Posted on 06/21/2011 12:56:23 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Tony the Tiger, some NASCAR drivers and cookie-selling Girl Scouts will be out of a job unless grocery manufacturers agree to reinvent a vast array of their products to satisfy the Obama administration’s food police.
Either retool the recipes to contain certain levels of sugar, sodium and fats, or no more advertising and marketing to tots and teenagers, say several federal regulatory agencies.
The same goes for restaurants.
It’s not just the usual suspected foods that are being targeted, such a thin mint cookies sold by scouts or M&Ms and Snickers, which sponsor cars in the Sprint Cup, but pretty much everything on a restaurant menu.
Although the intent of the guidelines is to combat childhood obesity, foods that are low in calories, fat, and some considered healthy foods, are also targets, including hot breakfast cereals such as oatmeal, pretzels, popcorn, nuts, yogurt, wheat bread, bagels, diet drinks, fruit juice, tea, bottled water, milk and sherbet.
Food industries are in an uproar over the proposal written by the Federal Trade Commission, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“The most disturbing aspect of this interagency working group is, after it imposes multibillions of dollars in restrictions on the food industry, there is no evidence of any impact on the scourge of childhood obesity,” said Dan Jaffe, executive vice president of the Association of National Advertisers.
The “Interagency Working Group on Food Marketed to Children, Preliminary Proposed Nutrition Principles to Guide Industry Self-Regulation Efforts” says it is voluntary, but industry officials say the intent is clear: Do it, or else.
“When regulators strongly suggest a course of action, it’s treated as a rule, not a suggestion,” said Scott Faber, vice president of federal affairs for the Grocery Manufacturers Association. “Industry tends to heed these suggestions from our regulators, and this administration has made it clear they are willing to regulate if we don’t implement their proposal.”
It’s not just the food industry that will be impacted. Hundreds of television shows that depend on the advertising revenue, such as the Nickelodeon Channel, ESPN, and programs including "American Idol" will be affected, critics of the proposal say—at a cost of $5.8 trillion in marketing expenditures that support up to 20 million American jobs.
If the food is not reformulated, no more ads or promotions on TV, radio, in print, on websites, as well as other digital advertising such as e-mail and text messaging, packaging, and point-of-purchase displays and other in-store marketing tools; product placement in movies, videos, video games, contests, sweepstakes, character licensing and toy branding; sponsorship of events including sport teams and individual athletes; and, philanthropic activity tied to branding opportunities.
That includes softball teams that are sponsored by food companies and school reading programs sponsored by restaurants.
“The Interagency working group recommends that the food industry, through voluntary self-regulatory efforts, make significant improvements in the nutritional quality of foods marketed to children and adolescents ages 2 to 17 years,” the proposal says.
“By the year 2016, all food products within the categories most heavily marketed directly to children should meet two basic nutrition principles. Such foods should be formulated to … make a meaningful contribution to a healthful diet and minimize the content of nutrients that could have a negative impact on health and weight.”
The foods most heavily marketed directly to children and adolescents fall into 10 categories: “breakfast cereals, snack foods, candy, dairy products, baked goods, carbonated beverages, fruit juice and non-carbonated beverages, prepared foods and meals, frozen and chilled desserts, and restaurant foods.”
Beth Johnson, a dietician for Food Directions in Maryland, said many of the foods targeted in this proposal are the same foods approved by the federal government for the WIC nutrition program for women, infants and children.
“This doesn’t make any sense whatsoever,” Johnson said. “It’s not going to do anything to help with obesity. These are decisions I want to make for my kids. These should not be government decisions.”
Stinking slug-brained commies.
If they want a simple target, they should consider high fructose corn syrup. The excessive use of this sweetner seems to coincide rather directly with the obesity increase.
It would be dietetically superior to go back from HFCS to plain old sugar. For whatever reason, HFCS is not as satisfying as sucrose even though its flavor is very similar, so there is a tendency to want more of it. But soft drink makers switching to sugar might find their sales suffering, not because their product tastes any worse, but because people would be satisfied with less of it at a time.
And as far as the article, the Obamas are scum sucking pigs. There are alternatives out there if you want less sugar. I'm not a big fan of soft drinks so we don't buy them regularly. When there's a choice, I'll buy cereal that has less sugar. I'm capable of doing this on my own. I don't need their arm twisting and costly disruption of the food industry. This is another thing that will make food prices soar. They won't be happy until we are eating grass and bark. And those pinko hypocrites will still be living high on the hog.
My guess too, although all sugar is likely a culprit, not just HFCS. HFCS makes sugar a lot cheaper though (as it´s government-sponsored). Gotta love that irony, but it´s the federal government, so what do you expect?
Ironically though, instead of looking at sugar, the government has been waging a jihad against fat since the early 80-ies, egged on by vegetarian-ish busybodies. In 1980, the US was a very, very thin country compared to today.
My take: The government should stay the hell away from my dinner plate, and stop subsidizing the sugar industry with billions of tax dollars.
Related: “Is sugar toxic?”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sugar-t.html
As Obama is hosing down a chili dog.
Indeed. What I, or my children eat is, get this: None of the federal government´s business.
Related: “My Thanks To The Dietary Guidelines Committee”
http://www.fathead-movie.com/index.php/2011/02/03/my-thanks-to-the-dietary-guidelines-committee/
Regulating what children eat... Commerce Clause? General Welfare Clause? Exactly how do they even justify the ability to propose the mere idea?
Yes and they stick it in everything.
I never ate that crap and it’s not good for kids. But, where does the government get off telling anyone who to formulize their product which is already patented?
It’s true, the product is patented.
When I worked for McDonalds we could not make changes to only one item, the Big Mac. It’s patented right down to how the thing is stacked.
Don’t want the sauce? Well that’s not a Big Mac and we can’t omit it.
Don’t want cheese? Can’t omit it.
Don’t want three pickle slices on each layer? You are not ordering a Big Mac.
I can’t sugary anything and Big Mac’s but who am I to tell the business what they can sell in the hopes of reaching some ridiculous utopia?
Fat people are fat for exactly two reasons:
Bad Food Choices.
Lack of exercise.
If anyone thinks otherwise they are just kidding themselves and that is their right.
But life sometimes comes with pleasure such as Leonidas Chocolates, my favorite being Manon Blanc. I love the Astrid Truffle by Neuhaus. In fact, anything they make is scrumptious.
For fun and intense flavors I love the Richart Truffles.
No one has the right to deny another pleasure and no one has the right to tell another how to live.
One of my pet peeves is that lying commercial about all sugars being the same. They are NOT, that’s why the body metabolizes the differently.
HFCS has an extra molecule that makes it harder for the body to break down. The longer it stays in the blood the more it affects blood sugar.
I would also like to see products list the trans fats by volume instead of per portion. They skirt the truth by making the portion size so small that they can claim zero trans fats, which misleads people into thinking a product has no trans fats when it really does. If people could see that a product claiming no trans fats per serving actually had 10 grams of trams fats per volume, they realize the product was not trans fat free after all.
People can’t make informed choices when deceptive advertising is allowed. jmo
So has McDonald’s ever caught anyone else making pseudo Big Macs? What would it take to be different, using four or two pickles instead of three on each layer?
A lot of people that had soft drinks prior to HFCS say the real sugar soft drinks had a much better taste.
Enzymes in normal saliva help the body convert ingested sucrose into a glucose-fructose mixture which would be virtually identical to the sugar content of HFCS, which is then metabolized by normal bodily processes. But the process from taste buds to appearance of sugars in the blood stream would be slower. And ironically, more satisfying. Getting a sugar buzz too quickly after tasting the sugar is perceived as less satisfying, not more.
Yes, it’s in the We Are Your Overlords clause. Right after the You Don’t Know Nuthin’ clause.
I just know what the dietician/nutritionist told me.
The 80’s is about the time that HFCS was being shoved at us.
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