First Lady Michelle Obama is making sure we eat healthy. Go Michelle! How lucky are we, to live in a society where our masters take such good care of us. I don’t know about you; but I sleep soundly knowing that the Most Important Woman in America (next to Madame President-to-be, Hillary Clinton, of course), has our culinary and nutritional backs.
Nutrition facts labels on food packages are getting a long-awaited makeover, with calories listed in bigger, bolder type and a new line for added sugars, after a major push by first lady Michelle Obama.
Facts getting a “makeover”? Since when do facts need a makeover? Facts are simply that; facts.
The First Lady wants us to believe that without government, we would have access to none of these facts. If big, mean, greedy, selfish and evil food producers were not forced by the government to tell us these facts, then we would be lied to. After all, businesses have no incentive to tell us the truth. They rarely, if ever, will tell us the truth. And politicians rarely, if ever, will lie.
If you believe that, I’ll bet you voted twice for Barack Obama.
And serving sizes will be updated to make them more realistic — so a small bag of chips doesn’t count as two or three servings, for example.
Is there even one person in the United States – just one person – who follows serving recommendations simply because the federal government made them? Those who might arguably need them will never pay attention; chances are, they cannot even read the labels provided. And those who don’t need government telling them how to eat will not read them, either.
So exactly why do we provide government with the money and power to provide these labels? Some will reply that they utilize these facts in determining their nutritional intake. I don’t doubt this is true, of a minority. But would these facts not be available in a free market unencumbered by government mandates? It all depends on what customers want. If enough customers demand information in order to buy the products food manufacturers are selling, then rest assured that businesses – operating on the motive of self-interest – will provide them. In fact, a private market would probably “upgrade” or update the information a lot more thoroughly, and a lot more often than once every 20-25 years, which is how long it takes.
Michelle Obama would have us believe that without her, or without the federal government mandating such things, the information would not be available. In reality, just the opposite is true. And even in a hands-off free market society, fraud is properly against the law. Leaving aside that businesses will most likely want to provide accurate information so as not to demoralize and lose customers, providing outright false information would qualify as against the law.
The first lady is expected to announce final rules for new labels in a speech Friday morning as part of her “Let’s Move!” campaign to combat childhood obesity.
If the fate of children’s health lies in the hands of a command-and-control politician’s wife in Washington DC, decreeing orders or recommendations from her maternalistic throne, then all of us – not just children – are doomed. Here again, the parents who would do well to consider rational advice for their kids’ diets will be the least likely to follow that advice, assuming First Lady Michelle’s advice is unquestionably rational and reliable. Short of hiring social workers to police the homes of all families with young children, Michelle’s efforts are a precious waste of time and money.
Yes, I realize that such things make politicians and politicians’ spouses feel morally superior. But they have nothing to do with reality or facts.
Mandates and regulations beyond what consumers would demand in a free marketplace cost businesses more money. They take time away from business’ job of pleasing customers so businesses may please the federal government, instead. Michelle’s feel-good mandates cost customers money by slowing down efficiency and profitability in the companies from whom people are buying food. Neither Michelle nor her husband, nor the next Twits in Chief we install on the government throne to run all our lives, will ever get the blame for any of this. They will only get credit for “caring.” The more such worse-than-worthless idiots like Michelle Obama make all our lives more cumbersome, the more we applaud them for “caring,” the more power we give them and the more trillions our federal government goes into debt.
And we wonder why America is falling apart at the seams. You’ve done it to yourselves, people: Particularly those of you who support such moronic ventures.
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