With a host of proposed food regulations on the table, sometimes there’s no telling what the next absurd idea will be. A somewhat tongue-in-cheek editorial in Saturday’s Los Angeles Times describes what a few of these regulations might look like if “Twinkie tax” inventor Kelly Brownell and the rest of the food cops win their repugnant crusade to demonize food to the same level as tobacco.
The Times writes:
Society could move forward with local ordinances that ban cookies from enclosed public places where others might be exposed to secondhand sugar, and, of course, at parks, where children might see them. Vending-machine sales of Ritz crackers would be banned. In fact, it might be best for stores to put the Cocoa Pebbles behind the counter. Children would have to show proof of incipient adolescence to purchase. Or they could always prevail upon some morally deficient adult, lurking in the supermarket parking lot, to buy their breakfast cereal for them.
Whether they knew it or not, the Times editors’ joking prophecy isn’t that far from what’s already been proposed. Brownell has testified before the Senate that “children are to the obesity field what second-hand smoke was to tobacco.” Ritz crackers are just a start for the food cops, who want schools across the country to pull the plug on their vending machines altogether. Public Health Institute lawyer Edward Bolen suggests “putting nutritionally deficient foods behind the counter like you do with spray paint.” And if all that doesn’t do the trick, New Zealand proposed slapping minimum purchase ages on a huge list of food options.
For more inane — and insane — proposed regulations, take a look at our top ten list of stupid food ideas.
