Tag Archives: food industry

Obesity and climate change

BBC news:

Obesity needs to be tackled in the same way as climate change, a top nutritional scientist has said.

In that case, let me get my soapbox…

You know, there is absolutely no proof that people are getting fatter. Sure, there are fat people around, but that’s just part of the long term historical trend towards people being better fed.

The occasional truly fat person is just a statistical blip. You’d expect to see a few around. That doesn’t mean there’s some sort of country-wide fattening.

Remember back in the 1970s and 80s when people were talking about “Live Aid” and the like? Back then, the big danger was getting thinner–and now they want us to forget about that and believe that the big danger is getting fatter! Hah!

There’s no proof that eating Big Macs makes you fat. Scientists are still undecided. There are a lot of possible alternative explanations. There’s no causal link, it might just be that fat people prefer the taste of Big Macs.

There’s a well-funded health industry conspiring to plant stories in the media suggesting that being obese and sedentary is bad for you, so that they can make more money selling diet aids and exercise equipment.

We can’t afford to do anything about obesity. If we did what the lunatic fringe wants, we’d destroy the fast food industry, Hershey’s, the TV and couch industries, and so on. We’d send America into another recession!

Terrorism is a headache

The US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is trying to ban the sale of various chemicals to people who don’t have an explosives manufacturing license from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF).

Fair enough, you might think—unless you know enough chemistry to recognize some of the substances on the list.

Aluminium powder, for example. Am I wrong to think that a terrorist will be smart enough to work out that given the softness of aluminium, you can use a bar of aluminium metal and a grinding wheel?

Sodium benzoate requiring an explosives license might be a bit of a problem for the food industry, where it’s used as a preservative.

And best of all, they want to make salicylate compounds outright illegal. That would presumably include acetyl salicylic acid, better known as aspirin.

Of course, I’m assuming you can’t cook up explosives using a box of aspirin, a bottle of sparking wine and a ground up aluminium ruler. If I’m wrong, I’m sure I’ll be corrected.