bet airplane food these days is way way healthier then McDonalds or any other fast food, or chain restaurant. If people are that concerned over this then they should use the internet or go to there grocer to look up other foods with the labeling to get an idea of what non-labeled (Nutrition Facts) food contains. Even tho airplane food tastes horrible even worse then frozen TV dinners I have seen it made or how they make it, that does not mean the raw food itself it trust worthy.
My point is the information out there that reports over why you should not drink diet sodas, or why you should stay away from corn based products, bla bla ect... But the FDA does not bother to push the issue over these things, or the other things that are flat out bad for you (understand that I am not a person who goes out and eats nothing but heath food I do like to eat from time-to-time "junk food"). There idea is to make half ass labels, and to tell you what intake of calories, fats, sugars, you should have. Then 10-20 years from now scientists will claim they got it wrong or the idiot press will not report the findings in there entirety. This has been happening since these Nutrition Fact Labels have come out or I should say "long before".
I don't think anyone is preventing pressure groups from publishing reports about the nutritional contents of food. The question is whether Apple should be mandated to disclose information about working conditions and whether consumers should be shown pictures of their device being assembled in China.
My understanding is that, if consumers are really concerned about nutrition, then they will tend to get that information. Nowadays, most places already provide this information and use it as a selling point (you can eat healthy at $fast_food_joint). If you choose to go to a place that doesn't make this information available, then it's your decision and it must mean that you don't care all that much about nutrition.
Where's the intimidation or coercion of people? Do you oppose the well informed consumer in general, or just when it comes to popcorn?
Why not remove ALL consumer information?
Personally, this is how I choose pretty much everything at the supermarket: I look at ingredients. If something looks suspicious, I don't but it.
1. How many DAYS does it take you to go shopping?
2. You must be a real blast at parties.
CAPTCHA: Biology
Nonono, we need you young people to pay for the benefits of existing retirees and/or get shot up protecting our citi^H^H^H I mean our overseas business interests.
All hail our overlords Haliburton, Unocal and the IMF
Because you're not actually choosing anything. ... To me, what you've described is the desire to reduce uncertainty so that you can make the correct choice.
???
Wait. What?! He's not choosing anything, he's just reducing uncertainty so he can make the correct choice?
It sounds like the only one uncertain here is you.
It's convenient that you can turn your brains off like that whenever you don't want to argue something on the merits, but it makes you look awfully stupid.
We've already fucking argued this on the merits, for centuries. Government intrusion into our lives = BAD. Our Founders figured this out after years of bloody years, and even wrote it all down on a helpful document for us (the Constitution)....which we then promptly ignored and continued down the same foolish, doomed path of increasing government power. It's gotten out of control and if you are unable to see what the GP sees, then maybe you need to inch your head out of your ass a few clicks and have a peek around. We're presently on the verge of global economic collapse, followed by WWIII, precisely because of this exact type of thing. Any time the government is given power, it's never given back and more is always taken, until it all crashes down in misery and disaster. Please, wake up.
"Why doesn't the government include this information--how happy is this chocolate cake going to make me?"
Because you're in a better position to measure how happy chocolate cake makes you, while the people that made the cake are in a better position to measure the number of calories in it?
Internet Libertarian tactic #2: shouting "WAKE UP" because you disagree with someone.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Because the government telling corporations that they can't sell you rotten food or dump toxic waste into your water supply is EXACTLY the same as government tapping your phones or forcing you to worship the state religion.
Randian idiots...
Wish the Randian morans would go ahead and move to their Libertarian paradise so they can see their ideology in full glory....