For some time now, the government has been intruding on our eating habits, and pressing against our rights to eat certain foods. Restaurants are being told to close because their menus have unhealthy food, others are being forced to change the ingredients of the foods they serve. And now in some states, school lunches are being searched to see if they contain foods that are unacceptable to the government. If they do, these kids can't eat the meals prepared by their parents.

Have we gone too far? Do you have the right to eat that delicious fat dripping hamburger if you want to? Some would argue that it's not the food that should be blamed for making us fat but the relative inactivity of the people who are eating it.

Thoughts?

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

Intolerable! If this policing goes on for long, the designers, who otherwise would have to come up with wider and wider seats, will not find employment. The same goes for the architects who would in un-food-policed times unveil buildings with wider corridors and doorways. And the wreckers, of course, of the old-fashioned building with narrow door- and hallways.

On the other hand, it always has been wise and advantageous to issue rules and regulations for the human masses by some authority.

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Brain-washing starts in the cradle. - Arthur Koestler

I think that as adults, we have the right to decide what to eat.
I think that as adults, we do not have the right to kill our kids with the junk food that so many of us put in their school lunch bags these days.

Carbonated drinks, lollies, cakes etc have been removed from school canteens for many years.

Sugar is something that can be so easily removed from our diets, but can be disguised in foods unless you are a label reader.

There has been a generation of parents who cannot cook, therefore unprocessed foods were not put on the table.

The good news is the popularity of cooking shows on TV, those young families that didn't have imaginative food cooked for them have become

foodies themselves.

Some of us older generations have always enjoyed our kitchens.

People should know better.

Unfortunately the fast food chains seem to be putting out cheaper and cheaper foods,

so lazy mothers find it easier to drive through a 'drive through' than going home and pealing vegetables.

Spot on HWNN, but I do cringe seeing very young children/babies given cheese burgers, they are not a good introduction to solids.

What an insight! I don't recall anyone having brought up the relation to "Prohibition".

The adoption of Prohibition was instrumental in opening up new entrepreneurships: smuggling, boot-legging, and speak-easies. What a flop. I suspect more people were killed, and were killed more violently in those activities, than were killed violently by alcohol in the years before Prohibition.

Now imagine a new Prohibition, without the sanction of a constitutional amendment, but backed by the raw, extra-constitutional power of a power-wielding Executive or a Nanny-Congress. To paraphrase e.e. cummings, "There is some food I will eat!" Try and stop me, meddling politicians. I will welcome smugglers bringing me potatoes from Ireland and hamburgers from Argentina, and Tacos from Mexico and ice-cream from Italy, and whale blubber from Canada. I will gladly visit the Texas Roadhouse Eat-easy, the Underground MacDonalds, and Joe's Bar and Grill operated in his basement. Knowing that the revenuers aren't getting any taxes from all this, besides bringing down the cost of my greasy, trans-fat meal, will bring me added joy. I may just walk out of Joe's without wiping the grease off my face. Just to spite the hundred thousand new tax collectors who can't figure out what to tax next.

Will the do-good Food Prohibition result in gangland gun-battles and perhaps a St. Valentine's Day Massacre -- this time on Thanksgiving? I wouldn't be suprised. There are people who kill for food already. I wish our government would apply their keen, fat-phobic minds to feeding the millions who die of starvation each year, and let those whose diets do not meet Congress' standards of perfection, just go along eating whatever. The attention paid to transfats and hamburgers, by double-dipping Congressmen whose life-long retirement pensions are more than I can ever hope to make while working, is criminally disproportionate to the importance of that issue.

And there you have it folks! We are just too stupid to know how to feed our children properly, but we're damn good at teaching them how to strip and load their glocks.

We need a dictator; someone who will take charge of us, and tell us how to properly provide for our kids and live our lives. Oh, wait, we have that now.

Never mind.

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A great many people will think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. ~ William James ~

Eating is fighting.

Professionals

If you have a dictator, you have to be obedient, else you get beaten up, tortured, imprisoned etc. [/quote]



Those are NOT the only options.

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Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. Leo Tolstoy

Or kill yourself:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=Jn0yH6i-9ys

Who is "they"?

I'm not pissed. Just stating the facts as I see them, and as they are reported on all the news stations and press.

Tobacco--bad
Salt--bad
Fat--bad
Transfat--bad
Guns-bad
Religion-bad
Profit-bad
Oil-bad
America-bad

But Obama is in the process of fundamentally changing the United States. So before long, we'll all be drinking that free bubble-lub and and eating that rainbow stew.

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A great many people will think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. ~ William James ~

So far as my own experience goes, I’ve noted no limitations to people eating as many grease burgers as they choose, when they choose. It’s been pointed out above that there should be warning labels on some of the worst foods. I’d have no problem with that. It doesn’t stop you from eating to your heart’s discontent! But:

Specifically to food choices for school kids: I have no problem with their choices being limited by adults….they are kids after all. They don’t vote, they don’t drive, and if left to their own devices they’d drink soda pop all day long, and their version of the food pyramid would have such entries as twizzlers, gum, ice cream and potato chips. If anything nutritious passed their lips, it would be entirely accidental.

I’m reminded of the old Bill Cosby skit where dad is in charge of feeding the kids breakfast, and he reasons that since milk and flour and eggs are in chocolate cake, he can safely feed his brood cake for breakfast…..until his wife finds out, anyway. So, if a teacher notes that little Johnny's lunch bag always has chocolate cake and nothing else, I have no problem with that teacher taking action!

So, I don’t feel the noose tightening, I don’t fear the jackbooted thugs that aim to deny children easy access to Coca Cola for lunch at school.

My post was meant to make a larger point:

It’s been my observation that extreme conservatives and extreme liberals both want to limit freedom. They sometimes even overlap on some issues. The principle is the same as their approach to taxes and deficits. An extreme liberal will deficit spend on social programs. An arch conservative will spend ruinously on the defense budget. The end is the same: red ink.

It is hilarious in the extreme that conservatives seem perfectly comfortable with the legal snooping into computer records, library records, routine wire tapping of telephones, full body screens at the airport, having to take ones loafers off before boarding a plane. I know the knee-jerk response: “9-11, these invasions and intrusions keep us safe”. To which I reply that he who would surrender his freedoms for security will have neither!

But, apparently food restrictions on minors is where they draw the line! This is absolutely precious. You can’t make this stuff up!

On the liberal side, the most obvious example is the over-reach that has become politically correct speech in the USA.

Either way: The Patriot Act, the Thought Police, your freedoms are eroded.

Why no hue-and-cry against the roadblocks that cops set up randomly to screen for drunk drivers….what happened to probable cause, and illegal searches?



Anyway…I didn’t mean to go off on a rant….but, the bottom line is that there are so many more and juicier targets to complain about than adults having some control over what kids eat.

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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)

Not in my fridge, no day, no way!

1776: The English landscape painter John Constable was born. He became a very influential figure in art.
1789: Fletcher Christian led the mutiny on HMS Bounty against Captain Bligh.
Think: Okay, done it.

To get back to food:
I have heard that Australia is now the number one 'fattie' nation. Too many barbies, I'll bet.
What is the Australian government doing?

Will, that is such an amusing idea. I can just picture it. Send it to McD and see what they say.