J. Justin Wilson, CCF’s Senior Research Analyst, released the following statement regarding the misguided decision:

Labeling obesity a “disease” does a disservice to the millions of Americans trying to lose weight. It only serves to set them up for failure, as they blame their newly-defined affliction, rather than their own lack of personal responsibility. No one denies that the obesity equation is relatively simple: if you eat too much and exercise too little, you’ll put on weight.

This is the only disease that I’m aware of that can be cured by going for a long walk. Obesity is, fundamentally, an issue of personal irresponsibility, period.

If we’re going to win the “war” on obesity, we cannot afford to have overweight individuals say to themselves, “I can’t help it, I’m sick.” It was a lack of personal responsibility that caused them to put on the pounds, and as study after study demonstrates, only personal responsibility will help them lose it.

The notion of food addiction is not a new suggestion. Food control zealots have long argued that Americans have become helpless “McVictims.” But food addiction claims like Moss’ are completely bunk. Cambridge University researchers recently re-issued a warning not to regard “food addiction” as the cause of obesity, noting they found “no conclusive evidence” of food withdrawal and little reason to equate food and narcotics. One pro-food addiction researcher recently conceded that “nobody claims that food has [as] strong of an effect” as addictive drugs on the brain.

“While Michael Moss and others who sell books with hysterical themes would like Americans to think there is some grand conspiracy in labs to turn Americans into food junkies, the theory holds little weight,” said CCF Senior Research Analyst J. Justin Wilson. “Activists know the notion of food addiction won’t hold water, but they use it to excuse lapses in personal responsibility. The logical follow on prescriptions include taxes and bans on common food and drinks.”

New studies would suggest the so-called obesity “epidemic” is leveling off. A recent study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that Americans are eating 3.5 percent fewer calories from added sugar today than they were in 2000, and have cut their sugar intake by six teaspoons per day. Similarly, the number of calories from sugar-sweetened beverages has declined. Those are voluntary changes that ordinary people have made on their own without 12 step programs.

“Obesity is a complicated issue that won’t be solved by making those who are overweight out to be powerless victims,” continued Wilson. “Americans have always known the difference between a banana and a banana split.”

Don’t set yourself up for a summons under the tree. The Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) suggests that, this Christmas, you ensure Santa signs a Christmas Food Addiction Liability and Indemnification Agreement.

This legally binding waiver guarantees that Kris Kringle won’t haul you into court for:

1. Failure to provide nutrition information and a detailed, verified list of ingredients (the “Grandma’s secret recipe” clause);

2. Failure to provide clearly marked usage instructions, including prominently displayed warnings concerning misuse, dosage size, and consequences of overdose;
3. Failure to warn of risk of drowsiness, including associated risk of operating heavy (reindeer-powered) machinery;

4. Failure to warn of risk and consequences of applicable ingredient allergies (lactose, peanuts, nutmeg, holiday cheer, etc.);

5. Failure to ensure that chimney dimensions are compliant with all applicable AHTA (American Holiday Travelers Act) regulations;

6. Failure to disclaim that Christmas lights, lawn ornaments, and other seasonal devices (plastic mangers, snowmen, etc.) are not intended as enticements to overconsumption;

7. Failure to offer organic, low-carb, or zero trans fat cookie alternatives (tofu cubes, celery sticks, carob-and-flaxseed bars etc.);

8. Failure to inform that cookies are not a weight loss food or meal replacement.

“With this waiver, families can spend Christmas morning opening presents, not seeking legal counsel,” said J. Justin Wilson, Senior Research Analyst at the Center for Consumer Freedom. “By swapping out Santa’s name for other likely litigants, they can also protect themselves from Scrooges-at-law who threaten to sue restaurants, food companies, school boards, doctors, and even parents for the nation’s extra pounds.”

Thanks to a combination of economic hardship and a proliferation of cooking shows, home cooking is back. A Harris poll found that 71 percent of Americans are cooking at home more. That would surely cheer famed chef Julia Child, who would have turned 100 last week and who brought the art of French cooking to America’s televisions and dinner tables.

She was legendary in part for proclaiming the virtues of enjoying, rather than fearing, food. Her recipes, heavy with butter, cream and sugar, offered the common household a taste of the good life. They would also offend the nation’s growing class of government worrywarts.

Throughout her life, Child stood against neo-puritans who demanded universal adherence to one view of the perfect diet. Whether she was arguing against organic evangelists with their “endless talk of pollutants and toxins” that played on “the country’s ingrained fear of pleasure” or telling the Associated Press that scolds and nags “see no beauty in food,” Child had no time for overblown hype in the kitchen.

Some would say we suffer because we enjoy the taste of the good life that Child provided. After all, we seem to read constantly that we’re fat, even as we pay more attention to carb-counts, calories and food rules than ever. But despite trying out Child’s rich recipes, our grandparents’ waistlines weren’t ballooning to anywhere near what they are now. Clearly, blaming food hasn’t slimmed a nation down.

That hasn’t stopped the nags and scolds, and now they’ve brought the government to do their dirty work. We’ve even seen them claim that food is addictive like illegal drugs.

Former Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration David Kessler told 60 Minutes last November that food companies are making “super palatable” foods that are “fat on fat on sugar on fat with flavor” and “hijack our brain.” Of course, that’s exactly what Child was doing on television 40 years ago, and waistlines weren’t bulging.

Now some argue that this so-called “addiction” should prompt governments to adopt food taxes or even forbid letting a kid buy a cookie. But Cambridge University scientists found that “The vast majority of overweight individuals have not shown a convincing behavioral or neurobiological profile that resembles addiction.” And the claim gets more ridiculous. The purported evidence for food’s addictiveness is that it makes our brains’ pleasure centers light up. Newsflash: Everything pleasurable lights up our pleasure centers, whether it’s your favorite music or exercise.

Mixing uncertain science with activist agendas to target ingredients or foods hasn’t ever proved a path to good health. Rather than following the blame-a-food-any-food crowd, Child preached a different message: moderation.

If we want to slim down, we’d be wise to follow that advice not only at the table but also in the rest of our lives. CDC figures show that only about 20 percent of American adults get the recommended amount of physical activity.

When she passed, Child was two days short of 92 years old. Not bad for a woman who wrote, “With enough butter, everything is good.” Moderation served her well, and it could serve us all well if we give it the chance.

When you consider the massive amounts of food that some Olympians eat, feeding the Olympic Games looks like a titanic task. The numbers are staggering: Organizers expect to prepare over 220,000 pounds of meat, 500,000 pounds of potatoes and about 42,000 pounds of eggs for the athletes in the Olympic Village.

But aren’t those foods high in calories? Despite eating quite large portions of food and even drinking sports drinks that the nation’s food police are trying to take out of our reach, Olympians are quite healthy and trim, which should teach us some lessons about health, weight and physical activity.

Take, for instance, champion swimmer Ryan Lochte, who will compete in nine events in London. According to the oversimplified food police model of health, Lochte should be buying two airline seats and getting around the airport in an obesity scooter, not a gold medalist challenging for more glory. He, like Beijing Olympics hero Michael Phelps, reportedly eats anywhere from 6,000 to 12,000 calories per day when training, roughly the calorie load of three to six large pizzas.

Compounding this nutritional heresy, Lochte reportedly includes sports drinks, steak, eggs and bacon in his diet. He’s hardly alone. The British newspaper The Telegraph reported that athletes in many sports routinely consume far more than the usual adult recommendation of 2,000 calories per day, and they aren’t all subsisting on industrial quantities of spinach and tofu.

Of course, Olympians can eat that much because they train like world-class athletes. One report said Lochte swims more than the distance of two marathons — over 50 miles — per week. And that’s not all the training he does. All that training burns a lot of calories, and keeps Olympians lean and at the top of their game.

Now, many of us have sit-down office jobs and can’t spend one-seventh of our lives in the pool. But we certainly could get off the couch more. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), only about 20 percent of American adults get the recommended amount of exercise.

And that’s not a terribly high bar to clear: only three one-hour sessions of moderate aerobic activity and two muscle strengthening sessions per week—and gardening counts for both, depending on whether or not you’re digging. You don’t have to run, much less swim a marathon and still most Americans come up short.

We have a lot to gain from taking up more physical activity. A recent study by researchers from Harvard and the CDC published in the medical journal The Lancet estimated that inactivity leads to 5.3 million deaths worldwide each year. That echoes a British Journal of Sports Medicine commentary that found that “obese men who were moderately/highly fit had less than half the risk of dying than the normal-weight men who were unfit.”

There are, to be sure, weight loss benefits to exercise too. Researchers from the National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive and Kidney Diseases surveyed the government’s National Weight Control Registry and found that physical activity was one of two primary methods that helped people who lost weight keep it off. (The other was frequent weight checks.) The lesson is the same as the lesson from the athletes: Calories burned through physical activity matter as much as calories consumed.

But while almost everybody hates dieting, almost everybody can find some kind of physical activity that is enjoyable. Although most people think of exercise in, well, “Olympic” terms — like running, swimming or cycling — it comes in many forms besides those that may be more fun. Walking the dog, carrying your golf bag and dancing can all make positive impacts without the hassle of dieting or “exercise.”

Before turning to government-level controls on our diets, we should try affirming personal responsibility in physical activity. Even simple changes like walking short distances instead of driving and playing active games instead of watching television can make an impact, and we might enjoy making those changes. That sounds a lot more appealing and far more effective than a mandatory diet.

Isn’t part of being an adult having the ability to choose? You know, such as whether you want to nosh on shish kabob, burgers, or hot dogs at your July 4th cookout? Most people think so. But America’s historical love for individual liberty seems to occasionally clash with our Puritanical roots. The dichotomy is once again rearing its head, this time in New York City. Now nosy politicians are taking a bit too much interest in what you choose to eat and drink.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has a Puritanical take: Adults shouldn’t be allowed to order a soda larger than 16 ounces. Yes, you read right. The leader of America’s largest and most dynamic city wants to make it illegal for a restaurant, ballgame vendor, or movie theater to serve you a soft drink larger than 16 ounces. He and his health department think that this edict will reduce obesity.

They also don’t think that banning consumer choices is really all that big a deal. Bloomberg even claims, “I don’t think you can make the case that we’re taking things away.”

Saying that the ban isn’t “taking things away” is obviously absurd. The government is doing just that when it bans certain cup sizes or makes you pay more for two drinks instead of one.

And government-mandated portion sizes like Mayor Bloomberg’s won’t make people slim down. Data from the federal government indicate that soft drinks account for only seven percent of Americans’ daily calorie intake. Many people already drink zero-calorie diet sodas.

So much for the claim that everybody’s guzzling buckets of sugary sodas. Additionally, people are cutting back their full-calorie soda intake. According to research published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Americans have reduced their daily intake of all added sugars by six teaspoons since 2000. The reduction came “primarily because of a reduction in soda consumption,” according to the authors. And let’s remember that all that happened without a government-set serving size.

And once the government starts banning certain foods, where will it stop? New York is already considering expanding its proposed ban to popcorn and milk-based coffees. What’s next? Will Bloomberg ban the pastrami sandwich or ration the cream cheese for Manhattan’s famous bagels?

Clearly, this isn’t good news for our food freedom.  And researchers from Cornell University argue that if the ban doesn’t work (and it won’t), it could even harm useful anti-obesity policy in the future by causing people to distrust future policies. They’d certainly have a reason.

But what about the soda tax, presented as a “moderate” alternative to Bloomberg’s ban? Isn’t that a win-win for stretched budgets and belts?

It isn’t. The promises of shrinking people with the tax code just aren’t backed up by the evidence. Research from Duke-National University of Singapore found that even a steep tax of 40 percent would reduce daily calorie intake by just 12 calories. Most people burn that off with a few minutes’ walk. And the financial impact of the tax hits poor consumers hardest, exactly the opposite of a well-designed revenue raiser.

Of course, it’s a lot easier for regulators and bureaucrats to play mommy and say, “You can’t have that,” than to treat Americans as adults. But banning particular foods or portion sizes is a path of certain failure. Research demonstrates that people instinctively resist heavy-handed dictates. It’s the American way.

Really, there’s only one government that’s successfully put its citizens on a diet: North Korea. This Fourth of July, we should remember that we can do better.

You’ll normally see CREW in action when it files an ethics complaint against a Congressman or calls for an investigation of one group or another. (CREW has targeted us with frivolous complaints in the past.) But all of this supposedly unbiased work has a hidden agenda. Seventy-six percent of the complaints CREW filed with the Federal Election Commission were targeted at Republicans and right-leaning groups; only 10 percent were filed against Democrats and left-leaning groups. And 100 percent of complaints CREW filed with the IRS have attacked conservative nonprofit organizations and Republican members of Congress.

Sensing a trend?

Like many of the other groups that we’ve profiled on ActivistCash.com, CREW’s funding tells a lot about the group’s agenda. In addition to receiving money from George Soros’s Open Societies Institute, CREW has received funding from the SEIU, Democracy Alliance, and other groups that strongly support Democratic politicians.

Ironically, CREW attacks other nonprofits for not revealing their donors. But when it comes to CREW’s donors, executive director Melanie Sloan doesn’t take her own group’s advice, saying, “I wouldn't have any donors if I revealed all my donors.” Or, rather, CREW’s credibility would be where it should be: nonexistent.

Head on over to CrewExposed.com for the full story on how one of DC’s “watchdogs” does little more than lick the liberal hand that feeds it.

Haven’t America’s animal-rights loonies taken enough fun out of life already? When the Weekly World News, better known for breaking news about supposed Elvis and UFO sightings, reports on a story and it doesn’t seem out of place, it’s usually a good sign that someone is playing a practical joke.

But San Francisco’s Animal Control & Welfare Commission isn’t laughing. Just 11 months ago the Commission recommended a citywide ban on the sale of practically all pets. And now the other flipper is dropping.

At the time, Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) CEO Wayne Pacelle was lukewarm to the idea, telling the Los Angeles Times that San Franciscans might find an incremental approach easier to swallow than such a broad move.

I think the best thing would be to start with [banning] the sale of dogs and cats from these pet stores. I think [with a ban affecting more species] you attract a set of additional opponents that sink an otherwise achievable goal.

It now appears Pacelle has his wish. First it’s the goldfish. And then what—hamsters? Turtles? Parakeets? (We’ll leave frogs out of it for now, although a certain parable about boiling water does leap to mind.)

Silly initiatives like this don’t happen by themselves: They require a push from activist groups. HSUS and other animal-rights organizations agitate constantly for just this sort of ordinance, as a baby step toward control over the way humans interact with animals. Self-styled nutrition gurus organize similar pushes for government intrusion into our diets—“for our own good,” of course. And environmental groups spend tens of millions of dollars every year lobbying their way to new roadblocks on food technologies that could make our food supply safer, more abundant, and healthier to eat.

And why not? They’ve spent decades perfecting the twin arts of the swindle and the legislative arm-twist. As long as well-meaning Americans keep funding them, they shouldn’t be surprised when Twinkie-taxes, onerous warning labels, zoning restrictions, salt-starved meals—and, yes, even bans on goldfish—are among the results.

If you think telling grade-schoolers they can’t raise money for charity with a lemonade stand is silly, you’re absolutely right. And if you believe telling inner-city kids they can’t have guppies falls in the same class of foolish, remember that this idiotic idea came from some of the same animal rights activists who are trying to nudge us all toward vegetarianism.

“Crazy is as crazy does,” Forrest Gump famously said. “Mama always said you can’t outgrow crazy.” 

At least that’s what renowned chef Mark Liberman is hinting at on his well-regarded foodie blog. Because as your great-great-grandparents would tell you (if they could), there’s really nothing “new” or revolutionary about eating local:

What I don’t like is this new self indulged movement that says to be a locavore you need to go to a farmers market, pickle something from the winter to enjoy in the spring, buy from local vendors, go to a farm and meet the man who raises your chickens and make your own vinegar from leftover grapes during harvest. Do I agree with all these?? Yes, of course I do!! But these are things that have been around for centuries, in fact I have several cookbooks in my library at home that date back to the 1800′s that focus on this. So, when I hear someone tell they are a locavore, I have nothing to say. Locavores have good ideas, relevant ideas, but there is nothing new.

On his own blog this week, Sacramento Bee restaurant critic Blair Anthony Robertson took notice of Liberman’s judgment, adding his own suspicions of the “self-congratulatory component to it that tends to be annoying”:

I even encountered a menu in Roseville that touted "local" halibut. I'm not a fisherman, but I didn't think halibut were found wending their way through the shallow waters of the American River, though I have spotted a sea lion at Sutter's Landing. I had always thought that the biggest and best halibut were caught in Alaska. When I asked the server, she wasn't sure what “local halibut” meant, so she checked with the chef. Turns out, “local”meant Pier 36 in San Francisco …

Too often, touting local or farm to table is an excuse to take the rest of the night off. I mean, if it's local and we can even name the farm, we don't have to do anything interesting to the cooking or even to the prepping. Yes, I've eaten plenty of steak of laudable provenance only to encounter lots of local gristle.

For most consumers, of course, farm-to-table dining ethics aren’t where the rubber meets the road. Most households are more concerned with how available food is, what it costs, and whether or not they enjoy it enough to have it again. And in most parts of the country, eating strictly local would mean avoiding veggies during the coldest months. (How healthy is that?)

For locavores who haven’t sufficiently hamstrung their cooking options, they can always become raw-food vegans, or “invasivores” (the “if you can’t beat ‘em, eat ‘em” approach to managing invasive species), or even “freegans” (because it’s hard to eat more “local” than your nearest dumpster).

These are all legitimate, if unconventional, choices. Different strokes for different folks. Just don’t do too many victory laps around the kitchen.

Nestle blogged last Friday about something we’ve been emphasizing for months, namely, that “sugar is sugar” whether it comes from beets, cane, or corn. And, she reiterated that the biochemical difference between corn sugar and ordinary table sugar is so “biologically insignificant that the body can’t tell them apart.” (The difference in fructose between corn sugar and table sugar is only five percent.)

The U.S. sugar cartel’s only interest in slamming the “corn sugar” name is to protect its product from a legitimate competitor—not to safeguard public health. That’s Nestle’s straight-shooter opinion:

[T]his lawsuit is about marketing competition among sources of sugars (plural). It has nothing to do with health.

Sugar companies aren’t in the habit of describing their product as “beet sugar” or “high fructose cane polysaccharide granules.” So it’s no surprise that they’re opposed to the “corn sugar” name change. Consumers might actually understand that there’s no significant difference between table sugar and corn sugar, forcing Big Sugar to compete with its primary competitor on a level playing field.

Thankfully, Marion Nestle recognizes corn sugar and beet sugar are about as different as chickpeas and garbanzo beans. Anyone who says otherwise is probably trying to sell you something.