CSPI: Miami and Everywhere Else

Jazz Food Police are looking through my folders...

Welcome, readers, to this edition of the show where we beat up Margo Wootan and Kelly Brownell. It's the least we can do.

Today's article is brought to us by Reuters, and it stars the FTC. An offical - the head of the organization - had the audacity to state that banning junk food ads that someone has deemed as "aimed at children" (note da scare quotes) is not the answer. Amazing. Really?

Prohibiting ads for unhealthy foods "is impractical, ineffective and illegal" under the First Amendment, which protects free speech, said Timothy Muris, chairman of the Federal Trade Commission.

"I think banning marketing is a distraction. Even our dogs and cats are fat ... and it's not because they're watching too much advertising," Muris said at an obesity conference in Williamsburg, Virginia, sponsored by Time magazine and ABC News.

That's right - our pets are fat! Blame that on little Johnny's tv habits. But happy Margo of the Woo-Tan Clan informs us that parents feel "outgunned" (forget the whippersnappers! We've got guns! [a very old silly private joke]) by Big Advertising.

Yawn.

Margo, are you just trying to make Kelly feel better because he's fat? It's not his fault, you know. It's those damned long hours he puts in trying to make Americans take less responsibility for their food habits. Really. (See last week's time magazine if you want some wisdom bits (and a photo) of sedentary perky Kelly Brownell. (p. 83, 6/7/04 issue). (If I had to caption the picture, I'd say "You can't discredit me; I'm a YALE psychologist!")

Oh, a bit off the tilt, but Kelly is THE big dog proponent of the so-called (to piss of Brian) "fat tax." He's the author of (in case you missed it: Food Fight (haven't picked that one up yet). In Time, it's noted that a penny-a-can tax could produce 1.5 billion in anti-obesity money. (Or...something else...as those tax tides turn. Anybody remember da tobacco settlement?).

Rest of the above-noted article doesn't tell you anything you don't already know. So move along, now. Y'know, burn some calories.

hln

Posted by hln at June 8, 2004 05:43 PM | Nutrition | TrackBack