Thursday, November 4, 2010

Political Experiments

I’m a big fan of local political experimentation. Each local municipality, each county, each state, even each country allows for some degree of experimentation. I can look at Holland’s or Switzerland’s drug policy and say, “Well, decriminalizing drug use and seeking to make it safer and easier to get treatment seems to have worked out.” Since it’s essentially a proven system, I would recommend trying it at the national level.

However, America is afraid of new things. Just as states one by one allowed females to vote, eventually a majority of states had a national policy instated in the form of the 19th amendment.

While we’re on amendments… the one right before it was also a political experiment. The 18th amendment was passed after many states had banned alcohol. In this case, one of the strongest arguments in favor of a national policy was that as long as there were states producing alcohol legally, it could be too easily brought into banned municipalities.

Ultimately, we saw that banning alcohol on a national level did not empirically improve society. I hope it’s a lesson we don’t have to repeat, literally, though it is one we are repeating in other ways. Still, many “dry counties” exist across the country, as well as “blue laws” limiting the sale on alcohol on Sunday or holidays. If you want to live in a place like that… your choice.

Ultimately, I believe what makes a law have a positive or negative impact on society is to what extent it grants liberty. With that in mind…

San Francisco is passing an ordinance over the veto of the mayor that will place restrictions on fast food meals for children… sort of.

If you listen to fast food defenders, you’d think McDonald’s was being targeted in some kind of hippie vegan witch-hunt. Are they banning hamburgers? Fries? Oh my god… not… the McRib?!

No.

Well, then they must be banning the sale of Happy Meals and their famous toys.

Nope.

Um… what are they doing?

Under the proposed ordinance, restaurants may give away a free toy or other incentive item only if the meal contains less than 600 calories, has less than 640 milligrams of sodium and if less than 35 percent of the calories are derived from fat (less than 10 percent from saturated fat), except for fat contained in nuts, seeds, eggs or low-fat cheese.

In beverages, less than 35 percent of the total calories can come from fat, and less than 10 percent from added sweeteners.

In addition, the meals must contain a half-cup or more of fruit and three-quarters of a cup or more of vegetables. A breakfast meal must contain at least a half-cup of fruit or vegetables.

So… you can still poison your kids and you can still get your kids a Happy Meal with a toy… in fact, at 640 milligrams of sodium, you can do both, with some fruit and vegetables that you can throw away if you want.

Honestly, the travesty is the drink. Hopefully, they provide multiple juice options, or you’re stuck with 2% milk or Diet soda.

Also, why is everyone turning this into a McDonald’s commercial by always mentioning them and Happy Meals? This affects every fast food place equally. I remember preferring Burger King kid’s meal, because it tasted a lot better than McDonald’s and you got a crown.

[I am going to regret having everyone picture me wearing a crown as a kid…]

And if 600 calories isn’t enough, you can get two. Or go to the next town. Or just order a la carte. I know the article says this is an idea that may spread, and every alarmist thinks this will happen, as well as the people advocating it in San Francisco. In fact, the belief that this will result in some sort of Communist-domino-theory is the only thing those who support the measure and those who oppose it have in common.

Here’s what I see: I see a community telling McDonald’s they want to have healthy options available to their kids. I see statist libertarians imposing their will on a small town deciding how they want to legislate.

Is the ordiance dumb? Hell yeah it’s dumb. It has more holes in it than a large box of Krispy Kremes. But people aren’t quoting the ordinance itself in nearly any of the criticism I see. They are attacking what they perceive to be the spirit of the law, that people should not be told what they can put in their bodies.

This law isn’t doing that, and I hope that is the precedent made here. Your choice of what you can put in your body shouldn’t be made for you (or your kids… unless you’re trying to bone your offspring… which a disturbing number of parents statistically are). I think it’s rather petty that unhealthy kid’s meals won’t be able to get toys, but you have to remember… you can still order whatever you want.

In reality, this will end up costing people in the area more money to get what they want, but they can still get anything. You can order a “Healthy Meal” and then get a real burger or fries or real soda or extra nuggets… whatever it is you want. A cynic might say, “See, it didn’t even work,” but I would say that parents who supported the measure likely got what they wanted.

They can get a healthy meal with a toy for their kids and believe their children are getting a semi-balanced dinner on the go. In their mind, the toy penalty seems like a disincentive, but it’s more like a tax that benefits fast food chains in the form of increased sales (since you wouldn’t be paying for apple wedges and celery sticks unless it was required to be included for the prize).

Since this ordinance’s specifics are so ill-conceived, don’t expect this to be anything but a local dilemma that I predict will be corrected (I’m guessing about when pot is legalized). Otherwise, people will just go to the next town, where they may have a better plan for providing healthier meals.

11 comments:

  1. Also, why is everyone turning this into a McDonald’s commercial by always mentioning them and Happy Meals?

    They just happen to be the largest, most well-known fast food chain with the most popular, well-known kid's meals, that's all.

    McDonald's has always been a target of the food Nazis (remember the attack on the french fries when they used to make them with beef fat- the irony there being that the vegetable oil used to replace it to make the fries "healthier" was actually worse in terms of its negative health consequences) simply because they are so big.

    Having said that, I'm not a big fan of McDonalds. They're a statist corporation that is a product of the statist capitalist system. Still, Ray Kroc was a genius and gave the public what it wanted and became a rich man by fulfilling the American appetite for cheap, greasy comfort food. You gotta give credit where credit is due.

    Back to the fries for a second. McDonalds original fries tasted so good because they were fried in beef tallow, but they were criticized for having too much cholesterol. Never mind that there has never been a proven connection made between dietary cholesterol and heart disease, or that many experts believe that the unnatural vegetable oils substituted are a bigger health danger. No, a small group of food police, sometimes with government as their enforcer, will dictate to all of us what's good and bad.

    As T.C. has said a couple of times already, those assholes can go fuck themselves!

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  2. I don't think you understand the underlying problem: McDonald's advertised their fries as meat-free. People from vegans to Hindus were not being "food nazis," they were being lied to. It's really hard not to find comments like this that try desperately to paint an entire group of people as "nazis" because they have different eating habits to be anything but insulting and insensitive, though in your case I'm just assuming it's ignorance derived from not really caring what's going on, only how you can paint what happens into your narrative of things.

    You can go fuck yourself, you ignorant cunt.

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  3. "Here’s what I see: I see a community telling McDonald’s they want to have healthy options available to their kids. I see statist libertarians imposing their will on a small town deciding how they want to legislate.

    Is the ordiance dumb? Hell yeah it’s dumb. It has more holes in it than a large box of Krispy Kremes. But people aren’t quoting the ordinance itself in nearly any of the criticism I see. They are attacking what they perceive to be the spirit of the law, that people should not be told what they can put in their bodies.

    This law isn’t doing that, and I hope that is the precedent made here. Your choice of what you can put in your body shouldn’t be made for you ... I think it’s rather petty that unhealthy kid’s meals won’t be able to get toys, but you have to remember… you can still order whatever you want.


    I have to ask Bret - did you read the above before you posted it, and if so do you stand by the above? Or do you wish to change it?

    Do you see it? Are you actually not making that connection?

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  4. I don't think you understand the underlying problem: McDonald's advertised their fries as meat-free. People from vegans to Hindus were not being "food nazis," they were being lied to.

    Bret, what you're referring to occurred after McDonalds took out the beef tallow (under pressure from, yes, FOOD NAZIS) and used vegetable oil. Before that (the early 1990s, I think) it was well-known that they were fried in a beef product.

    The issue with the crazy vegans/vegetarians had to do with the later issue of McDonalds continuing to use a tiny amount of beef flavoring to keep the fries tasting similar to what they had before.

    And fuck whoever the hell didn't like it, they're the idiots responsible for ruining my favorite french fries to begin with.

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  5. Well fuck McD's, because they freely chose to change it from what I understand.

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  6. Radio, I have no idea what you're talking about. You're going to have to use English and spell it out because I do read my posts and I'm at a loss as to what the problem is.

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  7. McDonald's still uses beef in their fries, and this thing you're claiming about food nazis never happened. It all comes from McDonald's telling vegetarians and people who religiously do not eat beef that the fries were vegetarian in the 90's, when in fact they were not. This became publicized in 2001.

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  8. McDonald's still uses beef in their fries, and this thing you're claiming about food nazis never happened.

    Bret, what never happened? Yes, it did, actually. McDonalds fries were originally fried in a mixture of beef tallow (93%) and vegetable oil (7%). This was attacked as creating fries will a lot of "harmful" cholesterol. When McDonalds switched to all vegetable oil, they did include, as I mentioned, a small amount of "natural beef flavor".

    So what's your point and where am I wrong?

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  9. Question: do you feel that the legislation is:

    Not intrusive or that the legislation is not “limiting choice” as is presented in the article linked.

    Attacked or criticized by “libertarians imposing (attempting to) their will”

    Just a request for a clarification before I consider going further.

    As for my view, I will take the simple - is this community’s "Board of Supervisors” this delusional to think something that stupid would work?

    From what I can gather from the unbiased medical sources (not paid by agribusiness), the prevailing idea is that HFCS in soft-drinks and almost every other packaged product is the/or/a main reason for childhood obesity.

    If they want to "help the kids", they need to review the school food, local grocery stores and vending machines for HFCS. The scope is far too small in the proposed legislation to be effective, of course the scale of intrusion necessary to be effective would be untenable.

    I tend to be on Bret’s side with the beef products in the fries - if the issue was simply an issue of “truth in advertising” then McDs was at fault for stating a product was “vegetarian” when it was not. -F- McDs for BS untrue advertising.

    If the attempt was to force McDs to change to fit the protestors needs or desires by legislation then fault to protestors and I change my vote to -F- statist protestors.

    And as a vegetarian of over 20 years I say most vegetarians give vegetarianism a bad name...

    Damnit now I have to go read about McDs and the damned fries they spew out...

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  10. I tend to be on Bret’s side with the beef products in the fries - if the issue was simply an issue of “truth in advertising” then McDs was at fault for stating a product was “vegetarian” when it was not

    That's not the issue I have with Bret on the fries. He has said twice now that I don't know what the hell I'm talking about, when he can't even get his facts right. If it wasn't for fanatical anti-cholesterol freaks and their lies McDonalds would never have switched to all-vegetable oil for their fries to begin with.

    In an attempt to keep regular customers happy and also avoid the continuing demonization by the food NAZIS (I won't stop saying it, Bret!) of their product, they compromised and changed to "healthy" vegetable oil (another big lie of the food NAZIS, like the one that got people to switch from butter to margarine, until it was discovered that the trans fats in hydrogenated vegetable oil was bad for people) and then used beef flavor as well.

    If McDonalds advertised them as "vegan" then sure, that was wrong and false, but I don't really give a shit about the stupid vegans and vegetarians in this instance; they can go fuck themselves with a side of beef!

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  11. Nikk, you can gather from my questions to Bret where that is about to go...

    As for the McDs issue with the fries, the story is far more complicated (and twisted and sick for that matter) than I thought at first... (see my post). Of course greedy groups and greedy lawyers are involved.

    "I don't really give a shit about the stupid vegans and vegetarians in this instance; they can go fuck themselves with a side of beef!”

    It is apparent that McDs did exactly that and ended up on top after using the issue as a PR stunt...

    And you will note that I qualified my post with changeable results.

    In the end:

    McDs made dumb mistakes and pays off with PR money to shut up the whiners.

    Stupid greedy vegetarian groups take PR money and fight over that ill gotten gain.

    Actual vegetarians simply avoid McDs and the greasy potato sticks now that the facts are out. The cost to McDs is minuscule for this loss of consumers as the target market is the lazy, ignorant, and self-indulgant.

    Fat kids continue to eat packaged foods washed down with gallons of HFCS sodas... (big win Coke/Pepsi/McDs and the parade of businesses whoring out agribusiness slop)

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