November 22 - Big Mac Attack - Lawyer Samuel Hirsch, acting on behalf of eight New York children and their parents, said McDonald's created a national epidemic of fat kids and violated consumer fraud laws by failing to adequately disclose the health effects of its menu.

"It's a very insipid, toxic kind of thing," he said.

One of the New York children, 15-year-old Gregory Rhymes, tips the scales at 400 pounds and has eaten every day at McDonald's since he was 6 years old.  His mother laments that she wouldn't have let her son consume McDonald's calorie-crammed food if she knew it contained high levels of fat and salt.

Instead of going after McDonald's, lawyer Hirsch should be filing charges against Mrs. Rhymes for child abuse.  It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that a history of nine years of non-stop fast food gorging resulting in a 400 pound teenager shows that Mrs. Rhymes is a lousy, irresponsible and negligent mother.  Of course going after the actual source of this poor boy's problem doesn't hold the same rewards as shaking down a multi-billion corporation.

November 18 - The Link Between Anti-tobacco And Obesity - A new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research lays out some of the costs of increasing tobacco prices. The zealots have run smack into the law of unintended consequences. According to the study, every 10 percent increase in the price of cigarettes leads directly to a 2 percent rise in the number of obese people. Between 1980 and 2001 the real price of cigarettes increased 164 percent. In that same period the number of obese people increased by 50 percent. Public-health professionals say privately that this massive increase can be traced back to the effects of higher cigarette prices, though fast food and changed working habits also were major contributors.

The problem is that the health effects of obesity far outweigh the negative effects of smoking. Two Rand researchers, health economist Roland Sturm and psychiatrist Kenneth Wells, examined the comparative effects of obesity, smoking, heavy drinking and poverty on chronic health conditions and health expenditures. Their finding: Obesity is the most serious problem. It is linked to a big increase in chronic health conditions and significantly higher health expenditures. And it affects more people than smoking, heavy drinking or poverty.

Although there may be statistical evidence that smokers, as a whole, die at a younger age than do nonsmokers, the vast majority of smokers, as well as nonsmokers, live to ripe old ages.  The so-called "drain" to the health system is caused by all people living much longer than they did in the past.  The author, however, is correct that as smoking, as a national obsession, gives way to a new "crises", obesity looks to be the best bet for a full throttle assault on liberty, responsibility and capitalism. 

November 15 - Delusions Leading To An Early Death - Some of the better people got together to run a survey querying the lower orders about their health.  To the astonishment of the elite, 17 percent of the respondents who claimed to be in excellent health were deceiving themselves.  These deluded dolts couldn't be in good health, according to the better people, because they indulge in all sorts of unhealthy behavior.  They drink, they smoke, they drink coffee, eat fried foods, enjoy salt and sugary snacks.  These horrible habits, along with an aversion to exercise, are clearly leading to an early grave.

The assumption that people cannot be healthy and happy without adhering completely to the dictates of tight-lipped nannies is one of the most infuriating aspects of the current health culture.  The notion that people cannot take care of themselves and live their lives as they see fit demonstrates that public health has clearly grown far too big for its britches.  It is not the business of health fascists to impose their ideology of health over all on the rest of us.  If they wish to eat their gruel, jog until they drop and eschew all the good things in life, that is their choice.  We'll leave them to their masochistic revels if they will only leave us alone.

November 15 - Too Much Salt, There Ought To Be A Law - The nation's largest public health group is recommending a 50 percent decrease in salt in processed food and restaurant meals over the next 10 years.  

The American Public Health Association said the reduction could save 150,000 lives a year from strokes, heart attacks and other illnesses linked to high blood pressure.  A resolution passed Tuesday at the health association's annual meeting in Philadelphia urges a collaboration with food manufacturers to meet the goal.

"Americans are consuming an ever-increasing amount of processed foods high in sodium at home, at work, at school and in restaurants,'' said Dr. Stephen Havas, the lead author of the new policy. "The excess sodium in these foods is unnecessary and leads to a large, preventable toll of hypertension, premature death and disability.''

So this special interest group wants to "collaborate" with the food and hospitality industry to meet a unilaterally imposed goal.  Sounds more like muscling in on the upcoming food industry shakedown than anything else.  They have decided that a 50 percent less salt must be used in preparing processed food and restaurant meals.  After the food is served, what is to prevent the consumer or restaurant customer from reaching for the salt shaker and pouring on as much salt as desired?  Will salt be sold only with a prescription?

It's amazing how coordinated and how rapidly the grifters are coming together to prepare the assault on food.  With their talking points and blueprints already prepared from the tobacco shakedown the time line for the shakedown is growing shorter by the day.

November 12 - Jonesing For Some Sucrose (Free Registration) - In her darkest days, Elena Santaballa painstakingly planned her binges. She surreptitiously purchased her stash. She hid the evidence. Even when trying to resist the temptation to use, she almost always succumbed.

Finally, three years ago, the Culver City woman acknowledged that she was hooked on sugar.

Now that the election is over, the Los Angeles Times can get back to the important things such as defining addiction downward.  In an astonishingly detailed account, the paper delves into the hard times of sugar addicts.  Most people are oblivious to the toll sugar addiction takes upon those unfortunates who suffer from its debilitating and demoralizing effects.  Take Kathleen DesMainsons, a "recovering sugar addict" who now rescues fellow addicts from the coils of addiction:

"When you're addicted to sugar, you need more to feel better.  Your life starts being focused on getting a sugar fix. You have symptoms of withdrawal, which is craving. You get antsy, irritable and cranky. To dismiss the experience of thousands and thousands of people who say they feel this way is pretty silly."

What's silly is that the medical and health establishment acquiesced to anti-tobacco's rewriting of the definition of addiction to include tobacco.  What was once a habit became with a stroke of a pen a condition identical to that experienced by heroin and morphine addicts.  The expansion of addiction didn't just nab smokers.  The new definition includes caffeine, chocolate and sugar.  It is also used to justify shoplifting, sexual promiscuity and bad manners.  Strangely the reporter writes that most health experts maintain that sugar does not meet the criteria for addiction, typically described as:

"an intense desire for a substance (so that it disrupts normal life), great difficulty stopping use of the substance and a severe physiological response upon withdrawal. People who are addicted, they add, lose control over their behavior and use a substance compulsively and repetitively in spite of adverse consequences related to their actions."

Smoking tobacco doesn't disrupt normal life.  So many people have found it easy to quit that ex-smokers outnumber smokers and there are no "severe physiological responses upon withdrawal."  Plainly smoking isn't addicting and hooked on sugar is an absurdity.

What's going on with the Los Angeles Times article is that the case is building for some massive lawsuits against huge food providers.  The shakedown of the tobacco industry required addicted consumers so the anti-tobacco special interests changed the meaning of addiction.  That part of the equation is already in place which will grease the skids under the food industry that much quicker.

November 4,  After Taking On Big Tobacco, Social Reformer Jabs at a New Target: Big Fat - John Banzhaf, just can't help himself.  He just must reform the world, his motto is "Sue the bastards" and he is proud enough to have SUE BAST on his license plate.  Having taken on Big Tobacco he now wants to sue for obesity.

"The public, he allows, may not quite be ready for this:  they may find the notion downright "bizarre." But they'll come around.  After all, this is about using legal action for what seems to me very important." says Banzhaf.

They will?  Come around to social engineering, Banzhaf style?  When will enough be enough?  It is apparently much easier to change the world by litigation, then by using the Constitution.  Let's just wipe out the entire Congress and 200 years of democracy and leave it all to the lawyers to create a new world order!

Shakespeare had it right," let's kill all the lawyers" and the world will be safe from fanatics like John Banzhaf.

November 1 -  Déjà Vue All Over Again - At the risk of beating a dead horse, we repeat:  The lies, persecution and thievery don't end with tobacco.  Taking down the tobacco industry and demonizing smokers was just the beginning.  An all out assault on the food industry is moving forward faster than most people predicted.  An editorial form a "respected" medical journal indicates that the time is already ripe to wage war on the fat.  From Wanda Hamilton:

For years we have warned the public that the war against tobacco would extend to other areas such as the food we eat. Now the war against the food industry (and against everyone who eats, which is all of us) is officially escalating.

At first there were just some highly vocal groups of zealots espousing the war against junk food and, of course, meat. Then such groups as Ralph Nader's Center for Science in the Public Interest organization took up the battle cry, condemning movie popcorn, Chinese and Mexican food as "toxic" substances and advocating meatless diets.

Meanwhile the big money organizations such as the American Cancer Society and their partners in government bureaus (especially the Centers for Disease Control) and the lawyers were gradually warming to the idea of pointing to our food as the very thing to replace tobacco as the number one killer of adults and babies and minorities.

First, they had to find an epidemic associated with food, and obesity was an obvious choice. However, just to make sure the epidemic was big enough, the definition of obesity was changed in 1998 so that 50 million more people in the U.S. became obese overnight with the stroke of a press release. And, of course, a Surgeon General's report was issued about the deadly epidemic of obesity, killing perhaps even more people than tobacco. Even the World Health Organization jumped onboard, wailing about the killer obesity epidemic (despite the fact that millions upon millions of people in poor countries -- especially children -- are dying of malnutrition).

With everything in place, the press releases were churned out and the media obligingly took up the battle cry about the deadly obesity epidemic, caused by the evil junk food producers and their impossible-to-resist ads and their targeting of "the children."

And finally the lawyers (most of them still collecting their loot from the tobacco lawsuits and ultimate settlement) have begun to sue the deep-pocketed fast food industry.

Now we have formerly respectable medical journals (the same ones that published the junk science and the sound bites of the anti-tobacco industry) joining battle against the food industry. Here are some excerpts from an editorial in the Sept. 28, 2002 Lancet:

"The soaring increase in obesity and type 2 diabetes among children is a public-health crisis, plausibly linked to the 'toxic environment' created in large part by the food industry."

"What can be done about this truly toxic state of affairs? Some solutions are obvious: nutrition professionals need to divorce themselves from the food industry.... "More radical solutions should be considered: taxing soft drinks and fast foods; subsidizing nutritious foods, like fruits and vegetables; labeling the content of fast food; and prohibiting marketing and advertising to children. An advertising ban similar to that on tobacco advertising has been recommended to the European Union. In the USA, litigation inspired by the success of the tobacco lawsuits is underway; parallels between the tactics of the tobacco and food industries are striking."

Ooooh, noooo, Mr. Doctor, don't liken the fast food companies to Big Tobacco!!!!

But even that's not enough. "At the SCEC [Stop Commercial Exploitation of Children] summit, Michael Brody, who chairs the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychatry's television and media committee, said, 'Just like paedophiles, marketers have become child experts.'"

PEDOPHILES??? Ronald McDonald???? Cute little Wendy????

October 28 - Racist Milk - The school-lunch program used to be considered one of the triumphs of liberalism. Should a Republican suggest trimming or altering the program in the slightest, he would promptly be denounced as an ogre determined to starve poor schoolchildren. Among certain left-wing activists, however, this orthodoxy has gotten an overhaul: The school-lunch program is now denounced as a health-destroying racist scam that facilitates the torture of animals.

As people become more fed up with their antics, behavior control pressure groups such as anti-tobacco become more loopy.  Taking a page from the anti-tobacco playbook, the animal rights gang is attacking the inclusion of milk in the school lunch program as racist.  Using the slur that makes decent people shudder, the fanatics hope to curb the distribution of milk with school lunches.  As is usual with dishonest pressure groups, emotion is used in place of reason and the ostensible beneficiaries of the shock tactics are actually the victims of a hoax and scam.

October 22 - Eat, Drink And Be Guilt-free - "In America we've heard of companies breathalysing staff not to see if they've been drinking, but to find out if they've been smoking.

"Some also watch what employees eat for lunch and if they don't have a balanced diet they're sent to the company doctor.

"This might seem excessive but what happens in America tends to creep in here and we want to nip it in the bud."

It's a sad state on American culture that pressure groups are being set up in Europe to fight to retain the freedoms that Americans threw away.  With the nanny culture exported from the United States to Europe, organizations are springing up to ensure that the rich diversity of that continent doesn't succumb to the enervating blandness that is California.  

The Free Society is hoping to stifle the anti-fat frenzy and stern governess mentality that is poised to regulate every aspect of personal choice and pleasure.  Spun off from the Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco, Free Society has a tough fight ahead and has wisely included reigning the rampant litigation that is responsible for so many lost freedoms.

October 1 - The Deadly Potato Chip - USA Today continues the fried potato scare with a breathless account of how scientists are on the verge of understanding a "possible" carcinogen recently associated, with much fanfare, to French fries.  The lengthy article delves into the arcane world of amino acids, sugars, asparagine and acrylamide.  How they all react together and with potatoes and other fried foods.  Long on innuendo and short on concretes, the bottom line is that we all better be damned worried and do what the anti-food special interests advise, namely eat like a hermit on a fast.

This "news" item prompts Wanda Hamilton to observe:

Ah, yes, the killer potato chips and fries. It's a wonder we're not all dead and that everybody doesn't have cancer, at least that's the way it would seem given all the many reports from the health hysterics.  The fact is that cancer existed long, long before the first French fry or potato chip (and long before cigarettes, for that matter). In fact, cancer seems almost a natural occurrence in aging, since it is primarily a disease of old age (though, of course, there are cancers that develop in the young). As one physician I know said, if everyone lived long enough, everyone would eventually get cancer. The vast majority of the young and healthy slough off cancerous cells all the time, but as we age, our bodies lose some of their ability to do this.

What the health establishment should be focusing on is better diagnostic techniques and more effective treatment, not desperately searching for possible carcinogens, because EVERYTHING contains carcinogens, from the water we drink to the food we eat and even the very sunlight necessary to human, animal and plant life. It is quite true that life causes cancer.

The healthists have turned too far away from treatment to what they deem as "prevention." They say -- and believe -- that prevention is better than treatment and is -- above all -- COST effective. Thus they are busy with their little teaspoons trying to empty the sea and analyzing everything for "carcinogenity" so that we might avoid all these substances. They are also busy trying to dictate human behavior and behaviorally engineer us to prevent us from getting cancer and heart disease -- even prevent us from aging or ever dying, as if that were possible.

Some infectious illnesses, such as malaria and polio and smallpox CAN be prevented with vaccines and sanitation, and this sort of prevention is appropriate and necessary. However, when the healthists departed from this sort of prevention to the so-called "lifestyle" diseases (apart from those that are infectious) and adopted behavioral and social engineering as part of their mandate, they turned the corner from science and medicine to politics. In fact, some of what they are now doing is nothing more than politics aimed at destroying capitalism and individual choice and freedom.

September 17 - The Horrors Of Addiction - Despite all the talk of obesity, there has been no mention of the caffeinated drinks that many diets in women's magazines recommend to fill an empty stomach. The fact that people get addicted to them is strangely absent from public debate.  It seems to happen particularly with diet versions. A quick search on the Internet reveals a disparate group of mostly young addicts who regularly congregate online to share their battle with their drug of choice: Diet Coke.

Anita wrote: "I am only 15 years old but I have been addicted to Diet Coke for years. I drink up to 10 600ml bottles a day. I initially started drinking Diet Coke to lose weight. Little did I know that once you start it's almost impossible to stop." The doctor told her to cut down after she discovered a stomach ulcer.

Gee, wasn't it fortunate that the definition of addiction was changed to incorporate caffeine?  Many insiders in the tobacco settlement assert that one of the key ingredients leading to the shakedown was the "evidence" that the tobacco industry was selling an addicting product.  The addiction scam is also used in the personal injury suits against the industry.

Purveyors of soft drinks containing caffeine, who were silent when the definition of addiction was broadened to target tobacco, would be wise to start lobbying the powers that be to revisit the addiction question.  Coca Cola and Pepsi, having deeper pockets than did the tobacco industry, better start looking for some tough lawyers.  Just don't use those who worked for Big Tobacco.

September 11 - Fat Teenagers File Class-action Suit - Three teenagers in New York City have filed a class-action lawsuit against McDonald's Corp., saying the fast food chain's food caused them to gain as much as 200 pounds and develop serious health problems including heart disease and diabetes.

The teenagers, whose ages range between 13 and 19, say in court papers that McDonald's inaccurately posted nutritional information and deceptively advertised its products. They also say the restaurant chain used marketing practices such as toy and value meal promotions to entice its patrons to eat the food.

Remember the frenzy over Joe Camel?  Although no evidence ever surfaced that that advertising campaign ever persuaded even one person to start smoking, the media whipped up the hysteria and Joe Camel was immortalized as the hypnotic avatar of predatory marketing.  The teenage slobs fronting for the suit against McDonald's are claiming that they were powerless in the face of the fast-food joint's seductive advertising and ate their way into obesity as a result.  

McDonald's is bleating mildly about frivolous suits instead of going on the offensive and taking down the lawyers who are using fat kids and their apathetic parents as tools to hit the payload.  The boys at the top of McDonald's corporate heap should take a page from a spokesman for the Center for Consumer Freedom:

"The trial lawyers are back at the drawing board, now using kids as their new pawns to try to get their multimillion-dollar payday in court. This has everything to do with fattening attorney wallets and nothing to do with slimming down Americans."

September 10 - Cold Gruel To Ward Off Disease - With the focus on obesity it's understandable that many are now paying closer attention to what they eat and are seeking out healthier diets.  How does a cold bowl of oatmeal sound?  Or chilled mashed potatoes?

Professor John Burn, described as a leading scientist, claims foods like potatoes, baked beans, rice and porridge, served cold, contain high levels of indigestible crystalline starch, which helps ward-off the disease.  The professor bedazzled the luminaries at Leicester University attending a "Festival of Science" with the following culinary advice:

"When mashed potato goes cold it crystallizes.  So do cold baked potatoes and baked beans. In fact the same thing applies to quite a lot of the rubbish you eat.  I'm talking about anything that contains carbohydrate that's not hot. Hot food will by and large be less good."

Professor Burn's dietary bombshell comes at a time the cuisine in the United Kingdom was on the verge of joining the ranks of the edible.

September 6 - McDonald's Begins To Cave - The fast food giant [McDonalds] that once fried its potatoes in beef tallow will start cooking french fries, chicken nuggets and fish fillets in a new kind of soy-corn oil with less trans fat and more polyunsaturated fat, the world's biggest food-service company announced Tuesday.  The new oil produces less of the type of cholesterol that can lead to strokes and heart attacks, and it also reduces the levels of dangerous trans fat by half.

Apparently learning nothing from the tobacco industry shakedown, McDonald's adopts a defensive mode and implies that the latest junk science focus on trans fat has some sort of validity.  Rather than challenge any of the assertions promulgated by special interests, McDonald's grants them the high ground by implicitly admitting that its current processes are unhealthy.

The anti-fat brigade, needless to say, is not mollified by McDonald's new soy oil and will be emboldened to make more demands, culminating in a big fat class-action lawsuit against "Big Foods".  Like Skinner's rats, fast food is reacting just as was planned by the shakedown artists.  It's admission of guilt will be used against McDonald's and people will most likely scorn the new, improved French fries.