Recipe for Control

indyfromaz|

I took up cooking, one, because I found I really enjoy it, but also because it’s better for me to control my own food rather than trust it to a heart attack in a box (have you read the fat & sodium contents on some of those pre-prepared meals!).
But the difference between my approach and the First Lady’s Food Police cudgel approach is I’m not preaching and I’m not trying to control other people.
She is. Just like her husband.
I often wonder who’s the more elitist, her or her husband.
“Even if we give parents all the information they need and improve school meals and build brand new supermarkets on every corner, none of that matters if when families step into a restaurant, they can’t make a healthy choice,” Mrs. Obama told them.
So we have to control you at every turn so you won’t be tempted!
So, instead of speaking to parents about moderation, the first lady wants to micromanage menus, making french fries a special order item at fast-food outlets and apples the default side order of choice for kids. Butter and cream must be cut, and whole wheat pasta must replace white.
Harmless advocacy? Perhaps. But Mrs. Obama’s speeches at political rallies and conventions suggests it’s probably more. The gears of government seem to be turning to her cause.
The Department of Health and Human Services on Tuesday announced a $31 million program to combat obesity (and smoking) in eight states. It comes with a plan to go coercive: “Use price to discourage consumption of tobacco and to benefit consumption of healthy food/drinks,” the press release reads. As in price controls?
The coincidences pile up as community organizers tied quite closely to the Obama campaign, including the National Council of La Raza and the NAACP, joined the cause. To aid the effort, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation chipped in a $2 million grant.
Fascinating associates don’t you think? La Raza, a racist hispanic group and the NAACP who calls Tea Partiers racists. Fascinating…
Then there’s the anti-McDonald’s TV ad campaign just launched by the Physicians Committee for Responsibility, another pressure group with a vegetarian and animal-rights agenda. In true Alinsky style, they’ve picked a target, personalized it and laid all the problems of obesity on one fast-food operator.
The advert shows a woman weeping over the body of a man in a morgue, with the man still holding a half-eaten hamburger. Toward the end of the advert, the McDonald’s logo appears along with the tag-line “I was lovin’ it”. The commercial then urges watchers to ““High cholesterol, high blood pressure, heart attacks. Tonight, make it vegetarian”.
Then you get Michael Moore who hadn’t been getting any attention lately spouting off that McDonald’s has killed more people than terrorists have.
What’s galling about all this is that Mrs. Obama’s anti-obesity campaign — like the policies pushed by her husband — presumes government has all the answers. In reality, it doesn’t.
Bu they think it does, as long as they are in control of it, that is. The Insufferably Superior Left strikes again!
Diets are a personal choice with different impacts on different people. Some children stay fit eating all the fast food they like; others can’t handle a donut. Some effective low-carbohydrate diets don’t restrict cream and butter at all, but minimize fruit. Go figure.
Micromanaging restaurant menus will only drive consumers to the junk food section at the grocery to get the goodies they crave. It won’t end childhood obesity, the causes of which are far more complex and numerous than trips to the Golden Arches.
But then you just drive the junk food purveyors out of business then and TA DA!   Instant Health! And you have Big Brother and Big Mommy to thank for it!
Like any solution imposed by big government, Mrs. Obama’s will harm business, limit choice and politicize the personal — a recipe for failure. (IBD)
You have to assume the Insufferably Superior Left actually cares. I know I don’t.
After all, her husband is frequent photographed (to look less like the elite he is) eating very unhealthy foods and he admits to being…a SMOKER!
Don’t do as I do, do as I say!
But Michelle can’t clean up her husband, oh no, she has to crusade against evil fat and salt to save you all from yourselves!
The Empress has no clothes.
She said it’s also important to change these national eating habits because they end up costing billions in additional healthcare costs.
And they want to take over your Health Care from birth to death. Hmmmm…Fascinating…
“I’m not asking any of you to make drastic changes to every single one of your recipes or to totally change the way you do business,” she said.
Not Yet, at least.
After all, when Liberals start preaching about it “being for the children” watch out!! (since they consider anyone who disagrees with them as “children” anyhow).

So how long before we “recommend” to a private business what they can serve and just force them to serve what we think is best for you?
After all, restaurants that serve crap, close. That’s business. But what if that’s all they are allowed to serve??
While suggestions that eateries serve a side of apples instead of French fries as the default side dish likely won’t go anywhere, there is another way to serve kids fewer calories. Just make the portions smaller.

Smaller portions mean less cost for the restaurant, and can help kids slim down. Charge the same, serve less food. Talk about a win-win! (Entrepeneur.com)

Exactly. The portion sizes today are about 1/3 larger than say 50 years ago.

If you can teach people to eat less, not just control what they eat, then you can lose weight!

After all, you have to burn more calories than you take in to do it.

And I fail but not as often as I used to and I have cleaned up my diet. So a lot of it is   also because of lack of proper regular exercise to on this middle-aged frame. But that’s another story…

But I don’t want to control you.

I trust with proper education and not liberal hysterics and Alinsky scare tactics that you are capable of make reasonable decisions and understand and accept the consequences of your actions.

But I also know that that part is nearly impossible in today’s liberal entitlement and evade responsibility for everything environment.

That’s what has to change. Not the menu.

“The delusion is that we all make free choices,”- Anti-soda crusader Harold Goldstein

* Obesity lawsuit instigator John “Sue the Bastards” Banzhaf lashes out: “All these platitudes about, ‘people should eat less,’ ‘responsibility,’ all this crap!” * Marion Nestle, queen of the food scolds, thinks that “balance, moderation and exercise” have no practical importance. “I don’t support that,” she says.
* Discussing “The Politics of Food,” Skip Spitzer of the radical Pesticide Action Network maintains that “the idea of personal responsibility is a cultural construct.”
* PETA medical “expert” Neal Barnard tells tales of food addiction, arguing that “it’s high time we stopped blaming ourselves for over-eating.”
* Kelly “Big Brother” Brownell advocates “a more militant attitude about the toxic food environment, like we have about tobacco… [smoking] became so serious that society overlooked the intrusion on individual rights for the greater social good.” He also suggests that human beings have no more control over their food choices than animals in a cage.
* Margo Wootan, one of the top killjoys at the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), implores: “We have got to move beyond personal responsibility.” And when the World Health Organization added a single, understated sentence referencing the “exercise of individual responsibility” to its anti-obesity strategy, CSPI raged: “Obesity is not merely a matter of individual responsibility. Such suggestions are naive and simplistic.”

Here’s how noted food critic Robert Shoffner describes their philosophy: “People are children and have to be protected by Big Brother or Big Nanny from the awful free-market predators … That’s what drives these people — a desire for control of other people’s lives.” (consumerfreedom.com)

So they aren’t the Insufferably Superior are they?

You are just children who must be led to do what is best for you.

Just like the fact that the fabulously beautiful planet Bethselamin is now so worried about the cumulative erosion by ten billion visiting tourists a year that any net imbalance between the amount you eat and the amount you excrete whilst on the planet is surgically removed from your bodyweight when you leave: so every time you go to the lavatory it is vitally important to get a receipt. (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)

John Stossel: For what it’s worth, here is some of the research we dug up to prepare my Michelle Obama discussion:
In his article “Egg on their Faces,” Steve Malanga points out that “Government dietary advice often proves disastrous.”
Starting in the 1970s… the American Heart Association advised people to reduce drastically their consumption of eggs as part of a goal to limit total cholesterol intake to 300 milligrams a day (a single egg can have 250 milligrams). The recommendation, seconded by government and other public-health groups, prompted a sharp drop in the consumption of eggs, a food that nutritionists praise as low in calories and high in nutrients. In 2000, the AHA revised its restrictions on eggs to one a day (from a onetime low of three a week)… To what purpose? A 2004 article in The Journal of Nutrition that looked at worldwide studies of egg consumption noted that the current restrictions on eating eggs are “unwarranted for the majority of people and are not supported by scientific data.”
Furthermore:
As a recent review of the latest research in Scientific American pointed out, ever since the first set of federal guidelines appeared in 1980, Americans heard that they had to reduce their intake of saturated fat by cutting back on meat and dairy products and replacing them with carbohydrates. Americans dutifully complied. Since then, obesity has increased sharply, and the progress that the country has made against heart disease has largely come from medical breakthroughs like statin drugs, which lower cholesterol, and more effective medications to control blood pressure.
Malanga also notes that new FDA guidelines recommend a maximum of 1500 milligrams of salt daily (down from 2300).  One hypertension expert observed  that the government’s salt war is a giant uncontrolled experiment with the public’s health.

Here are a few more reasons why government shouldn’t tell us what to eat:
We’re living longer than ever! 80 yrs today vs. 57 yrs  80 yrs ago
A CDC study found that more people die every year from being underweight than overweight!  And that moderately overweight people live longer than those at normal weight.
Government was once excited about BMI index. (body-mass index) Gov Mike Huckabee had all Arkansas kids tested!  But BMI is a lousy measure of health.  According to BMI: Tom Cruise and Arnold Schwarzenegger are obese; GWBush and George Clooney are “overweight”
Calorie counts on menu boards don’t work: people STILL don’t take in fewer calories! A study at McDonald’s , Burger King, Wendy’s, and Kentucky Fried Chicken found that people ordered MORE calories after the labeling law went into effect.
What’s junk food?  Chicago’s new candy tax defines sweets that contain flour as “food” – w/o flour as “candy.”  (Hershey bar? Candy. But Kit Kats, Twix, Twizzlers –are “food”) O.j. and apple juice? More calories than Coke! (97 v 120/cup)
“Protect the children?”  Children are the responsibility of their parents. When the state assumes the role of parent, it makes children of all of us.
It’s a good sign that America has food nannies – means were so rich that these are the things we’re worried about!
The food police haven’t jailed anyone yet, but who knows 20 years down the road?  MeMe Roth suggests annual obesity screenings at school; serving soft drinks to only those over 18; child abuse laws for parents with obese kids; taxes on soda and sweetened drinks.


If the government is allowed to dictate our diet, what’s next? Do they start deciding who we’ll marry, where we’ll work?

Thomas Jefferson said “A government big enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take everything you have.”

The Politics of Food

As an amateur home cook and a junkie for The Food Network and other Food Shows I take food seriously.
But not like our President and his Food Nazis.
And no, I don’t mean “Seinfeld”.
This is not a comedy.
This is your usual socialist tragedy.
Busy bodies with a moral superiority complex.

You may laugh about the White House assistant chef being appointed “Senior Policy Adviser.” You’ll stop laughing when you realize that those in power really do want to tell you what to eat.
You just can’t cook these things up. The 29-year-old Chicago chef that the Obama family for years paid to be their private cook, Sam Kass, was quietly promoted last month from his job as assistant chef at the White House residence and “food initiative coordinator” to the position of “senior policy adviser for healthy food initiatives.”
The long-suffering American people don’t get to know if an increase in salary is involved, because Kass is on the residence staff rather than the West Wing’s.
But we should know how much the taxpayers are paying this “bald, intense young man” who, according to the New York Times, is “part chef and part policy wonk” and is “reinventing the role of official gastronome in the Executive Mansion.”
He plays golf with the president at Martha’s Vineyard, attends the administration’s child-health briefings, and quizzes senior White House staff about policy.
“Do we have a toxicologist who specializes in colony collapse disorder?” Kass once asked in an e-mail to the Agriculture Department, according to the New York Times story.
Add the fact that Kass isn’t even a formally trained chef and you really start to wonder what’s going on here.
The law lets the president appoint anyone he wants as “senior policy adviser.” But if he wants to be the first president to employ a cook/food czar, he should make that plain to the public — and publish the man’s taxpayer-funded salary, as is the case with other White House policy advisers.
Of course, it all begs the question: Why on earth do the American people need a government-paid “food initiative coordinator”? This administration has been attempting to elevate nutrition to the level of a civil rights issue.
How much harassment is enough in regard to food? New York City has opened the door for every local government to ban trans fats. Then there are the ubiquitous nutrition labels on every food item in supermarkets and fast-food restaurants.
The food nannies are everywhere. Now in the White House, too.
If President Obama really wants to appoint a butcher, baker or candlestick maker to a top White House policy job, we humbly propose a better suggestion: Joe the Plumber. (IBD)
Because it’s such a dire situation, she has convinced her husband’s administration to spend $400 million a year to bring “healthy foods” to low-income neighborhoods and $10 billion to revise a decades-old federal measure that already feeds tens of millions of poor children at school for free.
This culinary revolution no doubt requires a trusted senior policy adviser—like Kass—who is an expert in healthy cuisine. The First Lady refers to her cook as a “partner in crime” and says it’s “just pretty powerful” to see what started out as talk in her South Side Chicago kitchen turn into a major initiative that “hopefully will change the way we think as a country.”
Makes you wonder what Kass, who also doubles as a White House chef, has been putting in the Obama’s food all these years. Incidentally, the “most transparent administration” in history doesn’t want Americans to know how much the famous family cook earns. Although he’s an important administration wonk, Kass’s salary is excluded in the Annual Report to Congress on White House Staff because he’s considered “residence staff” and those salaries don’t need to be disclosed. (Judicial Watch)


Even the private chef of the President is a political hack, for god’s sake!
Yet more “czars” from the “I’m not a socialist!” President.


In a statement released on June 22, the liberal Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) announced it was filing a lawsuit against McDonald’s for marketing toys with their signature Happy Meals. The statement’s creepy hyperbole nearly implied that Ronald McDonald should be featured on an episode of “To Catch a Predator:”

“’McDonald’s is the stranger in the playground handing out candy to children,” said CSPI litigation director Stephen Gardner.
And the Liberal Media just easts it up.
“But would children still be happy with their meal without the joy of a new toy? That’ll be up to kids, and possibly a judge,” chided NBC’s Erika Edwards.
“It’s entirely appropriate and not at all intrusive for city government to take steps to discourage the sale of sugary sodas on city property.”–San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom after he “regulated” the sale of non-diet drinks in city vending machines.

“On its own, popcorn is a low-fat, low-cal, whole grain food,” said Good Morning America’s consumer correspondent Elizabeth Leamy, “but the Center (for Science in The Public Interest) says that the way some movie theaters prepare it, it’s more like eating a rack of ribs with a scoop of ice cream on top.”
UK Daily Mail: Teachers have used ‘Big Brother’ tactics to spy on children’s lunchboxes, it has been revealed. They secretly photographed pupils’ packed lunches over six months and analysed the contents.
Staff awarded marks to the food and then showed their findings to outraged parents, offering them advice on how to improve nutrition.
Education bosses have now put a stop to the scheme in Gloucestershire after discovering the extent of the surveillance.
Nineteen primary schools have been using the ‘packed lunch toolkit’, which was devised by Gloucestershire county council and NHS Gloucestershire.
Contents were taken out of a random sample of lunchboxes and then photographs taken.
Staff rated the contents against set nutritional standards. They looked for high fat, salt and sugary foods as well as fruit and vegetables.
NHS= National Health Service. HHS= Health and Human Services.
Brothers from a different mother?
But Yvette Gayle, whose nine-year-old daughter Renee Dougan attends the school, said she didn’t mind.
‘It might encourage parents to pack a healthier lunch for their kids anyway,’ she said.
Cheryl Ridler, an education co-ordinator at the school, said the scheme has led to ‘a definite improvement in the quality of food’ brought in.
‘All the parents were very positive about it and we did it in a very nice and careful way, and in no way demanding and intrusive,’ she added.
Big Brother smiles upon you Citizen. Rejoice.


Maybe we could have a reality show, showing a Nutritional Intervention or maybe an actual Food Police show, showcasing the worst slovenly, offensive offenders against the public good.
Unfortunately, it is their business, because too many of us have insisted on treating healthcare services as an entitlement rather than a commodity. As a result, we’ve implicitly given government the permission to interfere with anything having to do with “public health,” including our food choices. And for the most part, many people support these dumb food bans because they imagine it’s doing some kind of good. I find it hard to believe that could be true. As the failed war on drugs has taught us, government regulation is no match for the forces of supply and demand.(411mania.com)

And where have we heard of Health Care as an entitlement?
The Left
Who are the Food Police?
The Left.
Funny how that worked out.

And with Comedy comes Tragedy.
And her it is folks.
The reason why the Food Police are coming to get you.
You’re too Fat!!!, and that’s a negative impact on ObamaCare.
So we can’t have that.
If the government gets to decide who lives and who dies, they get to decide what you eat as well.
It’s for your own good, after all.
Rejoice.


Obesity Rating for Every American Must Be Included in Stimulus-Mandated Electronic Health Records, Says HHS

(CNSNews.com) – New federal regulations issued this week stipulate that the electronic health records–that all Americans are supposed to have by 2014 under the terms of the stimulus law that President Barack Obama signed last year–must record not only the traditional measures of height and weight, but also the Body Mass Index: a measure of obesity. The obesity-rating regulation states that every American’s electronic health record must: “Calculate body mass index. Automatically calculate and display body mass index (BMI) based on a patient’s height and weight.”
The law also requires that these electronic health records be available–with appropriate security measures–on a national exchange.
The new regulations are one of the first steps towards the government’s goal of universal adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) by 2014, as outlined in the 2009 economic stimulus law.  Specifically, the regulations issued on Tuesday by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Dr. David Blumenthal, the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, define the “meaningful use” of electronic records. Under the stimulus law, health care providers–including doctors and hospitals–must establish “meaningful use” of EHRs by 2014 in order to qualify for federal subsidies. After that, they will be subjected to penalties in the form of diminished Medicare and Medicaid payments for not establishing “meaningful use” of EHRs.
Section 3001 of the stimulus law says: “The National Coordinator shall, in consultation with other appropriate Federal agencies (including the National Institute of Standards and Technology), update the Federal Health IT Strategic Plan (developed as of June 3, 2008) to include specific objectives, milestones, and metrics with respect to the following: (i) The electronic exchange and use of health information and the enterprise integration of such information.‘‘(ii) The utilization of an electronic health record for each person in the United States by 2014.”
Under this mandate in the stimulus law, Secretary Sebelius issued a regulation–developed by Dr. Blumenthal–that requires that all EHRs keep track of a person’s Body Mass Index (BMI) score. Body Mass Index is a ratio between a person’s weight and height, and is used to determine whether or not someone is overweight or obese. It is the preferred method of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for measuring obesity.
Michelle Obama has made dealing with the problem of childhood obesity the main theme of her term as First Lady.

According to the CDC,  “BMI provides a reliable indicator of body fatness for most people and is used to screen for weight categories that may lead to health problems.”
A person’s BMI score is used as a tool to screen for obesity or excessive body fat that could lead to other health problems. While it does not actually measure body fat directly, according to CDC, the BMI scores generally correlate with a person’s body fat percentage.
The new regulations also stipulate that the new electronic records be capable of sending public health data to state and federal health agencies such as HHS and CDC. The CDC, which calls American society “obesogenic” – meaning that American society itself promotes obesity – collects BMI scores from state health agencies every year to monitor obesity nationwide.
“Electronically record, retrieve, and transmit syndrome based public health surveillance information to public health agencies,” the regulations read.
With the spread of electronic health records, the CDC apparently will be able to collect such data more efficiently and with greater accuracy because the electronic record keeping systems can send the data automatically, eliminating the need for government – both state and federal – to keep, send, and process physical records.

So how long until the BMI Tax or mandatory “health education”??
So you want that Big Mac, well, there’s a 20%  surcharge Tax and we have to record how many of them you have and when you have reached your limit you will not be allowed to eat it anymore until such time as the National Coordinator’s guidelines for your better health says so.
How far off is that?
Not far enough for my tastes.
But that’s why I was so vehemently against the whole thing to begin with.
But what do I know, I’m just a “racist” “teabagger” “idiot” who wants what’s bad for you, at least according to the Left and it’s Media pit bulls.
Have that Big Mac now, because in a few years it will be banned or so heavily regulated and taxed it will cost you $20 for just one and it will have to be registered with the HHS.
And if your BMI says you can’t have it, well, the Food Police will coming knocking on your door to “educate” you Citizen.
Just you wait and see.
Big Momma Michelle is watching you…

Arrest The Hamburgular

Santa Clara County, Calif.: A dozen fast-food workers are lined up against the wall and sheriff’s deputies block the doors. The manager nervously tries to assure that everything is in order, but the hard-eyed detectives aren’t satisfied. Customers think this is a “sting” to round up illegal immigrants, but they are wrong.
One of the inspectors catches a glimpse of something shiny behind a freezer. He reaches behind, and pulls out a six-inch-long plastic Iron Man™ action figure, hard evidence that the restaurant stands in violation of Santa Clara County Ordinance No. NS-300.820. The manager desperately tries to assure the cops that the toy belongs to his son, who inadvertently left it behind. No dice – they haul him downtown on suspicion of using toys in promotions to lure kids and their parents into his restaurant to eat.
That’s right: As part of a crusade against childhood obesity, three politicians in a county of 180,000 people have decided that parents are not allowed to decide whether they can take their children to a restaurant where they might receive a toy alongside their meal.  (IBD)
Santa Clara County’s Board of Supervisors also voted four to one to enter amicus curiae in lawsuits challenging Arizona’s new immigration law. The county will soon consider a resolution commanding its law-enforcement officers not to check suspects’ immigration status, unless required by federal law. So illegal immigrants working in fast-food restaurants will be safer than Iron Man^tm action figures.
The fast-food toy ordinance, meanwhile, is so absurd that even the San Francisco Chronicle (April 30) editorialized on its futility. Somehow, I don’t think that being held up to ridicule is enough to stop politicians arrogant enough to fantasize a magic answer to childhood obesity.
After all, politicians have a desperate, emotional, need to be noticed doing “something” about your problems. Expect this ordinance to come to a California county near you in the near future. No child’s Happy Meal will be safe.(PRI)
The ordinance allows fines of up to $1,000, enforceable by the Health Department.
County supervisor Ken Yeager said Tuesday that the ordinance “prevents restaurants from preying on children’s love of toys to peddle high-calorie, high-fat, high-sodium kids’ meals,” and would help fight childhood obesity.
“This ordinance breaks the link between unhealthy food and prizes,” Yeager said. “Under this ordinance, restaurants are still permitted to give out toys. This ordinance merely imposes very specific, common-sense nutrition standards for children’s meals that are linked to these incentives.”
Saratoga Mayor Kathleen King has five children. “It starts with, ‘I’m hungry,’ and then it goes to what the toy looks like, so I know exactly where it’s going,” she said.
Yeah, weak parenting!
So the government must save you from yourself and parent your kids for you.
When they came for my kid’s Happy mean I said nothing.
Then they came after my fast food and I said nothing.
Then they came for my food to tell me what I can and cannot eat and there was no one left to say anything.
So, next time you see a Toy commercial for a Fast Food restaurant, think evil thoughts of those mean and evil, heartless, predatory capitalists whose only mission in life is to make your kids fat!! and think happy thoughts about how the government is going to stop them for you because you’re not strong enough to do it yourself.
Happy meal Toys are, after all, an evil capitalist Right-wing conspiracy to destroy your kids after all.
It must be George W. Bush’s Fault somehow…