September 29 [19:30 GMT] - Forget French fries and margarine, they are no good for you, now they will be illegal - Anti-obesity strikes at fast food restaurants with trans fat, just as anti-tobacco struck bars. Plus, restaurant associations brought it on themselves by catering to anti-tobacco. The pharmaceutical Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is heavily behind Bloomberg and his health squads. Try this for state paternalism: "Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden acknowledged that the ban would be a challenge for restaurants, but he said trans fats can easily be replaced with substitute oils that taste the same or better and are far less unhealthy. “It is a dangerous and unnecessary ingredient, no one will miss it when it’s gone.”

Note the use of the Precautionary Principle at work: “Artificial trans fats are very toxic, and they almost surely cause tens of thousands of premature deaths each year,” says Dr. Walter Willett, chairman of the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard University School of Public Health. “The federal government should have done this long ago.” Suspicion is enough, proof is not necessary. How can one be "almost sure" of death?... Ah, never mind anyway - they have the power, and that's all that matters. Obey for your own good, or shut down your business and go to jail.

September 17 [20:10 GMT] - Canada poised to make trans fat illegal - The great villain strikes again: there is absolutely no scientific evidence that trans fat is bad for your health. Of course there is common sense (is there really any left?...): too much trans fat - too much of anything - is bad for you. Whoppy skippy! The ancient Egyptians knew that already. But today the junk science par excellence, epidemiology, says that trans fat is bad for you - no causality established, no science involved, no accountability whatsoever by the "experts" who generate this trash information. And governments? They go along with the fraud, of course - somebody must show that "something has been done" to forbid what the "experts" say is bad, right? So what if these BS laws put the economy on its knees and make people work much harder to buy food. Health before economy, freedom or truth! This is the Health Revolution!  We want a zero risk existence - and we-mean-zero! Who are you (you bastards) to say that zero risk is impossible? Whose payroll are you on -- who's your daddy?!... So what if there is no proof that trans fat harms health? We don't need any of that hair-splitting shit. We already know that fat kills!

However, (like everywhere else health fanaticism is involved) here the word "know" does not mean scientific knowledge at all: it means belief, justified with a mockery of science, because nowadays religion and old-world witchcraft have been replaced by epidemiological witchcraft. It just sounds more scientific, you know?... We are in the 21st century after all. This critique of the anti-transfat "science" written by Rolf Penner of the Frontier Centre for Public Policy’s Agriculture in 2005 can be literally transposed to passive smoke, as multifactorial epidemiology is trash of universal application.

September 8 [15:55 GMT] - New book: An Epidemic of Obesity Myths - “The first myth is that someone's fitness can be calculated by measuring their BMI - body mass index, a figure based on height and weight. "Normal" BMIs are 18-24.9; "overweight" BMIs are 25-29.9; and an "obese" BMI is a reading of more than 30.  That means that actors Tom Cruise, Sylvester Stallone and Mel Gibson are technically obese. A National Institutes of Health panel stated that as of 2004, 65 percent of Americans are overweight or obese.”

September 7 [15:30 GMT] - Australian cheerleaders told to cover up - Here’s one we almost missed. Why the cover-up? Seems the adults are afraid that the kids will get anorexic if their cheerleader costumes expose a bare midriff, thus tempting them to diet excessively. On the other hand, we might point out that the promotion and tolerance of skinny, attractive cheerleader peers makes fat girls feel unhappy, and may lead to desperate eating binges. Having said that, why are adults – and the government – all supposedly with the custody of the mental and physical well-being of children—encouraging even this much suggestive sexual display among young women, which might be seen as exploitation? But on second thought …. Never mind. Suffice it to say that these days, even running a cheerleading squad is an exercise in fretful pop-psychology second-guessing to the point of utter (pathetic) confusion.

August 28 [17:00 GMT] - Garbage in, garbage out, garbage all around… -  “Another pointless exercise in the statistical torture of data that have nothing to confess.” That’s how ace junk science buster and FOX commentator Steven Milloy characterizes a new study that claims “just a few extra pounds” of weight takes years off your life.

Milloy rips into this study for several reasons. One of those reasons will probably seem especially astonishing to junk science newbies who don’t have a grip on how big a scam statistical junk science can be. The “research” in this one is such that “it could very well be that overweight study subjects killed in automobile accidents or violent crimes are counted by the researchers as being killed by their bodyweight.”

Yep, you got it. Garbage in, garbage out. For more on this, click here.

August 3 [13:20 GMT] - Chicago Chefs protest foie gras ban … (more) - The City of Chicago has banned the serving of foie gras, and a group of restaurant chefs calling themselves Chicago Chefs for Choice has been formed in protest.

One participant to a StarChef. Com forum , on the issue said this:

 “I'm a Chef/Owner in Chicago, I suppose this is akin to the 1920's prohibition (that didn't work out so well either) We have a city council that has apparently solved all of our civic, social and economic issues. I look forward to going to work and seeing no potholes and living with the knowledge that all of the cities schools are well funded and everyone has health coverage. Nice dream right? But not to sound overly biblical, and to paraphrase Joshua in the old testament, As for me and my house we will serve foie gras!!!”

July 3 - Meddling Medicos - The American Medical Association is jealous of the behavior controllers in the United Kingdom who have been given free reign to impose wholesale their social regulations upon the population.  The AMA has a wish list that it wants our government to enact to save Americans from themselves. 

The coverage of agenda in the Wall Street Journal on June 14 adds that the AMA wants the Food and Drug Administration to take salt off the list of food additives that can be used without regulation because they are on the GRAS (Generally Regarded As Safe) list. In other words the AMA wants to treat salt like a carcinogen or other toxin. The reason is to reduce heart attacks and because we stupid people just won't cut down on salt no matter how much the "experts" have nagged us, so the behavior engineers are going after the manufacturers and restaurant owners and hoping to criminalize salt. Since salt-reduced let alone salt-free food is virtually tasteless, they will succeed in making people either avoid restaurants or travel to restaurants with their own shakers. Sort of like hip flasks during Prohibition.

July 3 - Hauling out the heavy artillery - Plans to radically expand the therapeutic state in Great Britain could provide the last nail in the coffin of personal liberty in that once great country.  To combat the brand new "epidemic" of obesity, the social engineers propose sweeping regulations of the food industry and advertising industries.  The medical profession will be monitored to ensure that it is assigning the utmost priority to battling childhood obesity.  Showing its fealty to the multi-national pharmaceutical industry, the government is considering the use of anti-obesity drugs that reduce the size of the human body.  In Great Britain the political goal of converting a free citizens into automatons whose bodies belong to the state is well underway.

June 15 - FDA: Restaurants on front lines in obesity fight - “…And letting consumers know how many calories are contained in a meal also could guide the choices they make, according to the report. Simeon Holston, 33, called more disclosure an excellent idea as he lunched on a sausage-and-pepperoni pizza at a downtown Washington food court…”  

Poor crocodile Simeon needs a shrink as a zookeeper: he doesn’t know that sausage and pepperoni pizza is fattening. What did he learn in school, antitobacco?... Now, really – answer honestly: do you actually and diligently read all the ingredients and calorie reports before taking a bite of food out of a box? Would you do that at a restaurant? You are there to eat, and you have so little time to read as it is, never mind summing up your caloric intake when you're supposed to be enjoying yourself! You have as much time as politicians have to read and digest the hefty 136-page book just cooked up by the Keystone Center for the Food and Drug Administration. Politicians, like most of us, love fast food – and in this case we are talking about political fast food.

Hefty and expensive, those reports tell politicians all about the mounting evidence of fat bellies across the land: the “experts” are saying it; it must be true. Invariably, the remedy is political fast food - more regulation, taxation and prohibition, and the problem will go away. Seriously, who believes that? And who believes that 64% of Americans are overweight? Of course they are - all we need is to change the threshold for obesity and the evaluation criteria, and presto, it's a fact. Equally of course, we are all capable of eating salad instead of sausage without the need for some bureaucrat to regulate our portions. Restaurants at fault? Can anybody say that waiters harass or point guns at the heads of customers who don’t order nice pepperoni pizzas or juicy cheeseburgers? Here is the “Philip-Morris-made-me-smoke” syndrome again, shifting the responsibility from those who make the choice to those who offer it -- so we can force and enforce the “solution”: get rid of the choice. The bad - says who? - stuff must not be made available. Go eat a fat one!

June 15 - Taxing the portly - Meeting this week in Chicago, the AMA is considering recommending a "small" federal tax on soda along with other suggestions for a better and healthier America. It's estimated that small tax, possibly 1 cent per can, could raise $1.5 billion a year, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest (which previously has decried the consumption of most popular food).

The only surprising aspect of this proposed shakedown is that the American Medical Association waited so long in proposing it.  As its membership declines as doctors leave in disgust over the organizations overtly political maneuvers, the AMA retains its clout by enthusiastically joining any ideology that extracts money from the people in the name of public health.  The money, if such a tax is imposed, would go to outfits like the Center for Science in the Public Interest who would take it and construct campaigns to demonize the overweight and the corporations that sell so-called unhealthy food.  Remember the self-serving activism of the AMA and CSPI whenever some bonehead politician cries over the phony "health care crisis."

May 30 - Behold the modern freak show - In today’s world of “Big Brother” and reality TV, covert freak shows can easily pass for respectable mainstream feature writing. Really, what possessed Britain’s venerable (kinda) Guardian newspaper to send a journalist out on assignment to an obscure place in Russia Soviet Union to pay a poor family for exploiting the spectacle of a grotesquely overweight child? Are we learning something from this? Or are we just staring? The lead for this feature is telling; it’s as if the writer lamely tried to put a brave face on this sorry assignment by playing up the trusty health angle: “If there is a 'face of child obesity', it is six-year-old, 15-stone [210 pounds] Dzhambulat Khatokhov”, the article begins. Uh-huh. The Guardian’s web robots reinforce the redeeming social value hook by placing the article on a page with links to Special Reports on Medicine and Health, and “useful links” to institutions ranging from the British Medical Association and the Royal Institute of Public Health to the (good old) World Health Organization. Guardian readers, you may gape and stare with a healthy conscience!

May 30 - The junk food smugglers - Nanny may, in fact, not be all that bad. In England she's apparently teaching little children some very important lessons in entrepreneurship: how to start a blackmarket. With potato chips, sweets, burgers and soft drinks (in fact anything interesting) banned from the British schools, the enterprising kiddies are learning how to stock and run their own businesses, dealing in delectable playground contraband. Older kids are setting up car pool services like underground railroads that lead to MacDonald's.

Alas, poor Nanny may eventually be forced to ban the legal sale of burgers to "children" who are under 18. No, better make it 19. Er,,,how's 45?

May 30 - Follow the losers - In hopes of satiating an insatiable appetite for power and control, Big Beverage has bent over, with hardly a whimper, for the health fascists. Big Beverage no doubt thinks this act of submission will be enough to get them out of the crosshairs.

Big Tobacco tried this ploy starting with the Surgeon General warnings and the TV advertising bans of the 60’s and 70’s. Then vending machine bans and so on. Throughout the 90’s the tobacco companies basically chained their wrists to their ankles trying to gain favor with their persecutors. These tormentors, though more than happy to sidle up for the occasional quickie, had a lot more on their minds than the fleeting pleasure of watching their victim capitulate and squirm.

After decades of rolling over at their beckon call in hopes of a reprieve, Big Tobacco finally learned the real cost of getting off the radar. Cold hard cash to the tune of HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS of dollars that is sucked from the wallets of consumers to pay for government protection. Significant portions of these protection dollars are now being used to initiate and institute what amounts to, in many cases, total prohibition of a legal product on private property!

The "science" behind the obesity hysteria is every bit as shoddy as anything anti-tobacco ever regurgitated. As proven in a recent lawsuit in the UK (perhaps link to your archive commentary?), shining a light on the real science is the only way to derail their poisonous agenda.

If Big Beverage, or Big ANYBODY, plans on following Big Tobacco’s “grab your ankles” script, well, we all know how that movie ends.

Einstein’s definition of insanity: “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”

May 15 - From Big Tobacco to small sugar cone - Finally, the disinfecting sunlight of a public health campaign seems set to end the decades-long reign of the small-proprietor ice-cream vending industry in England.  In a move to draw attention the industry’s manipulative marketing tactics (they systematically park their vans near schools), health campaigners are focussing on the tremendous cost wrought to society by these seemingly innocuous, mostly ma-and-pa businesses.

“There are millions going into healthy food in schools, yet kids are rushing to spend their money on food from mobile vans,” says Chris Waterman, the executive director of the Confederation of Education and Children’s Services Managers .

Think of  the waste. Millions of pounds sterling wasted. Millions. And that’s not just idle speculation. It’s the considered judgement of the Executive Director of the Confederation of Education and Children’s Services Managers.

Those few industry apologists that remain in the health care sector (one quoted here actually sounds as if she’s defending ice cream) should weigh their words carefully or consider changing careers.

May 15 - Big Mac attack - Yes, it's going to be official. The British parliament is about to enact the...er, not law, just apparently the statement that "There is no NEED for bigger burgers." Next they'll be prattling that there is no NEED for strappy gold sandals with 4 inch heels. The declaration is, of course, one more "for the children" who "aren't old enough to make informed choices." Along with its new laws on what is and what isn't "anti-social behavior" Tony Blair's UK is on a Huckabee-like health kick and the article tells us much more than we want to know about Blair's personal path to physical salvation (climbing more stairs; drinking water instead of tea.) And soon, we'll presume, drinking that water in a "smoke-free" pub. Inspiring, isn't it? Doesn't it just make you want to run up some stairs and chug-a-lug some water? Jolly Old England?

May 1 - Science in their own interest - “Had the anti-smoking zealots revealed their entire agenda back in the '60s and '70s, they wouldn't have gotten much. By using the piecemeal approach, they've been successful beyond their dreams, and the food zealots are following their example,” notes columnist Walter E. Williams, in this glimpse into the ambitions of Center for Science in the Public Interest.

If you’re ready for government monitoring and control of your grocery purchases in the foreseeable future, just keep quiet while the anti-smoking, anti-fat brigade arranges it all for you. After all, they’re promising the politicians heftier tax revenues. What weight does your individual dignity carry against that?

that’s happening now with ETS – and it could lead to prohibition if it isn’t stopped.

April 3 - Busybodies or Tyrants? - Walter Williams doesn't have much use for the laughably named Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington DC outfit that campaigns endlessly to convert Americans into a nation of tofu-swilling hypochondriacs.  Unlike many who disagree with CSPI's goals yet attribute good motives to the organization, Williams sees them as a malignant pressure group that is steadily eroding our rights, much as anti-tobacco is doing.  The brazenness of some elements in tobacco control provides the proof that "reasonably" compromising with unreasonable people is a recipe for disaster.

March 24 - Addicting ingredients - This story from the New York Times delves into the plans by special interests to shake down the food industry and they took down the tobacco industry.  Of special interest is an "obesity expert" from Yale named David Katz.  Although he admits that "the evidence is scarce" he believes that the food industry engineer their foods to make their customers eat more.  How do these diabolical companies accomplish this?  By craftily conspiring to make their products taste good!

Research shows that people eat more when faced with a variety of foods, or even a variety of flavors within a single food. For example, you are less likely to overeat plain baked potatoes than those drenched in butter, salt, sour cream and chives.

What a break through!  The task now for Katz and his social-engineers is to mandate that food be boring.  A baked potato and broccoli without even a pat of margarine next to an unseasoned hamburger patty will solve the obesity crisis.  No flavor no fatties.  The future according to Katz.

March 8 - Ostrich denial - As calls to impose a "fat tax" and require warning labels on soft drinks erupt the beverage industry channels the deep wisdom of the Big Tobacco and buries its head in the sand, hoping the mean people will go away.  Such was Big Tobacco's tactic during the early days of the anti-smoking movement when decisive action could have crushed tobacco control before it unleashed its poison upon America.

Confronted with proposals "in favor of a soda tax, such as the one on tobacco" because "studies involving the links of soda and obesity are at the same stage as studies on tobacco and health problems several years ago," a flack working for the American Beverage Association squawks that linking soda consumption with smoking cigarettes is "absolutely ridiculous."

Hardly ridiculous since the demonization of soda is based upon the same sort of "research" that demonized cigarettes.  Big Soda, like Big Tobacco, is an enormously rich industry that is run by cowards who continue to believe that if they only give in a little their persecutors will be sated.  The greed of the conmen and shakedown artists can never be satisfied as the beverage industry will find as it goes down the exact same path as Big Tobacco.

March 6 - Cigarettes of obesity - As the war on fat lumbers onward the shakedown artists and their compadres in junk science are honing in on individual components of the food industry, seeking the weakest links.  Two sets of researchers have found that soft drinks aren't merely associated with obesity but actually cause it.  Two scientific journals this week will publish these conclusions after a week of coverage by the mainstream news media.

As noted in this story from the Deseret News, the researchers have learned their anti-tobacco lessons well.  Much of what they say echoes the dogma that proved so successful against smoking and the tobacco industry.  Explicitly likening soft drink consumption to smoking opens the door to heavy government regulation as well as providing the foundation to shake down the rich soft drink industry by law suits. 

The corporations targeted for shakedown have unfortunately decided to conduct themselves as did the tobacco industry.  Instead of focusing on the predatory motives of the anti-fat special interests they indignantly repudiate any linkage between their product line and Big Tobacco's, seemingly obvious to the fact that anti-fat's "evidence" against Big Soda is just as damning as the "evidence" against Big Tobacco.  That the evidence in both cases is fraudulently concocted escapes the soft drink industry's notice.  Big Soda can learn from Big Tobacco and could win by doing exactly the opposite of what the cigarette manufacturers did.

February 27 - Attack on conventional wisdom - This year has been unkind to many of those who toil in the junk science vineyard.  Recently the benefits of the low fat diet have been shown to be vastly overrated.  Dethroning the low-fat obsession is a cruel blow to those special interests who plan on reaping riches from shaking down the food industry. 

This article from TCS Daily is an excellent compendium of the myths and realities of low fat diets.  It's interesting to note that the fat warriors chose to link breast cancer to fat consumption much as the tobacco warriors found non-existent links between this frightening disease and smoking.  Capitalizing on disease is what social engineers do best.  Ameliorating or curing disease is something they don't do at all.

February 15 - Fat War enlists perfect spokesman - The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the billion-dollar foundation financed by drug company stock, a few years ago branched out from its mission of banning smoking and raising cigarette taxes to benefit the manufacturers of smoking cessation devices to working the "epidemic" of obesity, another racket designed to enrich Big Drugs.  This week RWJF announced an $8-million grant to be given to Bill Clinton, a former president of the United States.  President Bill fronts for something called the Alliance for a Healthier Generation.  Its agenda includes encouraging children to eat better and exercise more.  How novel!  And certainly a better gig for Bill than selling used mattresses.  When two con artists such as these two meet, hold onto your wallets tightly.

February 15 - The orthodoxies crumble - There is a seemingly inexhaustible willingness to believe that the voice of science is the voice of truth -- impartial, incorruptible, and unambiguous. It isn't, of course. Scientists are no less vulnerable to error or bias or ego than the rest of the human race. Scientists too can blunder or act from ulterior motives or convince themselves of things that aren't so. And yet on the whole they enjoy a level of deference and public trust that people in most other fields can only envy.

It's refreshing that these words are written by a newspaper man on the collapse of yet another casualty of the ginned up war on fat.  If only he could persuade his colleagues in the American press to stop reporting press releases from scientists and researchers as straight news.  The level of hysteria over health would diminish dramatically if reporters cast their supposedly skeptical eyes on health studies that daily clog the news.  Old media may stop hemorrhaging subscribers and viewers if reporters made it their business to report what a study actually means, including accurate explanations of what the risk or benefit percentages actually mean.  Above all the people and organizations that fund the study must be identified.  The Chicken Little approach to health and science will backfire unless the hype is curtailed.

February 10 - Littering with secondhand fat - Norman Kjono talks about the war, not on obesity or smoking, but on the working class.  It's Robin Hood in reverse as the elite riffles the pockets of the poor and middle class, remorselessly promoting its thieving ways as the path towards happiness and good health.

February 8 - Candy warning labels - Chocolate bars in the United Kingdom will soon carry warning labels modeled on those that grace cigarette packs.  The labels will support the government's call for balancing lifestyle with physical activity.

The chocolatiers obviously hope to stave off the inevitable shakedown that is building momentum in countries where the epidemic of obesity rages.  The warning labels will be as successful as the cigarette labels were in holding off the con artists and gangsters.

February 3 - Knee-cap the bastards - John Banzhaf III, of Action on Smoking and Health, has seen too many Mafia movies.  He fancies himself as some sort of wise-cracking "muscle" issuing vague but sinister threats to people targeted for a shakedown.  That he makes these threats in writing indicates how confused the moral climate has become.

February 1 - Licking their chops - The shakedown artists and con men may have extracted as much as they can from smokers through high taxes and the tobacco settlement but those exercises in theft were only a warm up to the rape of the food industry.  As the biggest food maker in America Kraft Foods, Inc. is in the crosshairs

Expect to see more articles such as this as the gangsters gear up their campaign against Big Foods.  Boiled down to its essence this multi-paragraph story reveals that Kraft Foods conducted research to find out how to make its food products taste good.  Pretty innocuous stuff but when linked to the same sort of research conducted by its sister corporation, Philip Morris, the nation's largest cigarette manufacturer, the implication is clear.  Big Food is addicting the populations just as Big Tobacco did.

January 30 - Suing to eliminate free speech - A non-profit "health" advocacy group is targeting a breakfast cereal manufacturer and the cable channel that carries its advertising.  Issuing a ultimatum, the Center for Science in the Public Interest,  demands that Kellog Co. and the Nickelodeon cable network radically alter their advertising to children.  If the companies don't commit to changing their marketing approach within 30 days CSPI will file a lawsuit in a Massachusetts court asking to stop Kellog's advertising campaigns.

While CSPI is not known for its sense of humor, one of the plaintiffs it has dug up to provide the human face for its anti-corporate agenda provides some laughs:

"It's hard for a parent to compete with so many ads making junk food fun and cool," Sherri Carlson, a mother of three who would be a plaintiff in a lawsuit, told reporters. "Although I have a strict policy against junk cereals in my house ... this doesn't stop my children from asking me for them, especially after seeing enticing ads."

Got that?  This mother, who refuses to buy the Kellog "junk food", is willing to sue the company because she is annoyed her children are asking for the Frosted Flakes.  In today's American inconvenience and offense is not to be tolerated and batty pet peeves must be allowed to clutter the over-worked courts.

January 27 - Stealth fast food tax - "Fed up" by school kids littering neighborhoods in which high schools are located, an Oakland California city councilwoman has a plan.  Her plan does not focus on the adolescent scofflaws who daily violate the law against littering but instead target the fast food joints that lawfully sell a legal product to those who choose to buy it.  "Fees" ranging from $230 to $3,815 per year would be charged to restaurants and convenience stories depending on the size of the establishment.  Non-profits and professional shakedown artists are enthused about the plan and support is high among city council members.

January 27 - Limits proposed - A county supervisor in the Bay Area has a solution for the epidemic of obese kids; get rid of the fast food purveyors.  While his busybody approach to a dubious problem that has been overblown by money-grubbing special interest groups is hardly unique, this politician's conflict of interest is fairly glaring.  The fast food banner is the owner of a restaurant that competes with the establishments he want to limit.

January 25 - Baseless lawsuit - For years we have said that the suits against the tobacco industry, although highly lucrative to lawyers and special interest groups, were merely dress rehearsals for the main event; taking down the food industry.

Michael Siegel examines a wonderful scheme by a team of lawyers, one a veteran of the tobacco lawsuits, whereby lawyers suing the fast food industry needn't bother with proving cause and effect.  In fact legal wrongdoing by the targeted corporations doesn't appear to have any place in this shakedown scheme.

January 16 - Tightening the grasp - The new year finds Michael Bloomberg, New York City's ϋber daddy and hyperactive mayor, forging ahead into new zones of intrusiveness on his quest to shape up the population.  With smoking out of the way, Bloomberg first jumped on the trans-fats junk science crusade sending out letters to food service operators "suggesting" that they clean up their act.  Next on his list is tackling portion sizes in the myriad of eating places that once made the city famous.  Bloomberg envisions the health department teaching restaurateurs how make a healthy meal.  Bring on the tofu, raw veggies and skim milk!

None of this, of course, is the purview proper to government but in Bloomberg's mad, health-obsessed universe individual taste and choice is the problem and government control is the solution.  Unfortunately the suicidal New York hospitality industry, which ineffectively and flaccidly fought the smoking ban, reveals itself as an unwitting stooge for expanding health department power.

Leaders of the state restaurant association - who opposed the smoking ban - have so far supported the health department's dip into nutritional education, but are eyeing it cautiously.

"It's one thing for them to recommend, it's another if they start saying, 'You must do this,'" said Charles Hunt, who heads the association's New York City office.