Have you ever seen those 1930's era photos of serried ranks of Germans, all doing their pre-work calisthenics, all dressed exactly the same, in formations that would make a Guardsman proud.

Calisthenics and other forms of physical excercise seems to be an obsession peculiar to socialism, I suppose the motto of ' a healthy mind, in a healthy body', rings their collective bell, as they try to get at least a part of it right, they certainly have no hope of achieving the first part!.

Now that the war against tobacco has, been as good as won, the next target could be food. We will only be able to buy or eat what is considered as 'healthy', by some pompous, anal retentive bureaucrat, or by some industry sponsored academic. (remember the Flour Advisory Board recommendations?).

I thought that the next target might have been alcohol, but of course, too many of our elite owe a debt to the brewers and distillers, and we must not forget the tax revenue stream.

Previous attempts at prohibition have all been total disasters, in spite of drink causing far more social damage than any of our other 'bad' habits.

So much for all these 'social engineering' experiments being supposedly for our communal benefit, when in reality they are just exhibitions of communal control, instigated by anonymous non-entities in the bureaucracy.

That they are happy to spend such large sums on 'weight-watcher' schemes for civil servants, is almost beyond belief, do they have no sense of priorty?.

Well, maybe. But would those worthless, self-propagating parasites have so easy a time of it if Britons were in shape? Wouldn't you expect people with pot bellies and without the wind to walk around the block to want someone to take care of them?

I don't disagree with anything you say about this subject, but I do notice you focus your fire entirely on the government, seeming to expect outraged citizens (sorry, subjects) to follow you to the barricades. They're not, are they? Maybe they are used to ineffectual bureaucracies scurrying around issuing reports and plans. Maybe they like the idea that the government is doing something about problems, for its own sake.

Or maybe they're just soft. A free society can't long be held up from the top; it has to be supported from the bottom, by a vigorous and virtuous citizenry. Maybe what our prosperous countries are lacking now is as much in the governed as in the government.

So they're spending 9.6 billion to fight something that's costing 3.6 billion?
Does that sound cost-effective?

I remember being very impressed by the required morning calisthenics for all citizens in 1984 when I first read it at age twelve thirty-six years ago. With that one incident, Orwell taught me what tyranny is.

I find it incredible that my nation (U.S.) has made health fascism a national priority. The only winners are those who draw the government salaries.

One way to lesen childhood oesity is to let the kids out and play. But you can't do that because of the fears of child molesters and other sleazy types- the same fears promoted by these lefties in the first place.

Give me liberty, or give me a bloody great bacon double cheeseburger! With fries and coke on the side.

Seriously, not so long ago the wonderful Blair govt. proposed that doctors could have the right to impose health regimes on their plump patients. This is the logical outcome of socialised medicine. Instead of rationing a scarce resource - health care - by price, as in the market, you have to ration it through some kind of bureaucratic rule. So it is no surprise that socialist-minded folk deem their are entitled to tell us how to live our lives.
Hayek and others predicted this would happen decades ago.

God, I loathe the Labour Party and everything they stand for. They are a plague of locusts on the economic and political health of the nation and its spiritual wellbeing. Munch, munch, munch. Leave waste everything on which they alight. They are fleas, with all the lack of any single redeeming feature that characterises parasites. BTW, does anyone know whether Blair has ever actually earned any real money? By which I mean, has a private individual or corporation ever paid him to plead for them? Or were all his briefs on the public payroll? Has this 50-year-old ever done a day's work in his life that wasn't to the account of the taxpayer? Or is that another thing he has in common with serial liar Bill Clinton? At least Hillary got out and worked her own scams.

> seeming to expect outraged citizens (sorry, subjects)

No, "citizens" is fine. Since 1831 and - colloquially at least - much earlier.

But I agree with your comments, especially the last paragraph: active citizenry is almost a dead concept in Britain. And, by definition, it is something that cannot be revitalised by a conventional political party but only maybe by some kind of anti-political movement that scares the hell out of the parties. Where to start....?

Congratulations on a brilliant rant!

Just one minor caveat. You refer to 'porcine civil servants'. This may be true of the United Kingdom but it is certainly not true of the European Commission, where I myself am employed. Most Commission officials are slim, trim and brimful of energy. Perhaps they are 'feline' or 'canine', or even 'caprine' -- but they are certainly not 'porcine'. We even have an on-site 'Centre de Sante' where we can do workouts or Aerobics or Yoga or otherwise do the 'mens sana in corpore sano' trick during lunchbreak or after working hours.

If you're building the Europe of tomorrow, you can't afford to be overweight.

Besides, comparing civil servants with pigs is offensive to animal dignity. What harm have the porkers ever done to man?

I think I'll have to report you to PETA.

Listening to the first hour of the Nick Ferrari phone in on LBC this morning was rather heartening in a depressing sort of way.

Apparently there was a programme called Wife Swap on Channel 4 the other night where the mothers of two famillies go and live with the other's family for a week. One of the famillies were, frankly, pond life - no offence to water boatmen and newts intended. No attempt at getting a job, spawning kids (8 yup EIGHT), kids have asthma and the parents smoke around them, they spend £160 a week on fags, £80 a week on going to the bingo. Just to bring us slightly back on topic, Ferrari made the wry comment that the woman had, "obviously never seen a salad bar". LOL

Here's the best bit they get £37000 a year in taxpayer handouts.

The callers were wild. Mostly wondering why they bother getting up to go to work. I didn't hear any calls for the abolition of the welfare state but most realised that it is seriously flawed and that has mutated way beyond a simple handup to those in need.

The programme is on again tonight:

23:40 Today Channel 4
Wife Swap
New series of the reality programme in which wives swap their husbands, children and homes for up to two weeks. This first programme follows Emma, who lives in a large house in Devon, and Lizzie - who lives on a Rochdale council estate - as they swap lives

And here's something I found in the Exeter Echo

:) with you guys on most of this; *well* stupid... if people want to kill themselves by being fat, let 'em do it.

but James Wolf, "... the fears of child molesters and other sleazy types- the same fears promoted by these lefties in the first place."

yeah, a curse upon those infamous lefties of the Sun & daily Mail!

Glad to see my money is going towards a gym in Brussels - diversification is important. I would hate to think it was only being wasted on the Common Agricultural Policy.

Tim writes:
"Glad to see my money is going towards a gym in Brussels - diversification is important. I would hate to think it was only being wasted on the Common Agricultural Policy."

Actually, I work in Luxembourg. I think there may be several EC gyms in Brussels, but I'm not sure.

Charles - not just diversified into gyms but lots of them too! Excellent.

I am a vegetarian.

I have excellent reasons of my own for voluntarily choosing this option, that are not the State's business, Society's business, any Church's business, the food industry's (or any other industry's) business, animal "rights" organizations' business, or even my doctor's business unless I choose to inform her of it.

I like having the freedom to be informed about my food and to be able to choose what I eat (despite Monsanto's best efforts). I like it that you have the exact same freedom (if you do in your country). I have absolutely no interest in forcing you to eat or not eat any particular food.

I regard State intervention into food choices as a particularly pernicious violation of my rights over my own body.

For those in the know the term is diworsified...

Anyway since in the UK the NHS completely insulates risk from financial effect, the unhealthy are in effect "encouraged" by the way the NHS is "funded".

I would be interested to see a study of the USA where the health of those paying for medical insurance was compared with those that don't. I expect those that pay to be healthier, and actively maintain their health much more than those that don't pay premiums.

Rob, I think that's a red herring... if a person can turn a blind eye towards potential ill-health/death, they can surely ignore the accompanying financial trouble. Plus, if your thesis holds any water, why are there so many more obese people in the US than over here in the UK?

The implication that money will matter more to most people than their health/life seems bizarre to me, & only applies to a small number of people i've ever known.

Speedwell,

I assume, however, you are happy the state forces food manufacturers to actually tell you what is in the food vis-a-vie GM components, content and so forth.

Britain isn't obese, it's anaemic. It's life-blood is being drained from it by an army of worthless, self-propogating parasites.

But these parasites are also endowed with the certainty they are right, which makes them so very difficult to shake. They remain attached to the healthy body politic because they pat the dutiful on the back and give a reassuring smile, emboldened by their certainty, while lifting a least 50% from their wallet. Until the light goes on in the heads of the individual that the pat on the back and Caring smile is actually costing them too damn much, more of the same is on the way on both sides of the Atlantic.

Toolkien - *All* parasites are certain, in their plodding, bloodsucking way, that they're right because being a parasite serves to continue their existence. The people who don't pump out the flea spray are at fault, not the parasites.

Dave, you make the mistake of believing that because government accomplishes a desirable thing by force that only government force could accomplish that thing. Yes, I want accurate labeling of food ingredients. No, I don't believe government is necessarily the best way of ensuring that.

Because sufficient demand is there, the absence of government regulation would mean consumers turned to third-party certification laboratories for the same guarantees. (Consumers who didn't care, of course, would be free to consume all the unlabeled swill their hearts desired. Freedom of choice means freedom to make bad choices, or it doesn't exist at all).

Underwriters Laboratories comes to mind in a different context. They've been independently certifying (among other things) the safety of consumer electrical appliances since the 19th Century. Billions of them. Far from raising prices or creating luxury goods, getting that UL mark has become an ordinary part of bringing certain products to market.

S. Weasel, exactly. The Soil Association's been doing this for the last seventy-odd years, and its stamp of approval, or a mark from the Vegetarian Society or whoever else, is far more, well, marketable than the Government's.

People trust the Soil Association.

S Weasel,

People have been talking about accurate food labelling as desirable for about as long as I can remember. I have dim memories of listening to a Radio 4 programme in the kitchen at home in the 70's on this very subject. Yet the manufacturers constantly have refused.

Look at the fuss they are still making about clear labelling of items which may have GM components.

You can say that there is an alternative, but I don't believe for a moment we'd have clear, sensible labelling without government action.

Ian, yes the Soil Association have been marking things, but that's different to the kind of labelling I'm think of.

People have been talking about accurate food labelling as desirable for about as long as I can remember. I have dim memories of listening to a Radio 4 programme in the kitchen at home in the 70's on this very subject. Yet the manufacturers constantly have refused.

So, if you have accurate food labeling, why do you talk about it so much? And if you don't have accurate food labeling, why are you sticking up for government regulation when it has clearly let you down?

if you have accurate food labeling, why do you talk about it so much?

I do? I wasn't aware that I'd made any comment apart from pointing out that it came in, at least in the UK, through government action.

And if you don't have accurate food labeling, why are you sticking up for government regulation when it has clearly let you down?

Why has the government clearly let me down? I suggest it is a case of government regulation actually affecting a change in the way food is presented and packaged.

I'm not happy with the way Carbohydratyes are displayed on food packaging because it makes it hard to work things out from an Atkins perspective. But apart from that, the labels are very good.

I wasn't aware that I'd made any comment apart from pointing out that it came in, at least in the UK, through government action.

The quotation was "People have been talking about accurate food labelling as desirable for about as long as I can remember. I have dim memories of listening to a Radio 4 programme in the kitchen at home in the 70's on this very subject."

So why were people talking about food labeling and running radio programs about it if it was a problem government had already solved? And if it wasn't a problem already solved, then that's how the government let you down.

If you mean that government acted only recently and after long-term and significant public pressure, I don't see any reason to assume manufacturers wouldn't have done the same. Certainly, there are many foods labeled in excess of government requirements in order to appeal to a specific customer base (vegetarians of all stripes, diabetics, the lactose- or glucose-intolerant, soyaphiles, carbophobes, caffeineheads and so on).

Heavens, how can an Atkins devotee believe government and nutrition have been a happy mix?

If you mean that government acted only recently and after long-term and significant public pressure, I don't see any reason to assume manufacturers wouldn't have done the same.

Really. So why did it take government action in the end?

Heavens, how can an Atkins devotee believe government and nutrition have been a happy mix?

Atkins asks for stricter food labelling in the latest addition. He actually makes a point that finally the government have forced a reluctant industry in the US to comply.

Of course, Atkins didn't think the classification of carbohydrates was suitable, but you can't have everything.

What makes you think Atkins is libertarian? I just find it a way for me to feel better as I suspect I have had a long term wheat intolerance.

Certainly, there are many foods labeled in excess of government requirements in order to appeal to a specific customer base (vegetarians of all stripes, diabetics, the lactose- or glucose-intolerant, soyaphiles, carbophobes, caffeineheads and so on).

This is a separate issue to nutritional labels. You also see labels like... "85% FAT FREE" as I did on a Muffin recently.

Clear, detailed labels such as calorific, fat, protein and carb content do not generally help sell things. Consequently there's not much pressure people can bear to get them improved.

Eye catching, and potentially misleading data like "85% Fat Free", on the other hand, is exactly what you expect the market to produce.

I have no idea what Atkins' politics were. I meant the notion of eating a zillion portions of starchy carbs and little or no meat and fat has been enthusiastically (not to say heavy-handedly) promoted by government nutritionists for thirty years. I'm betting that when we work out what's making Americans (and, increasingly, Brits) into grotesque fatties, it won't be because we ignored government advice, but because we followed it.

And why is labeling the carbohydrate content of food important, but not the caffeine content? Sodium, yes but soy, no? Yes to traces of nuts but no to traces of meat? Why assume the government has made the right decisions about which nutritional components are most relevant?

Goodness, anyone who hasn't worked out that 85% fat free means 15% fat is going to have more serious problems in life than choosing good muffins.

I'm not sure you can dump the whole nutritional thing on the government, most nutritianists were saying the same sort of thing. Besides, aside from Dr Atkins, there was a massive lobby behind the low fat diet trend. Weight Watchers isn't exactly a small organisation and I bet they have good lobbyists.

The government, at least here (UK), did push the 5 portions of fruit or veg a day, which is actually sound even under the Atkins style idea, so that's not so far removed.

And why is labeling the carbohydrate content of food important, but not the caffeine content? Sodium, yes but soy, no? Yes to traces of nuts but no to traces of meat?

There is a strong lobby certainly for the caffine content to be put in. I'd approve of that as I actually do try to avoid caffine. Certainly all drinks containing it in the UK are labelled as such. Also, sausage products etc... do contain percentage meat content.

Why assume the government has made the right decisions about which nutritional components are most relevant?

The government might not make the right decisions, but at least they have got the labels on the products, which is more than the market had achieved.

The current labels need work, but I think they are pretty good myself. I certainly find the UK ones better than the US ones.

sorry, didn't close a bracket...

I certainly find the UK ones better than the US ones.

I'm sure you do. The UK ones have less information on them than the US ones, of course, but I have no doubt you prefer them.

Really? Is this a state by state thing? I've only lived in California and I found the labels to be next to useless compared to the ones at home.

I think it's federal. Aside from metrics, the US and UK labels are basically similar, but the US version breaks down carbs further by sugars and fiber, and breaks fats into saturated, unsaturated, poyunsaturated and (most recently) transfats.

Of course, both allow a long string of specific ingredients to be appended with "natural and artificial flavors" which, to my mind, is the data equivalent of "and small quantities of a bunch of other stuff."

Closed.

Most of the UK ones now do fibre, but they don't break down any further than that yet. I hear that is coming.

I don't recall seeing the same details on US ones in terms of ingrediants, nor do I recall seeing these on all products. I'll have to pay more attention next month when I'm over.

You normally get the "E" number for what the ingrediants are here. Of course, that's deliberately misleading - you don't want people knowing what goes into their food.