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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."
...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?
For those who didn't read the article, it's not so much anti science as pro-politics. Making sure the message is not negative: "The Bush administration repeatedly stopped the FDA from issuing rules to prevent contamination of eggs, produce and other foods, though both industry and consumer groups agreed they were needed as the death toll rose from such incidents. Mr. Bushâ(TM)s health department also demanded that it approve all agency press releases.
Much of the agencyâ(TM)s staff assumed that the Obama administration would restore the agencyâ(TM)s independence. [But] a decision that had nothing to do with the F.D.A. proved the turning point in the agencyâ(TM)s relationship with the White House. In the midst of the bitter 2009 battle to pass a law to provide health care to tens of millions of uninsured Americans, the United States Preventive Services Task Force announced in November that most women should not get routine mammograms until age 50 because the risks of the X-ray screens and surgical biopsies that often follow outweighed the benefits in younger women.
Although the task force did not consider cost in its analysis, Republicans charged that its recommendation was the start of health care rationing, an accusation given prominent play on Fox News.
"That scared the bejesus out of everybody," a top F.D.A. official said. The Obama administration became extremely risk averse, fearing further controversies might jeopardize the passage of health care reform, agency and administration officials said. It refused many interview requests for agency officials and scientists until the health law passed.
"To the career people, that was disappointing. Employees here waited eight long years for deliverance that didnâ(TM)t come."
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
...and WTF is the tech angle here?
They had a phone call!
BTW what's wrong with movie popcorn that it needs a label? I eat popcorn almost every day, and it's only ~300 calories. (I guess the theater dobs-on lots of butter.) Such a regulation would increase cost though. And they aren't in the best financial health, what with competition from HDTV and home viewing.
Another interesting quote from the article:
"In February 2011, the F.D.A. approved an application from KV Pharmaceutical to sell 17P, a decades-old drug used to prevent premature births. Since KVâ(TM)s version, called Makena, was the only one officially approved, the F.D.A. would normally have banned the sale of cheaper unapproved ones. To the agency, the only issue was that KVâ(TM)s drug offered guaranteed safety while those made by pharmacists were riskier.
"For years, pharmacists had been making unapproved versions of this injectable form of progesterone for $200 to $400 for a 20-week course. Though F.D.A. officials worried about repeated instances over the years when other pharmacy-made drugs had been found to lack potency or be contaminated with deadly bacteria.
"Once it had won F.D.A. approval, KV announced its price â" $30,000 for a 20-week treatment, a hundredfold increase. Administration officials then stepped in to halt any effort to ban pharmacy-made versions, citing the need to check an exorbitant price increase from a drug company that suddenly found itself with a monopoly, an increase that could burden women who needed the drug. The administration instructed the F.D.A. to issue a press release stating that, "at this time and under this unique situation, F.D.A. does not intend to take enforcement action against pharmacies" that make unapproved versions of 17P. An administration official said that the health department and the F.D.A. worked together on the 17P issue and that the White House was not involved. "The notion that the statement or the action was somehow forced down F.D.A.â(TM)s throat isnâ(TM)t accurate," the administration official said. "F.D.A. officials said they had often been wrongly accused of considering price in drug approval deliberations and had always been able to reply that price was never a factor.
"We canâ(TM)t say that anymore," a top F.D.A. official said unhappily. Four months later, the White House approved a requirement that sunscreens protect equally against two kinds of the sunâ(TM)s radiation, UVB and UVA, to earn the coveted designation of offering broad spectrum protection.
"Top F.D.A. officials wanted to prohibit lotions with sun protection factors, or SPFs, of less than 15 from being called sunscreens because they do not protect against cancer or skin aging, while the administration insisted they could still be called sunscreens as long as they carried a label that said such lotions were ineffective."
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Great now we've got calorie denialists. Awesome.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
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"!
I partially agree with
Republicans are not distrustful of Science, they are distrustful of politicized scientists and various hangers on.
But I do think there are some that do completely disregard science (eg. Young Earth Creationists). I have been given the impression by the media that this is a significant part of the republican party, but who knows, it is the media we're talking about.
However I am curious as to what you mean by questionable science. Are you towing the standard "Climate Science isn't real science" line, or something more concrete than that?
I'm not trying to be contrary or anything, it's just I haven't kept up on American politics and domestic affairs nearly as much since I moved away and want to know what you are specifically referring to.
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
Calorie denialism is just another symptom of the Republicans needing to disagree with the Other at every turn.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
"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.
Republicans distrust any science that disagrees with what they believe, and then call it politicized. Democrats do the same damn thing.
That being said, it seems a lot more disagrees with the republicans than democrats, and the republicans do seem to extrapolate to a lot of 'neutral' science in their mistrust.
And neither side is against big government. Disagreement only seems to be as to which part of the government should be bigger.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
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.
Bill Maher is an outright germ theory denier. Most of the Republican party denies evolution and global warming. The Democrats are slightly better, in my opinion, but they've still got a bunch of flakes who have elevated a good idea (organic food) into some kind of pseudo-religion. My sister is like that. She thinks that organic food has magical properties that make it somehow better than any other food. She also refuses to give her kids vaccines. It's funny, because she'll rant about how anti-science the Republicans are in one breath, then rant about some bizarre anti-vaccine conspiracy theory in the next.
People are hypocritical, ignorant morons. That includes you, me, and everyone else. Thinking that you're immune to this kind of cognitive bias is yet another form of cognitive bias (known as bias blind spot).
Very clever... very sinister though as well. Problem is where does it end? Does the little Italian shop down the block now also have to label calories? How bout the ice cream shop? how bout the pizza place? Ok, so they all adopt the new law and now everything has to be carefully measured... the cheeze, the scoop, etc. across the board everything now has to have some stupid label to tell you what you already know (or would if you actually cared). Oh, you put too much cheeze on that pizza accidentally? Well then you need to be fined for breaking the law and we may have to close your shop till the FDA completes the audit. That audit run by overpaid govt employees, oh the tax payers can pay it. Yea, that's going to work well. I cant wait. No more improvisational cooking... only from strictly approved cookbooks where every calorie can be counted. I mean seriously think it through and you will see that its absurd. Just as absurd as thinking solyndra is going to resolve the environmental problems. I mean what happened to all the precious science and facts with that one? Now they are not important? Talk about denial. Look... I am sure some nuts think the environment is not in danger from mankind, but the vast majority of the right actually just think the regulation offered by the left will do nothing but give special interests even more power than they already have and knock out competition. Look at the carbon tax for a terrible plan to increase the pollution while looking green (with greed). Great on paper, terrible on the environment. If the left (or the right) came up with a way to not pollute and offer solutions no one would be a denailist... they would be consumers. Good ideas get bought. I am not a supporter of nuclear power and have hope in wind power but I dont think people should be forced to accept either. Both need research, both need development neither should get any help from the govt and the one that offers the best price to performance should win. No subsidies, no games, just business. BTW: I'm not right or left. I don't think the right is any more credible these days than the left but the idea of a small government with limited reach is certainly one I agree with. Unfortunately neither party wants that any more.
Holy fuck, dude, wtf is wrong with posting calories in food? It's meaningless to me, as I have no weight problem (I have problems putting it on, not taking it off), but I know a lot of fatasses who could use all the help they can get shedding pounds.
Nobody's saying "fattening foods are illegal". What it is is simple education -- popcorn's not supposed to make you fat. But a whole bucketful of it swimming in trans fats? Hell yes a whole bucketful is fattening, print the "10,000 calories, 9,000 from trans fat" on the tub.
I'd like to see a truth in labeling law. I worked at a drive in theater when I was a teenager, and the "butter" for the popcorn was hydrogenated soybean oil. So someone thinks they're getting butter (caloric but good cholesterol) when they're raising their bad cholesterol.
Jesus H Christ, you want the freedom to rip me off and poison me? Typical right wing... corporate rights foremost, human beings' rights don't matter. I should have the right to know what I'm eating. Making you print the damned TRUTH about what you're selling is hardly something to get bent out of shape about.
Free Martian Whores!
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.
Perhaps if it had a label we could answer this question.
-Dave
Denial Denialism?
Where does that get fun?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Bill Maher's like the left-wing Rush Limbaugh from what I understand.
Except people actually listen to Rush Limbaugh.
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.
> BTW what's wrong with movie popcorn that it needs a label?
Because some theaters use really bad oils to save money.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/story/2009/11/19/popcorn-movie-theatre-salt-fat.html
Money quote: "You can get one kind of popcorn with three grams of saturated fat and roughly the same size at another theatre with 38 grams of saturated fat. That's just a phenomenal difference," said Bill Jeffery of the Centre for Science in the Public Interest in Ottawa. "These are things that you can't tell by tasting."
to small businesses and little restaurants, this type of regulation would be exceedingly hard to enforce, expensive to the consumer, expensive to the restaurant, and once again puts the govt in charge of your well being.... I personally don't pick up a bacon cheese burger and think "now that looks healthy and nutritios" or a salad and think "god this has to be bad for you". I honestly don't think anyone is that stupid. Besides, a coke is about 230 calories... so is a large salad with some nice carrots, onions, and other veggies with a little chicken. Which is better for you? The information still relies on an alert consumer with enough intelligence to know whats good and bad for them unless you detail every fact, every piece of data on every ingredient etc and you read understand un digest all of it. The left unfortunately seems to think they need to protect people from themselves.... they do not.
You missed his whole point. Corporations, such as the one that owns Olive Garden, would have no problem with this regulation. They cook everything at the corporate kitchen with precisely measured ingredients. It is the little independent restaurant run by a man and his wife where they cook each dish up individually that would be killed by this. The big chain restaurants would love this as it would raise the cost for the independent restaurants more than it would for the chains.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
You've obviously never worked at a job where you face and have to deal with the general public.
Growing up, and early in school, I worked as a busboy in restaurants, when old enough a waiter and bartender. I've also worked retails....and from those experiences, you basically understand that about 90% of the people out there are pretty much fucked in the head...stupid....idiots.
I don't say that lightly...but when you deal with the avg "joe" on a daily basis, it really just kills you to see the ignorance and just general lack of display of intelligence out there. This was pretty far back for me, and I have to imagine in this day in age....it is even worse.
As hard as it is to believe, yes...there are a LOT of people out there, that do not comprehend that eating McD burgers and fries multiple times a week (hell, multiple times a DAY), washing it down with full sugar cokes....and having Twinkies as snacks in between those meals...will kill them and make them fat.
Yes, there are a lot of them out there, that are that stupid.
I know I come off sounding very elitist when I mention things like this....but after working those jobs, and talking to others that have done the same for any significant length of time, you sadly have to admit it is true. And when you understand that, well, I just am not surprised that much anymore by any strange news report, or anything 'interesting' I come across while observing the common man in the street.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Trouble is...it isn't just this...
I can understand the bans in public buildings, government buildings where people HAVE to go...but , how do they justify this in PRIVATE places like bars and restaurants, where no one holds a gun to your head to go work or be a patron there??
I don't get that one.
And hell, I'm trying to quit smoking now....doing well,and not having smoking at place IS a help to me not being tempted, but still....why can the govt. ban smoking on private establishments like that? Doesn't seem right, and curtails liberty on a legal behavior, that isn't being forced on anyone.
If a bar/restaurant wants to be non-smoking and figures they can make money off it, more power to them...I'll be spending my money there too, but if a private establishment want to allow smoking....they should be allowed to do it, since the act of smoking itself isn't illegal....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
No true Scotsman
http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~lhom/organictext.html
Contrary to what most people believe, "organic" does not automatically mean "pesticide-free" or "chemical-free". In fact, under the laws of most states, organic farmers are allowed to use a wide variety of chemical sprays and powders on their crops.
So what does organic mean? It means that these pesticides, if used, must be derived from natural sources, not synthetically manufactured. Also, these pesticides must be applied using equipment that has not been used to apply any synthetic materials for the past three years, and the land being planted cannot have been treated with synthetic materials for that period either.
Most organic farmers (and even some conventional farmers, too) employ mechanical and cultural tools to help control pests. These include insect traps, careful crop selection (there are a growing number of disease-resistant varieties), and biological controls (such as predator insects and beneficial microorganisms).
ORGANIC PRODUCE AND PERSONAL HEALTH
When you test synthetic chemicals for their ability to cause cancer, you find that about half of them are carcinogenic.
Until recently, nobody bothered to look at natural chemicals (such as organic pesticides), because it was assumed that they posed little risk. But when the studies were done, the results were somewhat shocking: you find that about half of the natural chemicals studied are carcinogenic as well.
This is a case where everyone (consumers, farmers, researchers) made the same, dangerous mistake. We assumed that "natural" chemicals were automatically better and safer than synthetic materials, and we were wrong. It's important that we be more prudent in our acceptance of "natural" as being innocuous and harmless.
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!
'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.
Same in the UK. You can get a pap smear within a day as well, as long as you're willing to go private. You'd have to pay for it, unless you have insurance , but you'd still get your pap smear. It'll cost you about £200 (~$320) and they also measure your cholesterol, perform a breast exam, etc.
At any rate, what does your anecdote prove? That someone, somewhere, might have been harmed by rationing? You can find such horror stories in all systems. I'm sure I can find someone in the US who was concerned about their health and didn't go to a doctor until it was too late because they didn't insurance and didn't want to pay hundreds of dollars. In the meantime, when you have a public system, it's important to make sure that resources are not misused. That means making tough choices: is the risk of misdiagnosis and false positives (which will bring up costs, not to mention scare some people to death) greater than the risk of missing some cancers? You could potentially screen everyone for cancer every year or even every month. Would that make any sense? Of course not, so screening is targeted based on evidence about who would benefit the most from it. I say that's the best way to design a system that has to make the best use of the limited resources that it has at its disposal.
The whole thing about death panels has never made any sense to me. Why on earth are *Republicans* complaining that the government is spending *less* money and reimbursing *fewer* procedures? That's their whole platform: less government spending! If their caricature were correct, the UK system would be amazing: a very bad, stingy system for the hoi polloi (a little like showing up at the ER in the US), which means that government will not spend too much on healthcare, and a very generous private system as long as you're willing to pay for it. Isn't it what they should want if they really cared about small government rather than pandering to the "get your government hands off my medicare" crowd.
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.
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.
...and WTF is the tech angle here?
The technical angle is that the FDA's edicts are not science-based. We got the food pyramid conflating fats and sweets and telling us to eat rafts of carbohydrates which are addictive, make you fat, raise your "bad" cholesterol score, and cause heart disease, on the back of the NIH spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer money trying to prove that eating fat was bad for you and failing. Now they want us to believe they're the right people to tell us what we should be putting into our bodies today. Bull Shit.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"