Big food companies are “21st-century pedophiles,” and ice cream is junk food?

Who knew?

Via Weekly Standard.

Readers will be aware of the war on junk food. We think, for instance, of former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s unsuccessful attempt to ban large soft drinks from the city, the FDA’s ban on trans fats, and the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that fast food chains prominently display calorie information….

But it could be worse. Compared to what the Chilean government is doing, as we learned recently from the New York Times, the United States is a libertarian paradise. “The Chilean government, facing skyrocketing rates of obesity, is waging war on unhealthy foods with a phalanx of marketing restrictions, mandatory packaging, redesigns and labeling rules aimed at transforming the eating habits of 18 million people.”

Since the law went into effect in 2016, companies like Kellogg have had to remove cartoon characters from cereal boxes, and candy companies have been forbidden from including trinkets with their products. No more Tony the Tiger or Cracker Jack prizes. The law prohibits the sale of “junk food like ice cream, chocolate and potato chips in Chilean schools.”….Beginning in 2019, ads for these and similar items “will be scrubbed entirely from TV, radio, and movie theaters between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.” Packaged food items now display “black warning logos in the shape of a stop sign” if the items are high in sugar, salt, calories, or saturated fat. Kellogg, PepsiCo, and other companies have raised objections to the law, but lawmakers like Senator Guido Girardi, who calls big food companies “21st-century pedophiles,” aren’t inclined to listen.

The Times report, not surprisingly, casts the whole story as a simple case of good versus evil—of earnest and public-spirited public officials “encountering ferocious resistance from food companies eager to protect their profits….”

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3 Comments | Leave a comment
  1. Alain41 says:

    Chile has National Health Care and Private Ins. Sys. with its own doctors and hospitals. 80% of population are in NHC and the richest 20% use the private system. Wikip. says that since 2007, public satisfaction with NHC has been decreasing. Also says that Chile had been aggressive toward mortality at the expense of chronic diseases. This looks like the plan for chronic disease. Not spending more money that it doesn’t have on health care.

  2. MACVEL says:

    They should seek advice from Mooch’s famine program for children.

  3. Maynard says:

    Some of us are old enough to have grown up before healthy food became a thing, and we grew up eating junk; everybody did. I don’t want to say that was okay, but kids and adults weren’t fat then.

    Obesity is a problem that ought to be addressed, but, like so many other problems, a war-on-whatever seems to coincide with things getting worse.

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