My problem with the food police is that I see it as a part of a much larger problem. IF the government has control of all our health care, then ANYTHING it determines as ‘unhealthy’ can be banned, eliminated by other means, or taxed heavily. If that’s the case, then the government has control of virtually EVERYTHING in our lives. Just think about it. The government says that the McDonalds hamburger is bad for your health, so rather than ban it, they place a heavy tax on it. If the government says that living in a house over 1500 square feet generates a carbon footprint that’s too large, then a heavy TAX can be put on such a luxury. If the government says that any vehicle larger than a lawnmower with doors is causing too much pollution and it’s causing health problems, then it will take care of it with a ban or a tax. (It’s my understanding that some European countries have a ‘barbie tax’, where the use of outdoor grills can be done only after a fee is paid). There is NOTHING out of bounds with a government controlled health care. And that’s SCARY.

It makes much more sense to address the relatively small percentage of uninsured (who cannot otherwise afford to purchase insurance) than to force EVERYONE into the same money draining basket.

Yes, this post is relevant to this thread because the ‘food police’ is just another step in the Government’s desire to have more control of it’s citizenry

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“Arrogance is a creature. It does not have senses. It has only a sharp tongue and the pointing finger.” Toba Beta

That's because you're a liberal, Ruth.

Actually, I agree that the post IS on topic because it links the government's desire to control what we eat with an all controlling and overly expensive government health care.


"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

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"The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program." - Ronald Reagan

Your response can serve as the poster child to explain why private and home schooling is becoming more and more popular.

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“Arrogance is a creature. It does not have senses. It has only a sharp tongue and the pointing finger.” Toba Beta

There has been a period of time in the not so long ago past when the Government completely controlled the diet/fat/sugar intake of the whole of it's population.
Great Britain was at one time down to one weeks food supply,and that was with strict rationing.
From the start of WW2 to at least 1950, the people were issued with ration cards.
The Government had worked out the necessary dietary intake for men, women and children, and coupons were issued accordingly.
Coupons were issued for bread, but you could use the same coupons for either cake or flour, but you gained nothing extra as the volume/weight varied according to which choice you made.
Meat was rationed, sugar was rationed(kids got 4oz of sweets a week). If you kept a pig for meat/bacon/ham you got pig meal in lieu of your pork based coupons. If you kept hens, then a meal for them replaced your egg coupons. Was mainly powdered egg which was only good for cooking(that's if if you chose flour and not bread or cake).
Margarine (made from whale oil) was 6oz per person each week, butter 2 ozs. My Mum always referred to butter as bread and scrape, put it on and scrape it off!
Concentrated cod-liver oil and orange juice were supplied in bottles, and it was a teaspoon of each that was deemed necessary to supply one's daily needs for certain vitamins.
The list goes on, but, the health of the British people during that period was the best ever recorded. Heart related illness almost disappeared, as did many other illnesses.
Does this not give foundation to the argument that there should be some controls on what is stocked on supermarket shelves?
Why should those who choose to live a healthy lifestyle pay the medical costs of those who exercise no self control, grow obese and clog the hospital system to the same extent they clog their arteries.
It pees me off when I go into the local supermarket and there are more aisles/shelves dedicated to soft drinks, potato crisps, sweets, chocolate, ice-creams, cakes and general junk food than there are for healthy nutritional food.
Sure, people should have choices, but, some regulations of some kind can only benefit ourselves, our children and the following generations from an overwhelming increase in heart disease and diabetes.
Canteens in Oz schools have had in practise for many years the selling of healthy food and drink only. Some schools monitor what is taken to school in lunch boxes, after-all, if the parents cannot be bothered, then someone needs to step up to the plate.

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RULES ARE FOR THE OBEYENCE OF FOOLS AND FOR THE GUIDENCE OF WISE MEN

Lighten up, dude,

I just want kids to have some basic nutrition. I'd rather it be from parents. If they fail, we shouldn't....we collectively being the "government"...ooh aaah.

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"Be without fear in the face of your enemies. Be brave and upright that God may love thee. Speak the truth always, even if it leads to your death. Safeguard the helpless, and do no wrong". (Knight's Oath, Kingdom of Heaven)

And for 'restaurants are being told to close because their menus have unhealthy food'.

I suspect this is another 'bogeyman debate' rather than anything based in reality.

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Arguing with a creationist is like playing chess with a pigeon. It'll knock over the pieces, crap on the board, and fly back to it's flock to claim victory.

Ray41,
A great post, telling it like it is - and was. In the case of the UK, controls worked, although they were put in place as a desperate measure.
Here where I live now supermarkets stock an excess (from my point of view) of chemical-rich food products. Aisle after aisle of it.
Some of the processed meats glow!
(and, why do you need to lighten up? I thought your post was well-balanced)

Outcome based policies, whether regarding income or school lunch, result in totalitarianism. See:
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-04-11/news/ct-met-school-lunch-restrictions-041120110410_1_lunch-food-provider-public-school

Veddy, veddy serious don't you know. We take ourselves veddy, veddy seriously
and can expound at excruciating lengths with qualifications that go on at mountainous
lengths to make the teensiest of points.

Would someone else digest and answer the bloviations expressed by our liberal friends?
Please contribute to the 'Give A Liberal A Clue' fund; and thanks.

Allow me:

Ruth, we are not interested in pedantic details like the actual reality of a situation, how we view the world from our compound is what matters. It's tedious (often impossible) to defend crude generalizations and baseless assertions; liberals need to learn to just accept the premise, even if it's false. How do you expect conspiracies gain any traction otherwise. Come on, get a clue.

I do have a couple of tedious liberal questions though:

Are school principles accountable to parents, via the school board perhaps; is the school board elected, if so by whom? What's the hierarchy in the US?

In the UK if a Head (principle) is acting against parent wishes – not even a majority – there are mechanisms in place to deal with the issue. Of course you can't please all the people all the time and rarely do Heads respond to kids 'acting up', as seems to be the case with the revolutionary Fernando Dominguez named in the linked report – looks like a bit of discipline is in order if you ask me.

And, how do you keep 'flaming hot chips' hot until lunchtime?.. or is this a lost in translation situation.

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Arguing with a creationist is like playing chess with a pigeon. It'll knock over the pieces, crap on the board, and fly back to it's flock to claim victory.

off topic:
Lost in translation

Suntory Scene

English version

Japanese version

Some points to consider:

1. The principle of "sin taxes" is well-established policy in the US:

a. Wine, beer and liquor are heavily taxed.

b. Cigarette taxes are onerous to say the least!

So, I think it entirely reasonable to apply the same principle to foods (I use that term loosely) that are contributing to runaway health care costs in this country.

It's the same principle. If you are against this, then I just know you want to eliminate the taxes on those other products as well?

Also, it was stated in the original post that inactivity is the culprit, more so than what one consumes:

Any doctor or nutritionist will tell you that health and proper weight are a combination of exercise and nutrition. But: if you choose to eat junk, drink too much soda or beer, you cannot possibly work out long enough or hard enough:

Even a vigorous workout like alpine cross country skiing might burn 1000 calories in an hour, and God bless you if you can keep that pace for an hour without collapsing! You can easily consume twice that many calories at one sit-down meal at Mickey Dees!

In a race between caloric intake, and the most intense workout that even the most dedicated fitness fanatic can put in, the fork is mightier than the sweatband.

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"Be without fear in the face of your enemies. Be brave and upright that God may love thee. Speak the truth always, even if it leads to your death. Safeguard the helpless, and do no wrong". (Knight's Oath, Kingdom of Heaven)

It won't work Maggie:

If you make all the wrong choices: you smoke, you drink heavily, you eat cheeseburgers till you burst:

Sooner or later, you, or people that make similar choices will show up at the nation's emergency rooms. You'll depend on medicare or medicaid. Even if you are wealthy enough to never need medicare, your costs will drive up the cost of private insurance for everyone. We are going broke spending on healthcare because our people are increasingly in chronic ill health due to their atrocious diet.

I will either pay for your bad choices in the form of higher health premiums, copays, lower employer contributions, and/or directly in increased taxation.

That being the case, your choices affect me, and the fiscal health of the nation. So, if you choose to mainline 12 sugar laden coca colas a day, I see no problem with taxing you to pay for your bad decisions.

The choice remains yours. You are simply expected to pay for health care consequences that result.

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"Be without fear in the face of your enemies. Be brave and upright that God may love thee. Speak the truth always, even if it leads to your death. Safeguard the helpless, and do no wrong". (Knight's Oath, Kingdom of Heaven)

You just aren't going to get it.

If you have insurance from a large provider like Blue Cross, Independent Health, et al.

If you have medicare or medicaid and possibily combine that coverage with supplemental private insurance.

Worse, if you have none of the above and stumble into an emergency room with some chronic end of life malady:

Your bad behavior increases costs for all other users of healthcare.

In the insurance industry, it's called risk, they spread that risk across the risk pool. The premiums paid to fund their policies, the taxes paid by us all to fund medicare, are set (or deficit spent) based on the costs of providing care.

We don't live in a world where you can pretend that your actions have no effect on others. If that world existed, it did so before the 19th century, or on the frontier. Where life was nasty, brutish, and short. Stop the pretense of nostalgia for a world that doesnt exist, and in which no sane person would wish to live!

Maggie, your scenario holds if: when the consequences of your diet lead inevitably to diabetes, stroke, heart attack, or a myriad of cancers including breast and colon: you stoically take a bottle of morphine (paid for with your own cash), go off into the wilderness, and wait for the reaper to call. Perhaps you'll indulge in some Native American chants to accompany your sojourn into the Spirit World.


Otherwise, you'll be using the health system like the rest of us, incurring costs that will be shared by all. You are in a society. You have responsibilities.

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"Be without fear in the face of your enemies. Be brave and upright that God may love thee. Speak the truth always, even if it leads to your death. Safeguard the helpless, and do no wrong". (Knight's Oath, Kingdom of Heaven)

If you were in Las Vegas, you could do stand up, HWNN. My scenario holds if you liberals will insist that people take responsibility for themselves. I need no chants, no morphine, just common sense - something that the left got rid of long ago.

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"The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program." - Ronald Reagan

After you all obediently sat for the Patriot Act I'd say bitching about school food sounds rather like the yapping of dogs in the manger, wouldn't you ?

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Sanity is not statistical

I speak French, too. A thoroughly disreputable character. Sadly, I am also the possessor of an indefinite U.S. visa. A dangerous, subversive character.

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Sanity is not statistical

[quote=excaelis
After you all obediently sat for the Patriot Act I'd say bitching about school food sounds rather like the yapping of dogs in the manger, wouldn't you ?[/quote]


Ah, Ex.......... It was only a matter of time before your acerbic sophomoric rhetoric would nudge it’s way into the conversation. I do agree with HWNN on one thing. This stuff is so funny you just can’t make it up.

Whenever a conservative warns of the disappearance of our individual rights - that is - the disappearance of our right to DO something without government intervention, you and the rest of your Neosocialist Red Guard always begin your wailing and gnashing of teeth with a recitation of the Patriot Act. Let’s look at the consequences of that act, compared to the Marxian directives that now permeate the halls of Washington. Hopefully, exterminators will be called in next November to rid us of the vermin who now carry this disease.

The Patriot Act, as defined by you, is, among other things, an invasion of privacy that allows the government to snoop into our personal affairs in a way that it should not. I actually agree with you to some extent. BUT, as a generality, the results of this act do not keep you from DOING anything you want to do that is a legal enterprise. NeoSocialist legislation, however, and Marxist edicts from the our temporary dictator-in-residence either take away our freedom to choose, OR at best make our choices more difficult through additional wealth distribution policies so commonplace in the directives of the latest incarnation of what you refer to as the Democrat Party.

School lunches are just a minor part of a very large issue. Citizen choice is rapidly being eroded and replaced by government edict. The Government believes that it knows what’s best for you, and if you don’t agree, they’ll make it so difficult for you that eventually you’ll come around- out of necessity rather than choice.

I’m sure you will respond with another barrage of Socialistic incantations to be eulogized by the hazzahs of Bolshevik sycophants who slink from the bowels of these fora whenever the light goes dim.

Have at it. The few stalwart conservatives in residence here will sit in our manger, watching the sunrise, yapping away at the humor of it all.

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"The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program." - Ronald Reagan