It is official: food is the new enemy of the international left.
While the crashers were doing their stuff on the neatly-manicured lawns of Geneva, dark plots were being hatched inside the gleaming towers:
All 192 countries in the World Health Organisation have tentatively agreed to an unprecedented policy on diet and health to tackle global obesity.
Did that include the Ethiopeans?
The voluntary plan was hammered out at talks in Geneva in the face of stiff opposition from lobbies such as the sugar-producing nations.
We are privileged indeed to witness the birth of a brand, new imaginary straw-man. Ladies and gentlemen, making its debut on the world stage, but soon to making regular appearances in the columns of every angry, left-wing polemicist in every media venue on earth, please give a warm welcome to….. “the Sugar Lobby” (boo, hiss). Stand right here in the spotlight, Sugar Lobby, and take your place among right-wingers, big tobacco, industrialists, zionists, gun manufacturers, motorists and George Bush.
Nearly one in six people worldwide is now considered overweight.
Amazing is it not? Seems like only five minutes ago that the battlecry of the social-working class was “feed the starving”. Now, in the blink of an eye, they have changed it to “starve the fed”. Astonishing stuff!
The BBC’s Imogen Foulkes in Geneva says this is the first ever attempt to regulate the world’s eating habits.
And we all know that it will not be the last.
Dr Kaare Norum, a Norwegian obesity expert who advised the WHO on the development of the plan, said the agreement was a victory for public health.
DR. NORUM: “I have been studying obese people for many, many years and the incontrovertible data I have collected as a result leads me to conclude that these people are very fat”.
WHO: “You are obviously an expert. Come join our committee”.
Honestly, the whole article sounds as if it has been lifted from an old issue of Pravda. Mind you, it comes courtesy of the Beeb.
So be warned you choca-holics and doughnut-dunkers: your stodgy, sticky delights are on the hit list. Lock them away in secret bunkers while you still can.
Hopefully the Clean Plate Club has not kept its membership files from back when I was a youngster.
There is only on thing for it we are all going to have to live in Ethiopia,probably in shifts,tht’ll teach us.
Well, the sugar lobbies of the world (particularly the one in the US) are a dreadful bunch of subsidy addicted rent seekers. Perhaps we could fight their culpibility in this dreadful epidemic of obesity by subjecting them to free trade.
Nah. Couldn’t have that.
You can have my pizza and beer when you pry them from my cold dead hands you commie bastard!
Life imitates the Simpsons.
An economics lecturer writes:
What an utter bonehead!
Something odd has happened with the output. The blockquote carried right on until after “catch up with the west”. “What an utter bonehead” was my bit not the crazy stuff.
Since I have severe hypoglycemia I don’t tolerate anything with added sugar, but let me tell ya, all this talk of the “lobbies such as the sugar-producing nations” nearly drove me to rush out & get some donoughts and cheesecake just so I could gain 5 pounds.
(and now for some shameless self-promotion) BTW, I’m ranting today about another BBC production, the Teletubbies. Now they’ve become political activists.
Just out of curiousity, does anyone know how low-carb diets (which can be effective at reducing obesity if done right) fit into this little equation? While it’s not a hard and fast rule, “fat is good” actually does come into play in these diets. And these diets (regardless of what you think of them) are a private market innovation and have changed many peoples lives for the better. But, I’m sure you would be punished for eating such fatty foods, since the diet wasn’t coordinated by a national public health agency.
Beware Big Sugar!!! Life imitates the Simpsons indeed.
The one thing the health nazis are up against this time is that, unlike smoking, everyone eats. In the anti-smoking campaign, they could count on most non-smokers (a majority of the population) to be either apathetic or supportive, because it was someone else’s ox getting gored.
This time, though, they are going after vices shared by a vast majority of the population. I predict failure.
RussGoble, I don’t know as to Atkins et al, but in my experience, since I don’t tolerate a lot of sugar and all carbos are metabolized as sugars, I have to add butter, olive oil, cream, and eat whole milk cheeses & yogurt, drink whole milk, have avocados, etc, in order to
1. maintain my weight (most people consume most of their calories as carbos, which I have to avoid)
2. fats also slow down how fast the body absorbs foods which helps control your blood sugar levels.
The result has been that, aside from maintaining my blood sugars at the ideal level, my good cholesterol’s higher than my bad cholesterol, my blood pressure is excellent, and my EKGs are great.
Whoever wants to take away fats from my diet will literally do it over my dead body, so they better not try.
It used to be that the cry against capitalism is that it makes most people too poor. Now the cry against capitalism is that it makes most people too rich!
Behold, the continually moving goalposts of the anti-capitalists!
You see, now they can claim that when communism causes famine, this is actually a health benefit.
Julian Morrison – Famine is nature’s way of keeping us trim. Those Third World sugar producing countries can do their bit by wrecking their meagre industries so we in the west don’t have to expend too much willpower refusing second helpings of Sarah Lee.
Want to combat obesity? Surely they mean healthier folks? If they want to be statist, they should have been smarter statists.
Put every youth from the age of 16-18 on a strict exercise regimen. PT every day, consisting of 2 klick runs, 10 pullups, and 100 sit ups will do wonders for an obesity program. Controlling the diet is useless.
TWG
Some days it seems like the world just one step away from transforming itself into a poorly-played round of Steve Jackson’s Illuminati. (http://www.sjgames.com/illuminati/)