Portion Sizes and Beyond — Government's Legal Authority to Regulate Food-Industry Practices — NEJM

Portion Sizes and Beyond — Government's Legal Authority to Regulate Food-Industry Practices — NEJM

The government in whatever country, state, county or city has regulations on so many substances you can take into your body, why are industry heads protesting these particular issues?

1. Anything ADDED to food and presently labeled as a "food additive" is regulated to permissible maxima or within certain bounds.
2. The content of REFINED foods, such as wheat flour is regulated in many places by the amount of protein or the amount of folate, even certain vitamins, so that the community gets a partly guaranteed healthy intake.
3. The amount of additives you can put into our shared "fresh" air is regulated but we call it POLLUTION! In many places your car can be banned from the road if it emits more than a regulation amount of carbon monoxide, particulate matter (SMOKE) or other volatile substances.
4. The amount of additives we can DISCHARGE into waterways is also regulated so our drinking water is OK and aquatic animals are not killed.

So WHY THE HELL are people getting so irate with an attempt to regulate what goes into our stomachs?

As someone interested in the long term health of the planet, I would be happy to see everyone deprived of extra sugar that is not a natural component of a food, ie. no one should reject a farmer's oranges because they are "too sweet".

I'm also happy to see "standard" portion sizes of drinks that already have sugar added CONTROLLED. What's wrong with that among all the so-called "diet" drinks that have NO genuine sugar added, just some FOREIGN substance like aspartame or saccharine that our bodies have no natural enzyme or pathway to process.

PORTION CONTROL is new? Bull sh*t! Isn't there anyone out there who has subscribed to a nutrition service which delivers "portion-controlled" meals to the door, instead of you having to serve yourself smaller meals?? ...And what do you think of places like McDonalds who allow you to choose "small", "normal" or "large" portions? WHOSE portions are these if not the food-regulator-for-McDonald's portion-controller's?

GET OVER IT