Archives for the 'nanny state' tag
Big Brother With a Chip on ‘is Shoulder, Innit?
Facing a severe economic crisis and renewed tensions with Argentina over the disputed Falkland Islands, the Daily Mail reports the British government is focusing attention on the dimensions of the country’s French fries:
They have been a staple of British cuisine for more than a century.
But traditional chips are the latest target in the Government’s war on obesity.
Chip shop owners are being encouraged to produce thicker versions because they contain fewer calories and less fat.
Chippy owners, however, have condemned what they see as an attack on their cooking.
The traditional British chip is already thicker – and therefore healthier – than the French fries served by big fast-food chains.
Despite this, officials from the Food Standards Agency watchdog are encouraging chip shop owners to produce even thicker versions, much like potato wedges.
[...]
The FSA scheme will cover Cambridgeshire, Greater Manchester and Northern Ireland by the end of this month. Officials will visit 80 chip shops to examine how much fat is in their chips and offer advice.
If the pilot scheme is successful it will be rolled out across the country and last two years. Other small caterers including Indian and Chinese takeaways will be included.
A spokesman for the FSA said: ‘The aim of the pilot project is to produce some targeted advice for businesses which is simple, practical and easy to implement.’
Right. Because they’re from the government and they’re here to help. Here’s some targeted advice for government: sod off.
More fry madness here.
Fat Kids, Skinny Kids
Meet Lucy. She’s five years old. And at 3′ 9″ and 51 lbs., she’s the new face of obesity in England.
Maybe poor Lucy should go on the Kelly Osborne sleepytime apple diet. (Since “an apple… has no carbs and no sugar in it”.)
Meat for me, but not for thee
Lord Stern of Brentford, the UK’s climate chief, hath spoken. And he sayeth, “‘Tis not meet for thee meat to eat, for you should not have it. But I have meat and I can it eat, so step aside you’re noshing on my roast and polluting the planet.” Lord Stern is, of course, not a vegetarian. He is , however, an economist.
Whenever I think I should, or in fact do, reduce my meat consumption, something like this comes out. Then I regret having contributed to both global warming and general idiocy by having had beans for dinner, and I go buy a steak ( which, incidentally, is supposed to be a deal now.)
Lord Stern, this steak’s for you!
“Some hae meat and cannae eat
Some would eat that want it
But we hae meat and we can eat
Sae let the Lord be thankit!”
HT: L. Coyle.
David Kessler is Back, And Can’t Resist the Chocolate Chip Cookie So He Wants to Outlaw It
David Kessler, the FDA head under Clinton, has re-emerged as a fervent voice about food. His latest argument is that the sweets industry has addicted the US population. His book argues that the food industry has addicted the US population to foods that corporations sell.
As a person who watches all of the ads but still has no interest in sweets I am unconvinced and think this is really about his own penchant for sweets that he cannot control. So regulate and outlaw them! Use government force to control Kessler’s own weaknesses!
As head of the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. David A. Kessler served two presidents and battled Congress and Big Tobacco. But the Harvard-educated pediatrician discovered he was helpless against the forces of a chocolate chip cookie.
In an experiment of one, Dr. Kessler tested his willpower by buying two gooey chocolate chip cookies that he didn’t plan to eat. At home, he found himself staring at the cookies, and even distracted by memories of the chocolate chunks and doughy peaks as he left the room. He left the house, and the cookies remained uneaten. Feeling triumphant, he stopped for coffee, saw cookies on the counter and gobbled one down.
“Why does that chocolate chip cookie have such power over me?” Dr. Kessler asked in an interview. “Is it the cookie, the representation of the cookie in my brain? I spent seven years trying to figure out the answer.”
I don’t know why the cookie makes Kessler crazy but please don’t try to regulate everyone else’s cookie experience based on your own cookie dysfunction, Mr Kessler.
DC Council’s Jim Graham Wants No One to Have a Piece of the Pie
DC councilman Jim Graham is one of the DC area’s most horrific left-wing moralists. Since it would be difficult to hide my contempt for him, I won’t.
I detest Jim Graham. He is a restaurant hater. He was instrumental in passing DC’s smoking ban, and since then has opposed such evils as the sale of single beers. Yet voters in his ward continue to elect Graham.
I have a feeling that might now change. Graham’s latest anti-restaurant play is so outrageous and so out of touch with reality that Graham’s supporters will have to see the light. Right?
Why is Graham’s latest ban attempt so unconscionable? I’ll tell you why. Jim Graham wants to ban the sale of pizza slices. Says their sale spurs violence.
This could mean the end of the jumbo slice–which along with the half smoke is one of DC’s few culinary contributions to the world. But this is just the continuation of a pattern the council–especially Graham–has been evincing for several years. As former DCist editor Ryan Avent wrote of Graham and the council in 2007:
In the past year as well, Council members, and particularly Ward 1 representative Jim Graham, have acted swiftly to close down District businesses connected with crimes, even when it appears that there was little the business could have done to stop the criminal act. Increasingly, it seems that the Council’s first inclination when faced with a problem is to restrict choice.
DCist has more on the proposed pizza slice ban here, and Graham’s anti-business grandstanding here.
Tell Graham how you feel about his proposal either by email (jim@grahamwone.com) or phone (202.724.8181). Tell him Crispy sent you.
Calorie counts come to Oregon
“To better understand this movement against fast foods, one has to appreciate first of all that many individuals do not like fat persons.” — Gary Becker
A calorie count mandate may be coming to Oregon. Newly introduced legislation would require all restaurants operating in Oregon that have more than 10 locations nationwide to publish calorie information on their menus. Multnomah County, which contains Portland, already has similar rules going into effect on March 15, so the impact will be somewhat mitigated by the fact that many of these restaurants will already be forced to comply. Nonetheless, there are many reasons to oppose this bill.
Continue reading this post »
Bottled Watergate?
Forget unpaid taxes and illegal nannies, there’s a new ridiculous scandal in town: Possession of…bottled water?:
This week, the City Insider spotted an almost empty case of bottled water in the back of [San Francisco] Mayor Gavin Newsom’s hybrid sport utility vehicle as it was parked in front of City Hall. At least one full bottle of Crystal Geyser Alpine Spring Water remained under the plastic covering.
Newsom has no one but himself to blame for this one, though. He issued a bottled water fatwa in 2007:
This from the mayor who in June 2007 issued an executive order directing city government to no longer purchase bottled water, saying the containers clog landfills while the city owns a pristine reservoir in the Sierra Nevada that produces some of the country’s best-rated tap water.
Newsom wasn’t short on real scandals to begin with, but will Bottled Watergate bring him down?’
The Fruit(cake)s of Our Labors
Mr. Melton, I disapprove of what you bake, but I will defend to the death your right to bake (and sell) it.*
Shasta County health officials are cracking down on an 86-year-old disabled World War II veteran who has been selling homemade fruitcakes for more than a decade.
The Department of Environmental Health cites an obscure law banning food businesses in private homes.
Jack Melton of Redding gave away many of his pecan-filled fruitcakes. But health officials saw a small handmade window sign offering some for sale.
Health specialist Fern Hastings says Melton must use a commercial bakery that has passed a health inspection even if he gives his cakes to the public.
Melton says the 10- to 14-dozen fruitcakes he sold each year helped supplement his Social Security benefits.
* Fun fact: The orginial formulation of the phrase was not really Voltaire’s, but a snappier paraphrase of his thoughts by his biographer Evelyn Beatrice Hall.
An Oregon smoking ban prediction
I’m supposed to be in Houston right now. Yesterday my bags were packed and, despite being skeptical that my plane home would depart on time, I trudged my luggage through the freshly fallen snow to the train that would take me to the airport. The train wasn’t running. I checked my phone and now neither was my flight. Thirty minutes on hold with Southwest booked me a new ticket on the 24th and three more days in a paralyzed city.
This is all mildly inconvenient for me, but it’s hell for people in the service industry. December is a vital month for them. Because of the record snowfall — the highest for a Portland December since 1968 — my bartender friends are being told not to come into work. Many places aren’t opening at all. Companies are canceling their Christmas party reservations, taking with them all the revenue they’d promised. Combine this with the national recession and 2008 is turning out to be a glum year for area bars and restaurants.
What does this have to do with smoking bans? Oregon’s goes into effect on January 1. By January 2010, the economic uncertainty we’re facing now will hopefully have subsided. And unless it’s another freak year for weather, December will bring its usual boost to Oregon restaurants. If that happens, smoking ban proponents will be able to cite statistics showing that bar and restaurant business went up after the smoking ban, “proving” that they were right and we who oppose the ban had nothing to worry about.
A similar dynamic played out in New York City in March, 2004, a year after the beginning of its smoking ban. The city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene issued a report showing that the bar and restaurant business had grown in the year following the ban. Critics countered that the study misleadingly conflated bars and restaurants and neglected to account for the economic recovery following the 9/11 attacks.
Who’s right? I don’t know and I don’t care. As I’ve said before, this is a stupid argument. The financial objections to smoking bans aren’t based on how they affect net hospitality industry revenues, but on how they impact individual smoking-oriented businesses. Generalized statistics obscure the impact on bars that can’t get an exemption, lose customers, and justifiably feel like their rights are being trampled upon. It’s cold comfort to tell them to suck it up because, well, at least their competitors are making money.
If 2009 is a decent year for Oregon’s bars and restaurants, I predict that this is the kind of claim we’re going to hear from local ban supporters. I’d like to go on the record now to point out that such crude analysis should be seen for the irrelevant BS it truly is.
First they came for the cigarette smokers
Today the Boston City Council approved its measure banning the few remaining smoke-friendly businesses in the city. How bad is the new ban? Here’s City Councilor Michael Ross and restaurant owner Lydia Shire writing in the Boston Herald against it:
In these difficult times every small business is important. There are but six cigar bars in Boston, all of which undergo an annual local licensing process, exhibiting that 60 percent of their sales are from the sale of tobacco-related products and that the appropriate signage reflecting the risks of tobacco use is visible.
All six small businesses will be shut down if the regulations are passed as written. Even if these regulations are altered to temporarily grandfather in these six establishments, it is not reasonable to ask small business owners to maintain their significant investment in their communities, only to be shut down despite their commitment to be good businesses and neighbors.
They also note that the ban will extend to outdoor seating areas, unfairly punishing business owners who invested in patios to comply with the original smoking ban four years ago. Ross and Shire deserve full credit for opposing this rampant paternalism. Yet they’re a little late to the party. Note that they both support the earlier ban on smoking in bars and restaurants; they’re only stepping up now because they’re among those “who care to enjoy the pairing of a cigar and a glass of wine following dinner at one of Boston’s excellent restaurants.” Well la dee dah. If they’re not willing to be equally vigorous in their support of the property rights of sports bar owners or smokers who want to have a cigarette while they take in a music show, they have no right to be surprised when the city steps in to take away their precious postprandial maduros. The difference in the new ban and the original is one of degree, not of principle, and this is exactly the sort of thing we libertarians warned governments were heading towards when the original, less restrictive bans came into force. Now they expect city councils to draw a line protecting elitist cigar smokers like themselves? Give me a break. (And I say this as a fellow elitist cigar smoker.)
There is one interesting wrinkle though. The cigar and hookah bar ban was amended to not go into effect for ten years, with the possibility of one ten year extension after that. Twenty years is a long time, perhaps long enough for cooler heads to prevail; for now it lets the council look tough without actually hurting the businesses. Even so, how sickening is this excerpt from the AP report?
Roger Swartz, who heads the commission’s community initiatives bureau, said the panel lengthened the grace period for the bars because of hard economic times.
“We wanted to give them a bit more time to get used to the idea that they’ll have to close,” Swartz said.
Oh, how very nice of you Roger. You say that as though the bars’ closing was an inevitable event delayed only by the grace of Boston’s benevolent politicians, when you in fact are the ones driving them out of business. How does a person become so self-righteous that they can take credit for protecting small businesses on the same day they forbid their existence?
Today the Boston Public Health Commission justifies the slippery slope arguments made by property rights defenders many years ago. We were told that we shouldn’t worry, that the smoking bans in bars and restaurants were reasonable, and that sufficient accommodations for smokers would be made. Now we see that no ban is strict enough for the public health nannies, that even six cigar bars in a city of more than 600,000 people is too many. The regulators will, perhaps, finally overreach and create a backlash, but by then much of the damage to business owners will be done.
[Hat tip: The Stogie Guys.]
This Week in Bacon
England for English snouts! That’s the message the utterly horrid Jamie Oliver is communicating, saying he likes his bacon best when it’s not all foreign and stuff.
…Oliver will go to war with European pork producers in a new television show.
In Jamie Saves Our Bacon, the campaigner will fight for British pork farmers who are being hit by cheap imports.
He said: “Seventy per cent of the pork we import is from countries with lower welfare standards than ours and would have been illegal to produce here.”
More here. Reminds me of the racist BBC presenter who was fired this week because she didn’t want her daughter to have to ride in a taxicab with some “guy with a turban on.” Nice.
What’s for Lunch? Not Sandwiches, Says Brit Gov’t
Restaurants already facing hard times because of the financial crisis have something else to worry about: a British-government funded nonprofit is urging workers not to dine out.
Now into the nation’s workplaces marches an even more interfering force – the packed lunch police.
A taxpayer-funded quango is trying to persuade workers not to buy a sandwich at midday.
Instead they are being told to raid the fridge every morning to make lunch from last night’s leftovers.
The Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) claims that throwing food away rather than eating it costs the public £5billion a year.
That’s significantly less, no doubt, than wasteful government spending like that directed to WRAP costs the public. Not to mention that a consumer-chosen sandwich tastes a hell of a lot better than a load of unwanted recycled food shoved down the public’s throat by their own tax dollars. Just sayin’.
The Daily Mail has more here. WRAP spews crap here. Quangos explained here.
Take this with a grain of salt…
… because that’s all you’re allowed to have, tiger. The Economist, with an unbecoming tone of approval, predicts that sodium is well on its way to becoming the next trans-fat:
Interestingly, New York City—which was among the first to ban smoking in restaurants and bars, and the first to pass laws targeting unhealthy eating habits—isn’t waiting for a new administration in Washington, DC to place salt on some national hit list.
By all accounts, New York is preparing to add permissible sodium levels to its recent ban on artificial trans-fats and its requirement for calorie counts to be listed on the menus in restaurant chains. Absent some national initiative, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle won’t be far behind.
One way or another, the betting is that by this time next year salt will be the new trans-fat. And manufacturers will be vying with one another to provide the lowest figure in the land.
Foodies, take note. Just as salt is coming into its own as a connoisseur product we may need to man the barricades in defense of this simple pleasure — and get our tasty New York pizza while we can.
High Schoolers + Food = Busted
Kids, you might get suspended from school for two days if you bring your grill to school and throw a tailgate party in the school parking lot before classes. Even if there’s no booze? Yes. “We didn’t have beer, we didn’t have weed, we had bacon,” said one student, whose quote is one of the year’s best.
And you might also think twice before dressing up like a banana and running across the field during a school football game. Why? Because you’ll be arrested and thrown in jail.
California Menu-Labeling Law Looms
Bay Area restaurants targeted in a slew of robberies. Crazies trying to amputate their own limbs with a butter knife in a Modesto Denny’s.
Apparently California is confident these restaurant-related problems are under wraps, and so it’s moved on to what really matters: mandatory calorie labeling, reports the LA Times:
Some 17,000 chain restaurants around California would have to give patrons calorie information under a measure given final approval Sunday by the state Senate.
If signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the bill by Sen. Alex Padilla, a Pacoima Democrat, would make California the first state to require restaurants to display the calorie counts of their menu offerings.
Senators voted 24-13 for the menu labeling measure, SB 1420, which would take full effect in 2011. Padilla said he believes diners will make healthier food choices if they know how many calories they may consume.
Even if I were to concede that is true–a leap I’m not prepared to make, even if The Economist seems to offer tepid support for its legitimacy–menu labeling is not a question of health. The issue is whether a restaurant and its customers or a government should decide what and how people eat. I’ll take the former. Every time.
Still, I get no say, and the bill looks set to pass. Sensing this, I assume, the state restaurant association is no longer publicly opposing the measure.
