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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
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.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
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?
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.
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.
Ganother cUnting Are you GAY
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.
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.
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.
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?).
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.
"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".
...is that it's NONE of the government's FUCKING BUSINESS what I desire to put into MY OWN FUCKING BODY!
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
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.
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.
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.
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!
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
'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.
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".