Keep Your Hands off my Vending Machines, You Damned Dirty Bureaucrats!
Really, Washington? You really don’t have enough to do that you feel it necessary to stick nutritional information on vending machines?
I swear I am sick and tired of living under a government that thinks me so unutterably stupid that I couldn’t possibly know that the prepackaged (yet delicious!) wads of sugar and various chemicals I get from a vending machine are fattening until some overpaid bureaucrat tells me so. It seems like every time I turn around, almost literally, my government is scolding me. I can’t buy anything anywhere without some government-approved lecture warning me that some obscure chemical inside it could possibly kill me. I escape to the open road where I hope to be rid of the All-Seeing Nanny, but no. If I’m not assaulted with lectures via billboard — don’t drive drunk, wear your seatbelt, don’t drive aggressively, don’t talk on your cell phone, pay attention — my radio is flooded with them in the form of helpful little PSAs. Television, magazines, newspapers, even the internet is infested with Washington’s Scolding Nannies.
And now, Twinkies have become Enemy Number One? Ye Gods, what a nation of whipped curs we’ve become.
It’s enough to make me want to have a dinner that consists only of a steak the size of an actual Holstein and two beers so dark and rich they form their own food group. Then, a dessert with more calories than the average NFL lineman eats for breakfast. I’ll give my meal plenty of time to settle because I’ll be smoking the fattest cigar I can find — one that required the efforts of an entire Dominican village to make. Then, I want to hop into a 1966 Ford Mustang Shelby GT 500, crank up Van Halen’s version of “You Really Got Me”, drive 100 miles an hour until I get to the nearest left-wing, totalitarian bastard of a Congressman and slow down just long enough for him to figure out that I’m flipping him the bird.
Oh, then I want to spend a couple hours at a target range with the largest-caliber hand-cannon they have. You know, just because the Constitution says I can.
Enough is e-frakking-nough.
Other Posts of Interest:
- Congress Moves to Hose People Who Pay their Debts
- Majority of Americans Say “Please, Big Government, Don’t Help Anymore!”
- Sit ACLU, Sit. Good Dog.
Category: The Rise of the Nanny State
I was pretty rant-y when they started in with the yummy goodness known as trans-fat, then the deliciousness of cereal. But now this? The joy of vending machine snackage denigrated with an icky "nutritional information" thingie?
Listen up, Feds… Give me liberty or give me death! Or, give me liberty AND death. My stomach, my choice!
And pass the beautifully artifically-colored Twizzlers. I know what is in them… I don't need YOU to tell dum-dum me that they aren't made of vitamins and fiber. I like them anyway.
Thankies!
They're following the British model. The state will take care of you. The state will monitor your safety. The state will ensure your health.
By the way, if you're not reading http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnis… every week, you should be.
Go Jimmie go! Jimmie be good. [The 'whipped curs' phrase is a model of restraint for one so justifiably worked-up.]
Quoted from and linked to at:
http://www.thecampofthesaints.com/2009.08.23_arch…
I have to always remember that my Mom and Dad read my blog on occasion, so the language can only occasionally stray into R-rated and even then only rarely.
Reminds me a bit of Edgar Friendly (Dennis Leary) in the movie Demolition Man.
Quoted from and linked at: http://parabarbarian.blogspot.com/2009/08/when-is…
The fact of the matter is, one of the major causes of obesity in the world are eating habits. If we're going to force the government to play a larger role in insurance, then we also have to expect that they will try to limit the damage.
Make no mistake, poor eating habits cost money, in the form of health care provided to people with higher cancer rates, heart conditions, diabetes, and medical accessories – billions of dollars every year. If making people more aware of what they put into their pie hole saves money, as well as increases our lifespan/quality of life, then the government owes it to us to present us with all of the information we need to make an informed decision.
Personally, I love the taste of junk food and fast food and what have you – I loved it so much that I weighed 300 pounds (at 6'5".) I started paying attention to what I put into my mouth, and now i'm 60 pounds lighter. Information is power.
It's good that you've done what you've done. However, you don't have the right to force that on the rest of us. That's the whole of the argument.
Force? Providing information isn't forcing anything. What you're advocating is that you'd rather wallow in ignorance so that you don't really know how bad something is for you, rather than be faced with the tough decision of limiting yourself and or expressing some self-control (it is a tough decision). From what I've read, no one is going to beat you down if you decide not to buy a bag of doritos, but a lot of people legitimately are unaware of what food they consume on a daily basis does for them in terms of their nutritional needs. Like it or not, each person does have nutritional needs that have to be met – you wouldn't overfeed a plant, it would die. It's the same with us, and we do have a right to eat all we want, but we still need to be aware of the details.
No, what I'm saying is that it is entirely unnecessary for a government agency to be involved in telling us that a Twinkie isn't a crown of broccoli. When I can't even buy a bag of chips without the nannying voices of government bureaucrats waving their health warnings in my face, I tend to wonder what, exactly, my government trusts me to do.
As it happens, it trusts me to do very little on my own.
It's not that easy though…Most of the time it's cheaper for food companies to use unhealthy products. We buy those same unhealthy products because it's cheapest, even though it's destroying our health.
The argument that you're using would lead me to believe that you also don't think there should be warnings on cigarette packs or the like. Since the 1950s, the percentage of people who smoke cigarettes in the US has dropped 40%. That's due to educational materials and warnings that have been put out by the government to educate us…there are still plenty of people who smoke, and it's their right to even though we know for a fact that it WILL kill them, and the same will be true for food.
Terrible eating habits will kill just as surely as smoking will, but from heart attacks and diabetes related illness rather than cancer. If people are aware how unhealthy their food is, well then maybe they'll make a change, just like people stopped smoking.
Umm…far from trying to force the government to play a larger role…some of us are actually trying to get them out of our business completely. And for precisely this reason. Because suddenly, the mere discussion of what role the government should have in our lives & health care has allowed everyone from Bill Mahar to a stranger named "Kory" on a message board to weigh in on everyone's eating habits. That's why most of us know instinctively the health care debate is not about covering the poor, uninsured people…its about giving no-good, busy-bodies a reason to mind other people's business and not their own.
And at 6'5" and 240 lbs., you are still safely in the government's "obesity range" yourself, so I'm going to give you a few tips (so you don't have to wait for the government to confiscate billions of tax payer dollars & borrow from American kids' futures to finance some program to tell you how to get control of yourself.)
Cut out all Cokes…drink water. 6-8 glasses a day and drink one glass at least 10 minutes before each meal.
Cut out chips, snacks, cookies, doughnuts, twinkies, anything that is chocolate covered or has cream filling.
Eat lots of fresh vegtables & a couple of pieces of fruit per day. Don't top your veggies with cheese or butter.
Eat lean cuts of meat in 4 oz servings.
When eating out, never eat more than half of what is served to you. And if they automatically bring bread to the table, ask them to take it away.
Avoid any meal that contains gravy!!
…or is battered or deep fried.
Make sure your last meal of the day is finished at least 12 hours before you intend to eat breakfast. And if you get hungry in between meals, munch on some yummy carrot sticks.
Come back & see us when your BMI is 6-9 points lower than it is now.
Thanks for the advice, it's all something i've been following for quite a while now and it's allowed me to drop an average of 12 pounds a month consistently for the past 5 months, and I continue to drop weight. I'm also considered to be in the 'over-weight' category, straight from the CDC website. Your sources aren't entirely reliable. The advice you gave is very sound, despite the fact that your only real point was to make an ad hominen attack against me because you can't say anything of real value.
Many friends and relatives ask me how I lost as much weight as I have. I must have exercised a rediculous amount. No. 90% of the weight I personally lost came from a change in my eating habits. Does that mean I've cut out all of the things we 'shouldn't eat? No, not by a long shot. I usually eat my entire plate when I eat out, and I love french fries and fried chicken. My lunch yesterday was a big hunk of french bread with olive oil. But everything in moderation.
The reason I WAS so overweight is because I didn't really know any better. We have a culture of over indulgence, where you can buy 5 burgers at McDonalds for $5, and it's cheaper than getting a salad. You'd be dumb not to take up a deal like that, except for that fact that it is slowly and inexorably killing our nation (along with most other developed countries.) Making people aware of just how that cheeseburger fits into their daily lives, and the requirements of their bodies can and will help them to make informed decisions, because as has been pointed out, the government can't make them for you.
The point, Kory, is that the government we have now very much wants to make those decisions for us. Labeling Twinkies is a step along that road. The truth is, people know that a hamburger is not as good for you regularly as a salad. They don't need government-mandated labels to tell them that. Indeed, if people really wanted all that information on their food, they'd ask for it themselves and patronize those places that gave it to them.