As I predicted in a May 4, 2006 post called “Another Gift From the Clintons”, the food police are back, with a vengeance. Yesterday the press gleefully reported that the Kellogg cereal company has seen the light. They have agreed to reformulate or discontinue most of their products in order to avert a lawsuit threatened by the Center for Science and the Public Interest. They have also agreed to stop advertising anything the CSPI disapproves of to children.
Good nutrition is a good thing, I don’t want my kids to gorge themselves on Cocoa Puffs and Pop Tarts, and I don’t eat breakfast cereal at all. So what is there to be unhappy about?
First of all, breakfast choices should be made by parents, who should be teaching their children not to want everything they see on TV. But the CSPI doesn’t trust parents, and they abhor the forces of the free market, which ought to determine what Kellogg sells.
The CSPI doesn’t trust the legislative process either. This would be far less offensive if this were the result of Congressional action which the public has lobbied for. The old leftist slogan “power to the people” has been replaced by “you’ll hear from our lawyers, and defending yourself will be very, very expensive.” Increasingly in our society, the many are being bullied by the few, and the media calls it progress.
To get an idea how ridiculously tyranical these people are, consider the following quotes:
“Our basic ‘rule-of-thumb’ at the Center is ‘if it’s tasty it’s nasty,’” said Bonnie Liebman, nutrition director of CSPI. “If you insist on eating at a Chinese restaurant we recommend you skimp on the meat and skip the sauces. Try a plate of plain brown rice and a little tofu. It’s on the unpalatable side, but that’s good. You won’t be tempted to overeat.”
Limiting your diet to plain brown rice and tofu will tempt you never to eat again, and that’s their goal. Imagine if that’s all you could buy at the grocery store, because that’s all Bonnie Liebman wants you to have. Bonnie knows best, so wave that white flag, while you still have the energy to do so. Not content with plain brown rice and tofu, she goes on:
“We’re not singling out any ethnic food,” Liebman said. “They’re probably all bad. We just haven’t gotten around to all of them yet.”
Now you know how Bonnie keeps herself busy, touring Italian and Mexican restaurants and trying boxes of Hostess Twinkies to make sure they’re bad for us. I look forward to hearing from her again.
To be fair, I should acknowledge that I’m carrying around a bit of extra weight, and it might shorten my life somewhat. Feel free to write on my tombstone, “He chose to live briefly as a free man, instead of dying after a long, unpleasant period of slavery.”
My real concern, of course, is not about food. My real concern is that we are pretending to be a free nation, while we are in fact surrendering to so many restrictions which neither the public or its representatives have agreed to. For example, my wife and I were compelled, not asked, to join a homeowner’s association when we bought our house. For about $50 a month, the homeowner’s association provides us absolutely no services, no swimming pool, no clubhouse, no grounds maintenance, nothing whatsoever. What do we get from the association for $600 a year? We occasionally get threatening letters from lawyers about something on our property which we haven’t been able to take care of yet, or the fact that we’re falling behind on our protection payments. It used to be a free country, but we have replaced Jonathan Edwards with John Edwards.
