July 22, 2007
A modest proposal
Jim Vesely appropriately laments the nannyist King County Board of Health's mandate that (certain) restaurants include calorie counts on the menus.
My modest proposal to stem the expansion of nannyist restaurant regulation -- require that any nutritional disclosure regulations that apply to restaurants also apply to any firm that caters a political fundraiser. e.g. every canape, slice of cheese, dollop of dip, glass of merlot, muffin, rubbery boneless chicken breast, dry omelette and burnt slice of bacon that is served up at a campaign event shall be accompanied by an official disclosure of detailed nutritional information.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at July 22, 2007
08:06 PM | Email This
1. You forget that only the stupid and the poor need protection from the evils of food. The rich, powerful and smart need not be bothered with silly things like that when eating at Ruth's or at a catered luncheon for Simms.
2. I propose every law in Olympia contain a detailed cost analysis. While I have a pretty good idea of what I eat, my waist size is the same it was 30 years ago in high school. I have no clue as to how much I am going to lose everytime Olympia goes rummaging through my pockets.
3. If this helps reduce the health care expenses that we, as citizens, bear for the overweight who don't have adequate insurance, I'm all for it.
4. BA,
I guess the simple solution is government provided "free" health care according to your logic. That way when the government rations the health care they can determine who is not complying with government dietary and lifestyle requirements and withold treatment until they expire. Just think, If you have the wrong BMI you will be forced to diet or lose your government provided health insurance, won't that be fun. If you smoke or drink, the government won't ban the product you abuse, they are making too much money from it. You will simply go untreated and die early leaving more in the SS fund for everyone else to use. What else can we ban Bill, don't stop now you are on a roll! How about making unprotected sex illegal? Think of the Billions of Dollars we could save in disease prevention like AIDS, Hep C. Oh sure, some will protest, but it's for the good of the whole. I bet the folks in Olympia are working up the white-papers to back up all of these great new programs right now..hey maybe you are one of them.
5. Bill Anderson, you want to lower your share of health care cost by regulating what other people eat, yet as a liberal left, I am sure you are fine with paying more through taxes in the name of national health care for other people's health care cost.
6. If Government has ANYTHING to do with it, do you really think it will be cheap! LOL
7. I once heard of a study that found that the average decrease in lifespan for those who didn't regularly exercise was 7 years, about the same as for smokers, and presumably greater than from improper eating. So why not gov't mandated exercise? It worked for Mao; why not for King County?
8. Reduce health care expenses? Is someone who can't pass a math exam going to count calories let alone read the nutritional information?
Coming soon: civil servant nutritionists to provide subsidized guidance to the calorie unconscious.
9. I have a problem with govt telling me what I can eat, or do, and what I can't eat, or can't do (as with the nanny ban on trans fats). I have no problem with govt providing me with the information I need to make an informed decision, even if that means forcing producers to provide such information. The former replaces markets, the latter reinforces them.
If you wanted to cut health car costs, I would think forcing doctors, hospitals, etc publicly to post their prices would go a long way to that goal. A major reason healthcare costs increase is because there is no price competition among healthcare providers. Such a requirement would promote market efficiencies by allowing consumers to make more informed decisions and by forcing producers to pay attention to costs and prices in order to remain viable.
I've often wondered why such a simple, market based solution is never proposed. Maybe someone here can answer that.
10. The same nanny state alarmists who are trying to ban trans fats are the same clowns that told us years ago that trans fats were better for us than animal fats. Anyone remember when butter was bad and margarine was good? Now it's margarine is bad. Of course butter is bad too. What's next? Mandated butter substitute made from fish oil?