Free Republic

Piers Morgan and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s want to be dictators and slave masters. Regulating a person’s diet is the regulation of a person’s life. Here was Morgan’s response to a guest who disagreed with him on sugary drink control:“I think people need [these types of laws] occasionally, particularly on issues like smoking, drinking, guzzling sodas too big for them, you know, eating 16 Big Macs a day, whatever it may be, the reality is we all need a bit of nannying about that. That’s why so many people are on diets. That’s a form of nanny state.”When governments...

Diners will have to wait a little longer to find calorie counts on most restaurant chain menus, in supermarkets and on vending machines. Writing a new menu labeling law "has gotten extremely thorny," says the head of the Food and Drug Administration, as the agency tries to figure out who should be covered by it. The 2010 health care law charged the FDA with requiring restaurants and other establishments that serve food to put calorie counts on menus and in vending machines.

<p>A state judge on Monday stopped Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration from banning the sale of large sugary drinks at New York City restaurants and other venues, a major defeat for a mayor who has made public-health initiatives a cornerstone of his tenure.</p>

New procedures give restaurant inspectors cups that can hold 17 fluid ounces and they'll be instructed to issue a violation only when a cup is found to 'clearly exceed' 16 ounces. There will be no SWAT teams policing Mayor Bloomberg’s controversial new ban on large sodas and other sugary drinks starting Tuesday, but city inspectors will be armed — with 17-ounce cups. The Health Department plans to use regular restaurant inspections to make sure eateries are not selling sugary beverages in servings larger than 16 ounces. But the inspectors will have specially ordered cups to help them enforce the new...

The federal government is tapping experts for its “B-24 Project.” It may sound like a new jet fighter, but in this case, “B-24” pertains to nutrition advice for infants and toddlers up to 24 months old. The project will produce “unified federal dietary guidance for children from birth to 24 months based on the best available science,” said Kevin Concannon, the Agriculture Department’s Under Secretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services. Concannon noted that current federal dietary recommendations are designed for people two years and older, and therefore the B-24 project “will fill an important gap.” …

First Lady Michelle Obama "But in the end, we also know that it's not enough to simply change the way our children eat — we have to change our own habits and behaviors as well. And this is final point I want to make today. We as parents are our children's first and best role models and this is particularly true when it comes to their health. . .

If students want to pass John Banzhaf’s law class, they’ll have to fight for increased government regulation in the food and beverages industry.Banzhaf, a law professor at George Washington University, will require his students to lobby state and local governments to ban sugary beverages, according to a press release. The release was put out by Banzhaf himself, who summarized the objective as “Undergrads Required to Lobby for Obama Policy.”“Some 200 undergrads will be asked to contact legislators in their home cities, counties, or states asking them to adopt legislation similar to that already adopted in New York City … banning...

<p>Mayor Bloomberg - who has already cracked down on smoking, trans fats, salt and super-sized drinks - is embarking on a new crusade: preventing New Yorkers from going deaf.</p> <p>Hizzoner's health officials are planning a social-media campaign to warn young people about the risk of losing their hearing from listening to music at high volume on personal MP3 players, The Post has learned.</p>

Millions of Californians would not be able to smoke tobacco inside their own homes under new legislation that would raise the bar nationwide for fighting secondhand smoke. No state ever has ventured into personal bedrooms and living rooms with its smoking restrictions, but California is going even further than that by targeting owner-occupied residences as well as rental units. Specifically, the measure would prohibit lighting up a cigarette, cigar or pipe in condominiums, duplexes and apartment units. The push would extend a lengthy list of places where smoking already is barred, including restaurants, workplaces, playgrounds, public buildings and cars containing...

Newly proposed federal regulations aimed at the snack foods and drinks served in the nation's schools could come with a hefty price tag. The American Action Forum estimates the regulations, which include caps on serving sizes and calorie counts, will cost schools $127 million and require more than 926,000 hours of paperwork. Sam Batkins, director of regulatory policy at the institute, says the proposals amount to yet another unfunded federal mandate for state and local governments, "at a time when many of their budgets are still struggling." The Food and Nutrition Service regulations would be administered by the U.S. Department...

<p>Only you're probably not going to like his advice for losing weight -- just eat less.</p> <p>"If you eat less than 2,000 calories you'll lose weight," the mayor said on his weekly WOR radio show today. "If you eat more than 2,000 calories, you'll gain weight. Now some things metabolize more quickly than others. And everyone says I should go on this kind of diet or that kind of diet. Don't eat and you'll lose weight."</p>

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Wednesday that the United States’ coal industry’s days are numbered. “Even though the coal industry doesn’t totally know it yet or is ready to admit it, its day is done. … Here in the U.S., I’m happy to say, the king is dead. Coal is a dead man walking,” Bloomberg said at the Advanced Research Projects Agency — Energy (ARPA-E) Energy Innovation Summit near Washington, D.C. Bloomberg has been a vocal advocate for killing coal-fired power. He said health problems from pollution and climate change-exacerbated events like Hurricane Sandy have fomented growing recognition...

SHREVEPORT, La. (CBS Houston) — Louisiana’s State Health Department forced a homeless shelter to destroy $8,000 worth of deer meat because it was donated from a hunter organization. KTBS-TV reports that the Shreveport-Bossier Rescue Mission lost 1,600 pounds of venison because the state’s Health Department doesn’t recognize Hunters for the Hungry, an organization that allows hunters to donate any extra game to charity. “We didn’t find anything wrong with it,” Rev. Henry Martin told KTBS. “It was processed correctly, it was packaged correctly.” The trouble began last month after the Department of Health and Hospitals received a complaint that deer...

Hunger is a force to be reckoned with; it is a motion that cannot be stopped unless it is quenched. But once hunger is sated, it comes again, often more urgently than before. This applies to hunger, in the typical sense, but also the hunger for life, money, faith and power. Once a taste is in your mouth, more is needed to fulfill you the following round. Mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, has such a hunger. He has a complex need for power that doesn’t ever seem to be sated. This power hunger has reared it’s ugly head...

Oregon gun owners cheered by the demise of Sen. Ginny Burdick's proposals to ban large magazines and scary-looking semiautomatic weapons should leave the Champagne in the fridge for the time being. The Legislature's gun-control advocates are still hard at work, and the direction in which they're heading would create problems for law-abiding citizens over the long term and, perhaps, do nothing to enhance public safety. We're leery of slippery-slope arguments, but two concepts supported by Burdick and Sen. Floyd Prozanski, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, could grease the transformation of concealed-handgun policy into something resembling smoking policies around the...

It becomes a difficult task for those in power to resist the lure of acquiring even more power. The more they have, the more they want. No such example exists greater than that of New York City mayor-king Michael Bloomberg. This is the man who brought into existence the absurd and absurdly named National Salt Reduction Initiative, an incentive-based program designed to reduce the amount of salt in restaurant and prepackaged food. This is the man who, last year, banned the sale of sugary drinks, like sodas, in more than 16-oz containers. Why? Because what’s good for Bloomberg is what’s...

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has fought against smoking, big sugary drinks and salty food during his tenure, is setting his sights on a new foe: Styrofoam. Bloomberg plans to use part of his Thursday State of the City address to push for a ban on Styrofoam food packaging. He also will call for initiatives that would increase the number of parking spaces for electric cars and begin recycling more plastics and food waste "One product that is virtually impossible to recycle and never bio-degrades is Styrofoam ... something that we know is environmentally destructive and that may...

(CNSNews.com) - Under the broad banner of "health," the federal government not only is telling Americans what to eat, it's also telling us to make our homes safer.This week, the Obama administration released a "bold new vision for addressing the nation's health and economic burdens caused by preventable hazards associated with the home."The project has a name: "Advancing Healthy Housing: A Strategy for Action.""People in the United States spend about 70% of their time in a home," the announcement said. "Currently, millions of U.S. homes have moderate to severe physical housing problems, including dilapidated structure; roofing problems; heating, plumbing, and...

If the Food and Drug Administration gets its way, your trip to the grocery store could get a tad pricier. Supermarket owners argue a pending federal food-labeling rule that stems from the new health care law would overburden thousands of grocers and convenience store owners -- to the tune of $1 billion in the first year alone. (Snip) The rule stems from an ObamaCare mandate that restaurants provide nutrition information on menus. Most in the restaurant industry were supportive of the idea, but when the FDA decided to extend the provision to also affect thousands of supermarkets

The Obama administration proposed regulations Friday that would prohibit U.S. schools from selling unhealthy snacks. The 160-page regulation from the Department of Agriculture (USDA) would enact nutrition standards for "competitive" foods not included in the official school meal. In effect, the proposed rules would replace traditional potato chips with baked versions, candy with granola, and regular soda with diet — but only for high schoolers.