Andrew Stuttaford wants Big Law to leave his Egg McMuffin (and other guilty food pleasures) alone.
Frances B. Smith restates essentially what I said the other day about Kraft.
In trying to appease the activists, they have given credibility and greater clout to those people who want to control what we eat by lawsuits and taxes and regulations. Just a few years ago, the idea of a “Twinkie tax” on fatty food got a laugh. Yale professor Kelly Brownell has been pushing that idea for at least nine years. In a New York Times op-ed (December 16, 1994), Brownell wrote: “Fatty foods would be judged on their nutritive value per calorie or gram of fat; the least healthy would be given the highest tax rate.” It should still be laughed at instead of parroted or paraphrased by our regulators.
Appeasement never works. Just ask Chamberlain.
The trial lawyers and their promoters, by portraying consumers as victims, are in reality acting against consumers’ interests. Telling consumers that food is the problem and they are the victims of food producers and fast-food restaurants is counterproductive in getting people to take positive steps to eat more balanced diets and exercise more.
Again, it seems like Big Law is a bigger problem in this country than either Big Tobacco or Big Food.
In light of the unprecedented financial assault on tobacco (and, in turn, on tobacco consumers), Kraft’s preemptory actions may seem understandable. But by conceding the moral ground to the fanatical food police so early, Kraft is in fact laying the groundwork for a successful and vicious assault by the trial lawyers and the meddling nanny-state activists.
Today the Sudetenland, tomorrow the world.