The Food Scout

When it comes to addressing the “Obesity Issue” and “Global Warming,” it is clear to me that the food industry is caught up in the nation’s effort to be busy with attack strategies that are about as productive as rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Local governments have been doing high-fives over bans and attempted bans on everything from fois gras to frying oil and bottled water (bought with city funds). Not only, of course, will these efforts have little to no net effect on Obesity or Global Warming in the long-run, but in fact they have created a backlash that has encouraged increased consumption by some, or simply sent people “underground” to get their fix.

When people started blaming soda cans for childhood obesity a few years ago, school administrations conveniently forgot that they had welcomed soft-drink manufacturers to install passive vending machines in return for sporting goods and other program funding. So machines were either summarily removed or soft drinks replaced with equally caloric beverages.

Now, this week we learn of a peer-reviewed nutrition and lifestyle study that has determined that consumers of sweetened beverages are not more likely to be obese than people who don’t drink them. So, um, ur, well, maybe the nutrition-istas were too quick to blame the vending machines, since (duh) it turns out obesity is more strongly correlated to lower physical activity, computer and TV use, and high-fat diets. Oops. Oh well, a few dozen innocent people were burned in the Salem witch trials as well. Nobody’s perfect, you know.

But the vending machine issue is so 2005, right? Activists have moved on to bottled water in the meantime. See, even though consumers THOUGHT they were doing a good thing to drink water instead of soft drinks, environmentalists and local governments are now encouraging people to use those appealing drinking fountains you see in urban parks where dogs slurp and homeless people wash their socks and bathe themselves, too. Meanwhile, convenient sources of cold water are about as prevalent as phone booths these days.

So America, go back to drinking whatever you want, out of whatever container you want, whenever you want. Because the Beverage Prohibition effort will not eliminate Obesity or Global Warming, any more than Alcohol Prohibition a hundred years ago (almost to the year, ironically) wiped out Drinking or Alcoholism.