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Continuing its trend of opposing any and all new technology (in this case, even if it saves lives), Ralph Nader's Public Citizen says, "The legalization of irradiation of our food supply is incredibly irresponsible, given the inadequate testing of effects on consumers' health and nutrition." Nader's nannies make this ridiculous claim despite repeated assertions of irradiation's safety from the Food and Drug Administration, the World Health Organization, and the American Dietetic Association.

Reporting on the growing number of overweight Americans, Toyko's leading newspaper points "to the ever-increasing size of the portions served at restaurants as silent testimony to the fact that Americans are eating more than they need." Stateside, the Christian Science Monitor's look at fighting obesity with fad diets sideswipes the restaurant industry: "In recent years, portion sizes in restaurants have increased dramatically, but for what useful purpose?"

Students at Penn State University will hold a conference March 31st-April 2nd designed to "join together activists from numerous political and social movements." Topics for discussion include making animal rights a social justice issue, attacking the beef industry, the promotion of a vegan lifestyle, a presentation by anti-milk activist Robert Cohen, and the use of civil disobedience. This meeting reinforces the fact that nanny groups of all stripes are uniting to take on issues outside of their normal individual agendas.

Marketing soy as a product that will help alleviate hot flashes has allowed soy producers to make a dent in dairy sales. However, researchers from the Mayo Clinic have nixed the soy producers' claims. "Despite optimistic hopes that this soy phytoestrogen product would alleviate hot flashes, the scientific data from this study demonstrated that it did not help," said one researcher.

Knight-Ridder News Service gives Murry J. Cohen of militant animal-rights group Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine a free ride in a syndicated editorial. In effort to scare to public with baseless claims about meat and dairy products, Cohen writes: "As we fret over the possibility of a modern plague, we live a self-fulfilling prophecy by continuing to eat meat and other animal products." ("Eating responsibly in the age of the epidemic," Knight-Ridder, 3/1/00.)

Without any scientific facts, the Boston Globe says there is an "obvious link between the growing popularity of 'supersize' servings in restaurants and grocery stores and the country's weight problem." If left unchallenged, this type of inflammatory rhetoric could quickly turn the hypothetical "link" between fast food and obesity into fact.

Yet another article “linking” obesity to fast food has appeared, this time in Asia. Quoted in the story is Professor Paul Zimmet, head of a steering committee sponsored by the…

Soy milk advocates have taken advantage of nanny fear campaigns vilifying milk with a brilliant marketing strategy that has made tremendous inroads on the dairy market. Soy milk producers are but one of many companies learning to market to the fear activists create, thereby changing the way some products and industries are perceived.

From deploring Kelly Brownell's fat tax to attacking CSPI's call for lawsuits against restaurants, two recent editorials in Charleston's Post and Courier and the Cincinnati Enquirer apparently draw upon Consumer Freedom research to take on the food police. ("The calorie cops demand a Twinkie tax," The Cincinnati Enquirer, 2/26/00.)

When questioned about the rabid animal rights group's sometimes violent tactics, the leader of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals' anti-fur campaign said, "I think that when PETA picks a target, it's hard to control what our members will do. We have 600,000 members across the world, and when something happens we hear about it after the fact." How convenient…