Food Companies Lobby To Block Warning Labels

[seedcorn]

The whole thing smells - yet again - of self righteous, moralistic busybodies compelled to control you and I "for our own good."
I'm wondering how many of the labeleers stand to profit in some way by the labels themselves? Anytime someone wants to protect me from myself, I get suspicious.

Personally, I'll consider the labels over a cold beer, and a nice cigar. I'll get back to you if I want to comply.

Wait you aren't going to save me from myself? How else would I know eating pounds of grease & sugars is bad for me? Someone has to label it, I can't look at the list of ingredients, then I'd have to use my public education to read/discern.

 

[vfem]

Don't forget... this is happening in Europe and England!

They look at things and label things differently to start with. Transfats are still ok there! ... and they are STILL generally more healthy then we are.


AND... they have government run healthcare, so it costs the tax payers and the state. You can't look at everything as an American

 

[Hattie the Hen]

Don't forget... this is happening in Europe and England!

They look at things and label things differently to start with. Transfats are still ok there! ... and they are STILL generally more healthy then we are.


AND... they have government run healthcare, so it costs the tax payers and the state. You can't look at everything as an American

Good for you vfem!!.............

People over here in Europe pay a lot more attention to labels than they seem to in the US. After all it is just information; they are not enforcing any actions other than printing this info. It is very interesting that certain companies are against this new legislation; invariably they are the same ones that sell huge quantities of the more questionable products. I have noticed that the more people are standing around the aisles in the supermarkets reading the labels on the products & firmly putting some of them back. I order a lot of my groceries online & have them delivered (old age & infirmity has caught up with me now) & I am very grateful that most (not all) supermarkets give all the important info on each product if you press an extra button. Those supermarkets who don't are amongst those companies who are objecting loudest & have the largest share of the market........Hmmmmm! SURPRISE, SURPRISE......!! They benefit from a large market of largely harassed, overworked, underpaid, badly educated & uninterested customers who are only interested in getting food ready to serve in large quantities at the lowest possible price...........!!!! I know this is true-- I see them with trolleys stacked high with trash in big cartons, along with huge packs of giant 3 litre bottles of pop & not a fresh vegetable or fruit in sight. They want to sell to a largely ignorant, harassed & undiscerning group of people; it is way more profitable.......!!

I realise that my rant will upset certain members of this forum but I really can't help myself today..... I had my 70th birthday yesterday & I was remembering my past & thinking about how things have changed (not everything is better (or worse) now by any means. I resolved to tell it as I saw it from now on...................You have been warned my friends.........!!


Hattie *** [now officially OLD....!! ]

 

[davaroo]

Again you gotta wonder who profits from applying the labels. The thing about a scalpel is it will cut both ways. As we rush to surgically eliminate the "bad things" from our lives - we rarely stop to ask the motives.

Good health? Certainly health food companies have a stake in seeing food warning labels in use. It's a great way to motivate buyers, I would think. Anyone think Kashi is against the labels?
What about the government? Regulators and watchdogs ensure their jobs if they get them in use. I wonder how much it costs the taxpayers to keep the Right Food Commissars in business.

There is equal gain to be had in whistle blowing as there is in vice.

Not all people need to be saved from themselves, as the control-minded folks believe. Some just prefer to make their own decisions and not have them forced upon us by moderate regulationists.
This is the core of my discontent, in the end - I don't need some government agency or moralist to eliminate or control things on my behalf. Some things that are bad for me I actually like (the aforementioned cold beer, for example.)

At times like this I recall Jim Fixx. For you yong folks who may have never heard of him, Mr. Fixx was a health celebrity during the 70's and 80's. He ate only healthy food and his claim to fame was running marathon's - and he cashed in.

Book deals, programs, promotions... all these and more were his, thanks to his gospel of healthy living. He made a ton of money as a "Guru of Goodness," and was billed as "The World's Healtiest Man." Women loved him, men envied him.

Then one day, he up and died of a heart attack. Here was the healthiest man on the planet - and he croaked from absolutely nothing. Just keeled over for no apparent reason. Living healthy and natural did nothing special for him, in the end. Go figure.


See, it isn't the labeling that gets me or the alarmist call behind them. Rather, it is our willingness to be labeled and legislated into submission that grates on my nerves. Someone proclaims something as "bad," and we buy in, howling aloud to have it controlled. "They need to pass a law..." becomes our motto.

Allow me my own warning, if I may: THAT will be our undoing, my friends - it wont be cheesy puffs.



Thoreau, where are you when we need you!?

 

[vfem]

You say who largely profits... but I say who largely benefits?

If honestly they can track people's healthy related to their diets... what if they were to impliment this temporarily? Give 5 years to see any health related studies proving, health has improved, and deaths were down by an astonishing percent?

I'm just saying...

Not to mention, I wonder what percent of the unhealthy eaters can't read?

Hattie, do they have the nutrition charts on their food over there? Things like percent of fat, how many calories per serving, what good stuff is in there?

 

[wifezilla]

The only problem with the warning labels is the same idiots who cause a lot of the health problems we see today get to design the label....like the morons who have been saying that natural saturated fats cause heart disease.

The "study" that "proved" that was total bunk, yet 30 years later and many more studies later showing that saturated fat doesn't cause heart disease, they are still bashing saturated fat.

The less saturated fat we eat as a population the fatter and sicker we get.

As for Jim Fixx...my brother was a big fan of his. But exercise is not the panacea we have been lead to believe. If you exercise your brains out and still eat a diet high in plant oils, carbohydrates (whole grain or otherwise), high in fructose and low in saturated fat, your arteries will still clog up...like Jim Fixx.

 

[seedcorn]

they can track people's healthy

Who's the "they"? "They" will charge us to do studies that are of no value because one researcher will say one thing and two others will point out errors in his study. Then idiots will scream for the Government to pass regs/laws. People will have to be paid to oversee the regs/laws. Lawyers will be paid to sue both sides. Meanwhile nothing is getting accomplished as people will eat what they want to, PERIOD.

Happy b'day Hattie. Hope your "tell it like I see it" is different than my MIL's.....

 

[hoodat]

I've never paid that much attention to what I eat. I just listen to my body and feed it what it says it wants. More than once I have sat down to a meal of a big slab steak and nothing else. Other times I get the "hongries" for veggies so that's what I eat. Thank goodness I don't find food like MacDonalds very attractive. When I eat there it's more a matter of convenience when I don't have time or don't feel like cooking.
I'm 78 years old (I usually round it off to 80 when people ask) and am still in good enough health to spade a garden by hand or take the kayak out for a paddle.

 

[davaroo]

I guess my problem, if it is one, is this: Fear. Everything frightens and worries us now - even our food. One of the few things in life that we can take individual pleasrue in, and we gotta muck it up with worry and doubt. So much so, it seems, that we cant accept what good we DO encounter.

For example, I did a little looking at life expectancies throughout history. The following lifespans emerged, based on historical periods:

Upper Paleolithic 33
Neolithic 20
Bronze Age and Iron Age 35+
Classical Greece 28
Classical Rome 28
Pre-Columbian North America 25-30
Medieval Islamic Caliphate 35+
Medieval Britain 30
Early Modern Britain 40+
Early 20th Century 30-45
Current world average 67.2

The striking thing here is that we didnt achieve significant increases in lifespan until modern times. Admittedly, historic man had problems we dont suffer from, but take a look at the current world average. It's nearly doubled in only the short span of 100 years. For eons, we could hardly expect to go 40 and in a century - BAM!! - it's doubled.

In the UK and the US, we currently enjoy an average lifespan of around 80+ years!

This increase didnt just happen by chance. It was the result of a concerted effort to increase both the quality and dignity of human life. The means to do this? Science, primarily, no small part of which is associated with agriculture and food production. Medicine and health care knowledge, played a part, too, as did worldwide economic changes.
It weren't Nature, wheat bread or Birkenstock sandals that did it, dear reaader. It was human ingenuity.

Okay, now we are living longer, better lives. So, why do we have to sully that with the, But Statement." You know, the one where we say,

Yeah, we live longer than ever before, but

...and then we count off the litany of food related horrors currently making the news, the ones that are surely knocking us off.

Admittedly, too much of anything is bad. That's a given.
But what is it about our modern psyche that gives us such wonders of accomplishment, yet also causes us to revile and feel guilty for them at the same time?

Im thinking that maybe, just maybe, we should embrace cheese-doodles as our friends, instead of as the enemy.

 

[seedcorn]

Well said, great history recall.

Im thinking that maybe, just maybe, we should embrace cheese-doodles as our friends, instead of as the enemy.

Can I embrace a hot fudge sunday instead?