Actually forget reading anything I’ve posted just read kabbes post above
What would the effect of a ‘calorie tax’? Would it be feasible to discourage eating foods which lead to morbid obesity in the same way that smoking is discouraged? Or would people objetc too much for this to ever be a feasible option?
Well then what’s the problem with making it bigger and easier to understand?
I agree with the this product contains … % of your RDI for … intake. People don’t know how much they should be eating. Take a look at diet coke cans, less than 2 calories per serving Too bad a serving is only about 60% of the can. Now who thinks of that?
I have no idea how much fat I should be intaking in one day. It doesn’t say that on the packet. And it should.
Ah yes. Typical leftist mantra.
“We have a problem! The government must fix it!”
How about stepping up to the plate and taking responsibility for your own actions? Or, start your own private crusade to educate parents and children about nutrition? My children are not fat. They ride bikes, rollerblade, and sink when they try to float in a pool because they have so little body fat.
Why should I pay for the stupidity of others? It’s not my fault some dumbass parent thinks french fries are a major food group. So why should I have to pay an extra tax on the half-gallon of ice cream I may buy?
Government does not do anything efficiently. The parents need to turn off the TV, take away the Gameboys, and buy their kids a bicycle. We have enough government intrusion in our lives. I don’t need them telling me what I can eat.
This brings us back to the stupid tax.
“This bag of chips is 2 Euros. Now, before you buy it, can you explain the meaning of this text on the back?”
“uhhh… healthy?”
“3 Euros.”
2 birds with one stone.
I think the problem is (in part) that moderation is a harder concept to get across than abstinence.
It’s simple with cigarettes - if you smoke them, you’re doing yourself harm, so don’t smoke. It’s less simple with food groups which we actually need, and that we need in different degrees, depending on circumstances. Remember “muesli-belt malnutrition”? Parents, actively concerned for their children’s nutrition and health, wound up with underfed kids because they didn’t understand, sufficiently, that a child’s food needs are different from an adult’s.
I don’t know if all the factors involved here can be summed up in a simple warning label … what’s needed is general education, here. Of course, we can rely on the industry not to provide that - no industry is going to cut into its own short-term profit margins just because that would solve a social problem. (Corporations are amoral, folks. They’re after your money, and beyond that they just don’t care. Fact of life. Deal with it. You can’t rely on the industry to regulate itself in the public interest, only in its own interest. And usually only its own immediate interest - the long term can go hang.)
Because the problem isn’t that people can’t physically see it. It’s that they either don’t understand it or they DON’T CARE. Neither is the company’s fault, and increasing the font size does nothing to fix either problem.
US Packaging does have this information on it (it has % of daily intake based on 1800/2500 calorie diet). Hasn’t really stopped our problem though.
I think the best idea I’ve heard here is the subsidies for fresh, healthy foods. If we really want to change this trend, it needs to be cheaper and easier to feed your kid a wholesome meal than it is to push a plate of Mac’n’Cheese at him.
You are paying for it. Indirectly anyway. Everyone in the UK are paying for it much more directly because of the NHS which is not going away any time soon as people want it to remain.
Food labels are a bit confusing. My pet peeve. You’ll buy a little baggie of potato chips. Baggies says “100g of blood slathering poison per serving”. Fine.
However, the little wee baggie is not “a serving”, no, a serving is 250 mL (8 oz) of chips.
Okay, so I have this baggie of potato chips… How many servings is the baggie?
Why doesn’t the little fit-in-a-lunchox-sized baggie tell you the total fat of the whole baggie (since that seems to be the way the packaging is designed – it’s not like those little baggies are re-sealable. They are essentially “one snack.”)
Sometimes they are good to you and the bag will also have “10 chips is one serving.” Other times it’s not so easy. Nutrition info listed by volume, packaging listed by weight (is a serving one cup of pristine chips or more densely packed mashed up chips?) etc.
Although the information is there, it’s not always easy to understand at a glance. Sometimes it is, but sometimes not. Luck of the draw.
Other pet peeve: “Credentials” in advertising.
E.g./ The Fancy-Sounding-Name-That-Means-Nothing Board of Specialists in Nothing-In-Particular says the Straight Dope has 50% less fat than a pound of lard!
Just musing:
The other day, I was looking for general nutrition info (needed a cite for a discussion) and I was amazed that while looking for dietary information, I found tons and tons of Atkins-related info and “Lose weight in time for summer!” diet crap, but finding genuine, honest to Og, good nutrition info, took longer than I expected… sigh Living in a world of “infotainment” and “aditorials”.
[QUOTE=yojimbo]
[QUOTE=Liberal]
What evidence?
Isn’t the point of government in a libertarian society to save the citizen from predatory/misleading corporations?
Also, I believe all the information is available for a concerned individual to eat a healthy controlled diet if they are willing to put some effort in.
However when a culture is comprised mostly of people who are not concerned, or not willing to put in the effort, and this chain of events is causing a significant burden to everyone (those concerned and those unconcerned alike) Then who the hell other than the government’s job is it to take action?
I vote for assigning the blame in a two-pronged approach:
[ol]
[li]Parents who don’t regulate their children’s diets are negligent. Frankly, I’d like to see criminal charges brought against the parents of that child (unless it had some bizarre medical condition that caused the weight gain).[/li][li]Companies that market unhealthy foods to children are beyond negligent: The advertising industry is very good at what they do. Children do not have the mental facilities to analytically evaluate advertising claims and make informed decisions. Coercing children to do unhealthy things so your company can make money is wrong.[/li][/ol]
Actually, Pacific Islanders have the highest rate of obesity in the world:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/1681297.stm
World Health Organization information on obesity:
http://www.who.int/dietphysicalactivity/publications/facts/obesity/en/
The article above states that over 1 billion people worldwide are overweight. The lowest rates are found in China (below 5% of population), the highest (over 75%) in Samoa.
Just a sidenote here…
One thing people fail to mention is that fast food, fatty food, and stuff that’s just downright BAD FOR YOU is extremely cheap. (My local grocery store is advertising, this week, 5 frozen pizzas (family size) for $10! A package of 3 chicken breasts, though, is about $6 right now…)
With families on a budget, it’s often easier to buy the crappy fatty foods and make ends meet. I was noticing this last week when doing my groceries and trying to cut down on some of the crap foods we used to bring into the house 
To buy a fat free, or a “less fat” version of anything, you’ll be shelling out more dough.
If you’re poor, you may not have that option.
And has anyone noticed the price of veggies and fruit? Holy crap, I used to leave in Eastern Canada, where stuff was pricy but NOTHING like the midwest - yikes! As lno teases me when I buy my vegetables, for the price of my broccoli, he can buy two frozen personal-sized pot pies! (75% of daily fat intake, 600+ calories…)
Oy.
Sad for the kidlets… As long as fast and fat food is convenient AND cheap, I’m afraid some people will see it as something they can feed the kids rather than going hungry…
I only buy that fat food is cheaper line halfway. A kid might be unhealthy eating pizzas and pot pies, but if they eat single-servings they won’t balloon up to the point that they choke to death. It’s also about portion control.
I also think it’s possible to eat healthy and eat on a budget. Eliminating pop, candy, and chips from the diet is a good way to suddenly discover you have more money for shopping than you thought.
The problem is that the human species is used to an environment where food is a limited resource. In western societies this is increasingly not the case. Experience and evidence suggests that this results in many people who, for one reason or another and stupidity being one of them, cannot and do not limit their intake.
We are all a product of our environment, and if our environment is such that it is damaging to us, even if the fault lies with our own weaknesses, then we need to alter that environment.
There is only one social element that can enforce a change in a “surplus-fat” environment, and that’s government. Again, experience and evidence has shown that other methods of control have failed. The food industry won’t change by itself, and nor will people.
Great! Lovely! All for it! But it doesn’t work! Experience and evidence shows that given access to more food people will shove it in their face, and to hell with ‘responsibility’. I can live with that, but can society?
Like it or not, you are not an island. You are part of your society which you depend on for much of your lifestyle. You don’t get to opt out of the minuses while enjoying the pluses.
Um…it tells you right on the label. See the part that says Servings per Container? That’s the number of servings in the baggie.
Because it’s simple math? And if the person buying the food isn’t smart enough to do simple math, they probably aren’t checking the label anyway.
No, the information is always there and it’s always easy to understand if you’ve got a halfway functioning brain and a sixth grade education. (My apologies if you’re not in the US, I can’t remember what UK labels look like).
What kind of nutrition information were you looking for? I’ve never had a problem finding nutrition information online.
Although the Atkins plague is beginning to go over the top in its ridiculousness. Or maybe it went over the top with the KFC ad.
For some people, a little education on proper nutrition for babies would help. But even with that information, some parents cling to old ideas of what’s best for baby, or put such an emphasis on keeping the kid quiet and sleeping through the night that they end up doing more harm than good.
A case in point: my niece Bonnie.
Now the rule of thumb is that a baby doubles their weight in the first six months and triples in a year. My kids pretty much kept to that pattern, though my skinny little daughter (6 lbs. at birth) was still 18 lbs. at 18 months. My 9lb. chubby little boy stayed right on pattern, and both kids now are normal weight with no weight problems.
But Bonnie, who was about 8 lbs at birth, tripled her weight in the first three months…I was shocked when I received a picture of her at 23 lbs at three months. Rolls of fat, but my sister-in-law was thrilled because she (and her mother) believed that fat babies were healthy babies, and she had started her on formula and cereal right from the start so she would sleep through the night sooner. She whipped through fruits and veggies and was started on meat before 6 months of age. My SIL was not big on fast food, and cooked from scratch most of the time, but the child was encouraged to eat everything on her plate and cakes and cookies were abundant. When we visited them a few years later, it was no surprise that both of her children were very large. Lick the butter off the toast and then re-butter…all the time. Eat whipped topping straight from the tub…never discouraged. Eat a snack less than an hour after dinner…perfectly fine. By then it was too late. Their eating patterns were established, and no one ever told them no.
My kids were breastfed, and we didn’t start even cereal until the doctor-recommended time which I think was either 4 or 6 months. I wasn’t adding cereal to their bottles, since they didn’t get bottles. I took the sleep-deprivation in stride, because the baby wasn’t expected to sleep through the night until later. It was always what’s best for the baby, not what would be nice for me. They were fed when they were hungry, and never just to keep them quiet. I introduced fruits and veggies at the proper intervals, and meat was held back until the recommended time. Solid foods came at that developmental stage. My kids were not allowed to just help themselves to food whenever they felt like it when they were toddlers, and if they didn’t finish what was on their plate, that was fine. I didn’t make dessert every night with dinner. The kids drank whole milk when they were little because that was best for them, and they made the transistion to 1% with no complaints when they got older. When they were little, we spent most of our day outside playing on the playground or running around the yard with the neighborhood kids.
So now I have two lean adult children (I’m the overweight one) and my niece and nephew are still overweight, even allowing for their different body types. I’m sure if I asked her, my SIL would say she did nothing wrong. They used to make fun of my kids for being slender!
So I guess the point of this long post is that it can be very hard to convince parents that what they do in the very early days can be harmful if the people around them place a lot of emphasis on children sleeping through the night, being good eaters and being kept quiet by filling their mouths. And not everyone is lucky enough to live somewhere where they can get the kids outside to play for hours on end when they are little. Many families who live in bad neighborhoods never take their kids outside, and many latchkey kids are confined to their houses after school with nothing to do but watch TV and eat. It’s not necessarily the junk food, but the pattern of eating that matters.
Certainly. If a company makes a fraudulent claim, then screw it to the wall. But subsidizing stupidity is, well, stupid.