Headlines (page 397)

Yet another article “linking” obesity to fast food has appeared, this time in Asia. Quoted in the story is Professor Paul Zimmet, head of a steering committee sponsored by the…

Without any scientific facts, the Boston Globe says there is an "obvious link between the growing popularity of 'supersize' servings in restaurants and grocery stores and the country's weight problem." If left unchallenged, this type of inflammatory rhetoric could quickly turn the hypothetical "link" between fast food and obesity into fact.

When questioned about the rabid animal rights group's sometimes violent tactics, the leader of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals' anti-fur campaign said, "I think that when PETA picks a target, it's hard to control what our members will do. We have 600,000 members across the world, and when something happens we hear about it after the fact." How convenient…

From deploring Kelly Brownell's fat tax to attacking CSPI's call for lawsuits against restaurants, two recent editorials in Charleston's Post and Courier and the Cincinnati Enquirer apparently draw upon Consumer Freedom research to take on the food police. ("The calorie cops demand a Twinkie tax," The Cincinnati Enquirer, 2/26/00.)

New genetically engineered rice could save the lives of two million children a year and prevent blindness in many more. Who could possibly be against such wonderful technology? How about the nannies from Greenpeace and the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Nannies in the federal government want to put labels on eggs telling you not to cook them over easy because of potential salmonella contamination. With an average of five deaths a year over the last 13 years from salmonella (none tied to bad eggs), the Plain Dealer correctly asks, "Is this worth a warning label on egg cartons and a government-sponsored scare campaign? That's not the sort of thing a taxpayer ought to get over easy."

In a troubling development, British Prime Minister Tony Blair has given in to activist hysteria and reversed his support of genetically engineered foods. Without any evidence, he proclaimed GE foods were "potentially harmful."

According to the Albany Times Union, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) and other like-minded nannies are "waging the equivalent of a culinary Holy War against the use of dairy and meat products" in school lunchrooms. "They [PCRM] have this agenda that no one should eat animal products and they are not even doctors," says a Dairy Council spokesperson, correctly noting that a majority of the animal rights group's members are not doctors. ("Students target of a food fight," Albany Times Union, 2/22/00.)

Nanny nonsense abounds in this article from Penn State's Daily Collegian. The author wholeheartedly endorses Neal D. Barnard, president of the radical animal-rights group Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, and repeats Barnard's ridiculous claim that milk drinkers are "at higher risk for osteoporosis than those who drink little or no milk."

In a USDA forum, diet book author Barry Sears said, "We need to view food as a potential drug…as Americans are the fattest we have ever been." Could this be a harbinger of public policy to come?