It's been a busy decade here at the Center for Consumer Freedom. We've had our hands full battling a seemingly endless mob of food fearmongerers and the absurd ideas they try to sneak into the mainstream. As 2010 draws to a close, our op-ed in the Las Vegas Review-Journal looks back at it all. We’ve selected the five dumbest food cop proposals from the past ten years, and our absolute (least) favorite was the fast-food lawsuit:
What do trial lawyers and candy bans have in common? As the nation's waistlines grew over the past 10 years, so did calls for more and more invasive government controls of what and how much we eat. While anti-obesity puritans have proposed some pretty ludicrous ideas (such as putting candy behind the counter with adult magazines), these five schemes take the cake as the dumbest of the decade.
Hungry trial lawyers have long had their eyes set on suing "Big Food" for supposedly "making" people fat. One such lawyer is John Banzhaf, who also has advocated suing doctors and said lawyers should even "go after parents with TVs in their [kids'] rooms."
Fortunately, one lawsuit was quickly rejected in 2003 by a U.S. District Court judge, who wrote of heavy eaters, "it is not the place of the law to protect them from their own excesses." That's because suing food providers is an insult to both common sense and personal responsibility — no one forces someone to buy food.
For the rest of the list, click here and read the full piece.
