Nutrition activists never met a food they didn’t dislike. And now they’re refocusing attacks from what’s on your plate to what’s in your glass. Food scold Margo Wootan from the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) took a glass-half-empty approach on the drinks currently offered in school. Over the weekend, she told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that “it’s sports drinks, juices, enhanced waters that need to be left out” of vending machines.
The rationale — provided by Wootan — behind CSPI’s push to ban the popular products from the cafeteria is as clear as mud: “They’re not evil, but they have a purpose.” (Oh. Now we get it.) The notion that the government needs to invade Americans’ personal lives to save the population from alleged “evils” extends well past parochial school Perrier. While announcing a new wave of dietary legislation, the New York Journal suggested one explanation for Big Brother’s interest in your eating habits: “The public health agency’s evolving role as a diet czar.”
A measure of just how pervasive this mentality has become can be seen in the new children’s book Santa Claus Is on a Diet. Disapproving of Santa’s belly (since it wiggles like a bowl full of jelly), the book asks kids to set out carrots in place of cookies for St. Nick’s snack on Christmas Eve. But they won’t stop there. CSPI is even lobbying for obesity warning labels on the sides of soda cans. With food tyrants taking cookies away from Santa, cupcakes away from kids, and doughnuts away from grandparents, the pie’s the limit for lawmakers in our food — unless we tell them otherwise.
