[quote]TrainerinDC wrote:
This is the embodiment of the slippery spoke previously spoken of. The founding fathers who wrote the constitution would have never considered the thought of no armed citizens in the nations capitol. [/quote]
IIRC, they would never have considered having citizens in the nation’s capital at all.
[quote]nephorm wrote:
Self-sufficiency is always the best answer.[/quote]
That’s fabulous and eveything, but true self sufficiency has been relatively rare in the last 1000 years and is impossible today unless you don’t mind living without things like electricity or a car for instance, nevermind things like weight training equipment which I’m betting most of us are not practically capable of producing ourselves.
As soon you must rely on others for anything you would hope to be supplied with goods by them that aren’t hazardous to you and your families health. It was much less complicated in the past for this to be the case. In today’s post modern world we must either rely on the rule of law or take it into our own hands.
If everybody “loved Jesus” and did the right thing because it was right we wouldn’t need enforced standards on things as basic as food, but as much as I don’t like it either, we do. As long as we do we’ll be teetering on the edge between personal responsibility and freedom and some kind of community enforcement. Even worse, enforement by these feckless cowardly whores that make up our government at the moment. That really… uhhh… blows, but welcome to the big bad world.
–Tiribulus->
This is a very good discussion. I disagree with banning transfats (but agree with labeling) because I stick to the principle that in recent years the more legislation the State/Fed passes the more our health has actually DECLINED!
People just need to learn to take personal responsibilty and head the warnings pasted literally everywhere. Everyone knows… except for the state of Louisiana maybe, that transfats are bad. People should be able to sign their own death warrant… they do when the ride a crotch-rocket without a helmet (in Michigan that is legal). Merely modern day Natural Selection.
Addtionally, just the act of frying food creates TONS of transfats. They could ban ingredients known to contain transfats pre-cooking, however, every single donut, french fry, and filet-o-fish will have several grams of trans-fats after frying.
TopSirlon
[quote]nephorm wrote:
Kailash wrote:
How about the personal freedom to walk into a restaurant, and eat a meal prepared from food rather than chemicals? This is a freedom that previous generations enjoyed, yet the libertarian extremists of this website would deny themselves and others.
You have already established yourself as a quasi-authoritarian in prior posts. It is clear that you don’t believe in individual responsibility or personal rights.
Trust me, if people wanted to eat healthy food… they would. But guess what? It doesn’t taste as good. This legislation essentially treats citizens as children who are incapable of understanding or learning what is good for them. Spend the money on an educational campaign. Hell, offer limited subsidies for restaurants with organic menus.
Yes, slippery slope arguments are most often made by extremists. Its the only way they can think.
When you start thinking, you let me know.[/quote]
You just proved to me twice that you are indeed an extremist. First, I am an anarchist (libertarian socialist). But you can only see regulation of the allowance for toxins in product sold as food to be the choice of an authoritarian. You’ve been put on an axis of “this or that and nothing in-between”.
Then you claimed that I am not thinking. That would again be an extreme viewpoint.
An extremist deals in slippery slopes, as they can only see things as going to one extreme or another. They can only see one instance as being applied to all others. They cannot view trans fats in restaurant use as one case, and trans fats in labelled use as another. They might not even see the difference between trans fats regulation and cigarettes.
Every case is unique, Neph. Every case. One day you will learn.
[quote]TopSirloin wrote:
Addtionally, just the act of frying food creates TONS of transfats. They could ban ingredients known to contain transfats pre-cooking, however, every single donut, french fry, and filet-o-fish will have several grams of trans-fats after frying.
TopSirlon[/quote]
That’s not exactly true. There would only be trace amounts of trans fats from normal food preparation. And NYC has not banned trace amounts.
The banned trans fats are created in a laboratory in New Jersey, like most of the industrial chemicals that should not be allowed to be sold as food.
The law did pass btw, according to a radio report I heard yesterday. NYC restaurants are still allowed 0.5 grams of trans fats per a food serving, as created by normal food prep. No more 8g of trans fats per a serving of potato chips, as was allowed in the past.
And people once again have the personal freedom to be fed food when expecting food, despite the pro-“business freedom” of those interested in an ever grosser and grosser national product. Like those who created the United States version of “Libertarianism”…
Europe defines “libertarianism” in a completely different context, btw, as freedom for people and not for businesses. Should businesses be allowed more freedom than people? I should hope not.
Please turn off the corporate propaganda “news” in your household. Thank you very much.
Why stop at trans fat? Heck, sugar can be pretty aweful for you, might as well ban that. (Sarcasm intended)
I don’t like the government taking away any freedoms. That is why I thik there should be a rule that for every law that congress passes, they must throw one away, and that for every freedom the government takes, they must give us one back.
Even though I work in law enforcement, and will be a cop one day, part of my swells with pride when I see someone challenging authority.
[quote]Kailash wrote:
You just proved to me twice that you are indeed an extremist. First, I am an anarchist (libertarian socialist).
[/quote]
I don’t think those words mean what you think they mean. What was your stance on models that are “too skinny?” Oh, yeah… government regulation and censorship. And please tell me how the hell you can be an anarchist socialist.
Yep, that’s me… I fully support poisins of all sort being put into our food supply. Give me a break. Whatever the government does, it does badly. I don’t want it watching my waistline for me.
You claiming that it is an extreme viewpoint that you aren’t thinking is an example of you not thinking. Again. From your previous posts, you must be an anarchist libertarian socialist right up to the point when you dislike something… and then regulation is A-Ok. BS.
Because small abuses of power never amount to larger ones, do they?
At any rate, find anywhere in this thread that I used the phrase “slippery slope.” I instead argued that this particular case was an illegitimate government interest on its face. I gave examples of things that others might currently enjoy, but which fall into the same class, which such government action might affect next. It’s a subtle difference, but you’ll get it if you try.
Wow… do you think politicians see them as separate things?
[quote]
Every case is unique, Neph. Every case. One day you will learn.[/quote]
What you don’t seem to understand is that while benign, philosophical despotism is the best sort of government, it is unattainable. As such, we ostensibly have a system that fills in the broad strokes, and leaves the rest to individual responsibility and preference.
And you don’t get to just throw out all the principles every time a new situation comes up… everything does depend on everything else. And trust me… when they come for creatine, or protein, or God knows what else, this legislation will be held up as an example of how the state has been doing the same sort of thing for a while, so this is “nothing new.”
[quote]Kailash wrote:
And people once again have the personal freedom to be fed food when expecting food, despite the pro-“business freedom” of those interested in an ever grosser and grosser national product. Like those who created the United States version of “Libertarianism”…
[/quote]
Btw… there is no such “personal freedom.” There is no such thing as a personal freedom that involves forcing someone else to do something for you.
And I don’t care how Europe defines libertarianism. They define a lot of things in fucked up ways, but that doesn’t make them right. Have you read John Stuart Mill?
We were in the public library one day a few years back and I stumbled over the WALL of congressional record volumes just for the last few years at rhe time. I took my son over there and told him to look at the ten foot high wall that spread for 25 feet from the window. I then went to the national budget which they had a copy of on it’s own table and is about 6 inches thick.
Next stop the United States constitution. I handed it to him and asked how it could possibly be fathomed that all those laws and all that spending was found somehow in this one fairly sparse document.
I know the entire congressional record doesn’t contain only laws and please don’t waste your time with arguments about the constitution being a living document. There is no way the founding fathers EVER in one trillion years intended the utterly outta control bureaucracy we have descended into today.
We still must have the rule of law though and there are many things the foundind fathers couldn’t have forseen, but they did not intended this.
–Tiribulus->
First time posting here, but feel it is an important subject, so signed up.
Banning is never the solution, educating is. Like with sex, when done with multiple partners you can get STD’s like AIDS. Is sex banned? Instead we took the route of educating our children, and using condoms, we put up bilboards, and updating our info and how we get it to ppl.
Banning this is one step in banning other foods. Today it’s transfat, tommorow it’s other types of oil or fat, before you know it Pizza’s as illegal as pot. Sounds silly huh? Fact is we’ve been eating things since the 50’s like this if not worse yet we weren’t in the shape we are now.
A lot of our health problems come from our habits, we drive instead of walk, instead of hard work on a farm we set in cubicles for 10+hours a day then go home and plop on the couch. We need to stop banning food and get more active.
When I eat a chicken mcnugget, it’s not like second hand smoke, I’m not forcing a piece of it down everyones throat in proximity. Someone else said they didn’t know what transfats were but were sure they shouldn’t eat them.
So in other words, you’re told what your eating is bad and let them ban it. Instead have anyone who sells transfat to any buisness have to tell who their selling it to that it contains trans fat. Make any restaurant that serves trans fat foods have to put a poster or warning by the register, make that law. By doing that your not taking the choice out of the restaurants on how to make their living, and giving the rest of us knowledge.
Fact is I can bet atleast 7 out of those 10 would see “Transfat foods served here” and shrug and still eat there, so why should the 3 who would chose to move on speak for all 10?
We have so many soccer mom and dad types anymore that their willing to sacrifice the freedoms of our entire country, freedoms our forefathers fought and died for, for a bit more safety. We used to be willing to give up our very lives for freedom, now we give it up for convenience.
We’re no longer willing to fight for our freedoms because we set back and let them tell us what we should and shouldn’t fight for, and what is and isn’t bad for us.
Take my Grandma, she was healthy for years, now 2 doctors have her so mixed up. One tells her to eat things like bacon ect. like the atkins diet, the other tells her bacon is bad, she shouldn’t eat cheese, pasta with creme sauce, or anything of the sort.
Now she drinks only a certain diet drink, eating only the most bland of foods, drooling over other foods, but because she was told they were bad, she has cut a part of life she enjoyed out. She’s no more healthy now than when she cut those foods out, and if anything she seems more miserable.
This is how it is with everything anymore, we’re told by 100 different ppl to follow 100 different diets, and that excersize isn’t needed because you can pop a pill to speed up your metabolism.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like genetically engineered crops, heart clogging oils and so on, but give me a choice. Let me know that a certain Taco Bell branch uses genetically engineered corn for shells, and let me decide to eat there anyway or go to the store and cook at home.
Don’t ban the corn, causing them to go else where putting the genetic corn croppers out of buisness, raising the price of Taco Bell food, and so on. I just see it as slowling falling rung by rung further on the freedom ladder. This isn’t the worlds biggest blow to freedom, but it is another blow no matter how small.
If we keep convincing ourselves we’ll be fine, then one day we’ll wake up with red meat banned, no alcohol, wearing a certain uniform, driving the exact same cars and so on. America is great because we have believed and fought for freedom, anymore we stand back and let our government tell us where to stand and what to eat. We need to stop saying “They said it’s ok so it is” and start asking for the freedom to choose what’s right for ourselves.
Anyway sry for the long winded speech, just touches a nerve anymore. It’s like seeing something coming at you in slow motion, everyone can see it coming but no ones moving because they figure they’ll just deal with it after it hits them.
[quote]Fading wrote:
–8<-- Snipped for brevity --8<–
A lot of our health problems come from our habits, we drive instead of walk, instead of hard work on a farm we set in cubicles for 10+hours a day then go home and plop on the couch. We need to stop banning food and get more active.[/quote]
The question to ask is why people are less active. Humanity at its core has not changed. People still possess the same traits they always have. Theft, murder, deceit, kindness, charity…these are all still present. It’s external stimuli that have caused this change.
Asking the government to control the situation by banning or requiring companies to disclose this or that is nothing more than curing the symptom rather than the disease because it addresses the what and not the why.
Doctors don’t simply throw medicine at a symptom without trying to understand the cause of the symptom. But that’s exactly what the government is doing by banning and regulating. They are trying to control the symptoms without bothering to isolate the causes.
Until the cause for the decrease in activity is addressed, we’re merely chasing our tails. Find the cause for the disease and the need for curing the symptom will vanish.
Like Nephorm said before. Arsenic is illegal in food because it kills rather quickly. Does anyone think arsenic should be legal to include as a food ingredient even with labeling? What if it took 2 days to kill with continued consumption? 2 weeks? 2 months?
At what point is long enough where we say “well this takes a long time to harm people and so it shouldn’t be regulated”? Clearly some regulation is necessary and if not for the wider implications I would be for making it illegal for public eating establishments to include trans fats in their food. It kills, it just takes a while.
The ideal situation would be where all businesses only market products of any kind that have been shown to at least not be harmful, it not healthy. They do not care anymore if their products kill us as long as they make money.
Do you think the spinach oufit that quite accidentally allowed e-coli contaminated spinach onto the market are in churh on their knees repenting for the harm they’ve caused? I guarantee you they have been in round the clock meetings with their lawyers trying to get out of this with as little damage as possible.
What if there were no legal recourse for those affected and they wouldn’t lose any business by just cleaning it up and going on? Does anyone believe they would’ve spent one dime helping the people they’ve hurt? They have to be forced to do some semblance of what is right by laws.
The trouble there is the laws are made by people who are constantly being stroked off by the very companies and their representative lobbying groups they’ve been charged with regulating. So what the hell is the answer?
Forgive my cynicism, but there isn’t one. A very wise man once said “in a free society the people get the government they deserve”. We built this house by decades of blissful complacency, uninformed voting and not voting at all. These career politcal power mongers don’t drive to DC and move into an office without us. we put them there and will continue to as a society if the younger people I talk to are any indication.
[quote]Defender wrote:
…
Doctors don’t simply throw medicine at a symptom without trying to understand the cause of the symptom…
[/quote]
Many times that’s exactly what they do. which is another whole discussion.
–Tiribulus->
[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
Like Nephorm said before. Arsenic is illegal in food because it kills rather quickly. Does anyone think arsenic should be legal to include as a food ingredient even with labeling? What if it took 2 days to kill with continued consumption? 2 weeks? 2 months?
At what point is long enough where we say “well this takes a long time to harm people and so it shouldn’t be regulated”? Clearly some regulation is necessary and if not for the wider implications I would be for making it illegal for public eating establishments to include trans fats in their food. It kills, it just takes a while.[/quote]
What company would remain in business if it allowed arsenic into its food? But there are protections built in for those companies. All it takes to assuage consumers is for the government to give its okay. Remove the government’s seal of approval and these companies will have to be far more careful about what they put into their products.
They wouldn’t be able to pass the buck because people would stop buying. As it stands now, their bottom lines are not as threatened as they would be without regulation.
Why should they care? Most of them don’t bear responsibility for their actions because they can run to the government for protection from unhappy consumers.
Again, the government stepping in and saying everything is now okay gives consumers a sense of security and provides a security blanket for the producers.
These companies are going to lose less business because of government regulation than they would without it. They have less incentive to be careful because they need only to meet the minimum guidelines.
[quote]The trouble there is the laws are made by people who are constantly being stroked off by the very companies and their representative lobbying groups they’ve been charged with regulating. So what the hell is the answer?
Forgive my cynicism, but there isn’t one. A very wise man once said “in a free society the people get the government they deserve”. We built this house by decades of blissful complacency, uninformed voting and not voting at all. These career politcal power mongers don’t drive to DC and move into an office without us. we put them there and will continue to as a society if the younger people I talk to are any indication.[/quote]
That’s the Great Flaw with the US system of government: 200 people clamoring for 1% of the pie.
[quote]nephorm wrote:
skor wrote:
True. However obesity costs a lot to our society as a whole and affects everyone indirectly through insurance premiums. Obese/unhealthy people are more likely to fall ill and it affects those who are around as well.
Then charge obese people more.
I ought not to be coerced by the government for the benefit of a weak minority.
As an analogy, vaccinations were made mandatory and it prevented spread of illnesses. Should it not be mandatory?
[/quote]
Read The River. There is pretty damning evidence that the polio vaccine in Africa effectively created the spread of AIDS in humans.
If anyone here thinks our government knows what is healthy for you, check out the food pyramid. Then read up on some of the studies based on people following the food pyramid.
I can not believe this law was passed ANYWHERE, nevermind in one of the largest cities in America.
[quote]Kailash wrote:
No more 8g of trans fats per a serving of potato chips, as was allowed in the past.
[/quote]
Okay, great - they can only have 500mg of transfats pre-cooking, but 8 GRAMS is acceptable for a serving of potato chips?!?! 8g of trans-fats is a HUGE amount!
Like I said, frying foods in super-heated oil creates a significant amount of trans-fats, similar to hydrogenating vegetable oils. Anyone can have home-made transfats by frying potatoes, dough, or fish in regular soybean or peanut oil - you don’t need hydrogenated oils to have trans-fats.
This law doesn’t really mean that much… just about worthless legislation. We are going to turn into Canamerica (Canadian-America) where possesion of anabolic steroids will get you more time than trafficing narcotics!
TopSirloin