Fear and loathing in the shopping aisle

Everyone's favorite meddler, Michelle Obama, announces improvements in nutritional labeling:
“So there you stood, alone in some aisle in a store, the clock ticking away at the precious little time remaining to complete your weekly grocery shopping, and all you could do was scratch your head, confused and bewildered, and wonder, is there too much sugar in this product?” she said. 
Saying hapless moms want to do the right thing, Obama suggested many give up in defeat because they can’t decipher current nutritional labels without “a thesaurus, a calculator, a microscope or a degree in nutrition.”
That's a solution right there:  government subsidies for nutrition school tuition for all hapless moms.

We run into these shoppers all the time.  They're vapor-locked, cart adrift in the maximum traffic-blocking configuration, gazing slack-jawed at the shelves.  They're clearly violating the "find it, kill it, drag it out of the store" shopping mandate of civilized people.

The only possible solution is to replace labels with EZ-to-follow instructions:  "Eat this," or "Do not eat this."  Or maybe we can just have the government ship healthy, nutritious, approved food in pre-measured packets to each home.  And then require a license for home cooking.  You can never tell what people might put in their food if they're given free rein.  There are children in those homes, you know, and besides, we'll be the ones paying their medical bills.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I see format changes to the information, and very little else, although I do approve the change to more realistic portion sizes.

The format changes bother me, because they require people who already have honest portion sizes to change their labels, too.

Doesn't that cost money? We are going to change every damn label on every food product, so that people who are careless about their math can ignore the new labels?

This is another clumsy government move that forces huge expenses on consumers, with very little benefit.

Valerie

Anonymous said...

Can we call this a "disproportionate response"?

Valerie

E Hines said...

Saying hapless moms want to do the right thing, [Michelle] Obama suggested many give up in defeat because they can’t decipher current nutritional labels....

There she goes, projecting, again. Typical Progressive.

Eric Hines

Grim said...

I suppose "added sugar" is a genuine improvement, but I don't think much of making the calorie count bold. That will tend to suggest that it's the really important thing about the label, which isn't the case.

Still, I'm with Valerie. Doing math in your head is good for you too.

jaed said...

Do not, I say, do NOT give them ideas. Britain has, or had, some kind of green-yellow-red coding for foods which are, respectively, government-approved, dubious, or definitely unapproved. "Eat this, don't eat this."

I can see that happening here, complete with the sort of school nutritional education that led one eight-year-old to approach her mother, cereal box in hand, worried expression on her face: "Mom, I don't think I should be eating this. It's got calories."

This is leaving aside the even more horrifying concept of an "Affordable Food Act", popularly known as "Michellefood".

Eric Blair said...

Devo had a song about this....

http://youtu.be/dVGINIsLnqU

Gringo said...

If a shopper can't comprehend the current food labeling systems, my suspicion is that the shopper will have difficulty with any subsequent system.

I am reminded of the aftermath of the 2000 Presidential election in Florida. In counties where Democrats controlled the design of the ballots, Democrat honchos later claimed that previously ineligible ballots should be INTERPRETED because voters just couldn't understand their setup. Well Democrat honchos, isn't that your fault, because you designed the ballots?