A Case Of The Vapers

National Review Online, December 26, 2013

What was it again that Mencken once wrote? Google, enter, click. Ah yes, it was this: “Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”

On Thursday, the New York City Council made room in its legislative agenda — it was also busy commissioning a study on polystyrene foam — to pass by a vote of 43–8 (that lopsided majority an indicator of idiocy afoot) a measure that will, once Mayor Bloomberg signs it (oh, he will) shortly prohibit the vaping (that’s the word) of e-cigarettes anyplace where smoking is now banned in Gotham, bars, restaurants, offices, parks, the beach, you name it. Technically speaking, the ban will take effect as an amendment to the city’s Smoke-Free Air Act. That e-cigarettes do not emit any smoke was an irrelevance.

To vape is to inhale a vapor from a plastic facsimile of a cigarette, battery-powered, bought for $10 at a local store, and good, it is claimed, for 400 puffs. The business end is fashioned to look like a filter. In another nod to nostalgia, the tip typically glows as the user inhales. It’s not the real thing, nothing like. Plastic is neither leaf nor paper. It holds no memories of that old bar down on the Lower East Side, that conversation once upon when. There’s no tobacco, no combustion, none of the warmth, none of the evocative transience, none of the mouth-feel of cigarette or cigar, and it looks just a bit dumb. Walk into Rick’s with an e-cigarette and Rick would laugh. Then again, Bogie died at 57.

Whatever the aesthetics of e-cigarettes, as nicotine-delivery systems go, they are a lot safer than the cancer sticks of old. There’s no carbon monoxide, no tar, very little, in fact, of tobacco smoking’s carcinogenic stew. To be sure, the Food and Drug Administration has detected tobacco-specific nitrosamines (a carcinogen) in the e-cigarette cartridges that contain the treats to come. A 2009 study revealed about the same quantity of TSNAs in cartridges as might be found in a nicotine patch, a total about one-nine-hundredth of the level found inside Joe Camel. The vaper (I know, I know) will inhale an even smaller portion, a tiny fraction of a minuscule amount. Furthermore, TSNAs were the only carcinogens detected in this study. Boston University’s Dr. Michael Siegel, a 25-year veteran of tobacco-control work (and a Centers for Disease Control alumnus), has noted that smokers of conventional cigarettes may inhale maybe 40 other carcinogens, not to speak of “thousands of [other] chemicals.”

It is true that at the end of November a study by Holland’s National Institute for National Health (RIVM) triggered a few headlines like “Dutch sound alarm about possible risks of e-cigarettes” (Reuters), but within the body of that Reuters story there was this: “The institute said it was concerned about a lack of evidence on the possible health effects of e-cigarettes…”

As a reminder: Don’t know is not the same as know.

The RIVM did note that the dread nicotine was involved and referred to reports of nausea and throat irritation by some users. Indeed, it recommended (Reuters writes) that “as a precaution [e-cigarettes] should not be used by pregnant women or in the vicinity of children.” For a health warning nowadays, this is on the mild side. The scientific concerns it reflects are not enough to justify a heavy-handed ban of the type now headed New York City’s way.

But what about the antifreeze? This substance, more happily associated with autos than lungs, has seeped into the e-cigarette debate, setting up a scare or 50. The truth is that the FDA found some diethylene glycol — an important ingredient in antifreeze — in just one of the cartridges surveyed in the 2009 study, a dismaying result but almost certainly a rogue finding. E-cigarettes generally do contain, however, a base of propylene glycol to “hold” the nicotine and any added flavoring. Propylene glycol is used in antifreeze, but as a kinder, gentler alternative to its rough diethylene cousin, particularly when there is any danger of contact with food. As is explained in the compound’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry toxicological profile (September 1997), “the [FDA] has classified propylene glycol as ‘generally recognized as safe,’ which means that it is acceptable for use in flavorings, drugs, and cosmetics, and as a direct food additive.” Move along, there’s nothing to see here.

As an alternative to propylene glycol, some e-cigarettes use vegetable glycerin as their base. This common food additive will affect their taste, but not your health.

And so far as the ingredients lurking in an e-cigarette are concerned, that ought to be about it. This is not, of course, a reason for arguing that research on these products should cease, or that stricter quality control should be opposed. Nor is it a claim that e-cigarettes are risk-free. They may, for example, inhibit lung capacity, at least temporarily. Beyond that and those pesky TSNAs, there is also the matter that most e-cigarettes will (as the astute folk at the RIVM had noticed) be used to deliver nicotine, a potentially addictive substance — albeit one that has been given up by tens of millions. Then again, much of nicotine’s famously powerful addictiveness can be attributed to the fact that it is being delivered via tobacco, a medium with naturally occurring monoamine oxidase inhibitors that seem to have a great deal to do (it’s a long story) with the difficulty of quitting smoking. Divorced from its leafy accomplice, nicotine is not that addictive, nor under those circumstances is it, to quote John Britton, who leads the tobacco advisory group for Britain’s Royal College of Physicians, even a “particularly hazardous” drug.

What about secondhand smoke, butcher of innocents, enricher of laundries? E-cigarettes give off little or no odor, and, although the research is still at an early stage, the health risks of secondhand vaping likely rest somewhere between zero and infinitesimal.

Considering all this (Dr. Britton has been quoted as saying that if everyone switched over to e-cigarettes it could save “millions” of lives), the medical world ought to be cheering the swift rise of a hugely safer alternative to demon tobacco. E-cigarettes are, so to speak, catching fire. In the U.S., sales are expected to hit $1 billion in 2013, twice the total of a year ago. That’s still only about 1 percent of the total spent on tobacco products, but it says something that Altria Group Inc. (parent company of Philip Morris USA), Reynolds American Inc., and Lorillard Inc. (which paid $135 million for blu eCigs in 2012) have all entered this market. Non-U.S. e-cigarette sales have been expanding rapidly too, reaching an estimated $2 billion in 2012.

But e-cigarettes have given tobacco’s fiercer foes, well, the vapors. Brazil, Norway, and Singapore have banned them. Others have imposed strict controls, including the prohibition of vaping in public places. Some British railway companies have exiled vapers from their carriages on the carefully considered grounds that they make other passengers “uneasy.” Such stupidities are not, as New Yorkers now know, confined to abroad. Their city is by no means alone. A growing number of America’s politicians, bureaucrats, and other nuisances are on the offensive against e-cigarettes. Thus bans similar to that now looming over New York City have already been introduced in New Jersey and Utah, states that would not normally agree on very much.

There are some legitimate concerns. There is a wide range of e-flavors, some of which, cherry crush, say, or chocolate (I’m not sure — on many grounds — about maple bacon), might appeal to a younger set. Meanwhile the anxious RIVM frets (according to Reuters) that e-cigarettes “might be attractive to young people because of bright colors, flashing lights and jewelry-like appearance.” Dutch e-cigarette design must have taken an exotic turn.

Such worries could be addressed by prohibiting the sale of e-cigarettes to minors, but that would not have been enough for New York councilman James Gennaro, a key promoter of the ban (and also a sponsor of legislation that recently increased the minimum age for buying tobacco in New York City to 21), who wants us all — of course he does — to think of the children. He worried (the New York Times reported) “that children who could not differentiate between regular and electronic smoking were getting the message that smoking is socially acceptable.” Combine the RIVM with Gennaro and the message is clear. E-cigarettes are a menace when they look like cigarettes. And they are a menace when they do not.

Other objections — that e-cigarettes might act as a gateway to the real thing (in reality, they are more likely to represent an exit from it) or that they might reglamorize smoking — are feeble stuff. This suggests that the real agenda is driven by the precautionary principle run amok, or, ominously, by something darker still.

And that something is not the prospect of the loss of valuable tobacco tax revenues (although that will not have gone unnoticed by some of those looking to bring vaping to heel). What is at work here is, at least in part, altogether more profound, and more disturbing, than that. The campaign against tobacco began with the best of intentions, but it has long since degenerated into an instrument for its activists both to order others around and to display their own virtue. And with that comes an insistence on a rejection of tobacco so absolute, so pure, that it has become detached from any logic other than the logic of control, the classic hallmark of a cult. So mighty is the supposed power of this anathematized leaf that anything — even when tobacco-free — that looks like a cigarette or provides any approximation of its pleasures is suspect.

It’s too much, of course, to expect any respect these days for the principle that adults should be left to decide such things for themselves, but the chance that the e-cigarette could save an impressive number of lives should count for something. Europe’s sad snus saga suggests that that might not necessarily be so. For generations Swedes have taken a form of oral tobacco, a snuff known as “snus,” cured in a way that sharply reduces its TSNA content. Snus is available in the U.S., land of dip and chaw, but, within the EU, where no such tradition exists, it can be sold only in Sweden. Taking snus is not without risk, but it’s far less harmful than smoking. Its popularity in Sweden, especially with the guys, goes a long way to explaining why that country has Europe’s lowest incidence of lung cancer among men. It has been estimated that introducing snus elsewhere in the EU could save some 90,000 lives a year, but the EU’s capnophobic leadership has rejected the idea. Anti-tobacco jihadists are quite content, you see, to accept that the perfect can be the enemy of the good.

As America’s vapers are now finding out.

Note: This article updates “Vaper Strain,” an article that appeared in the September 2, 2013 issue of National Review.

Powder Keg

National Review Online, March 24, 2005

There's a menace abroad in the land, a lethal white powder that is being consumed by sensation-seekers all across America. And like meth and other fashionable horrors, this scourge is not confined to the mean streets of the big city, but can be found in the small towns, big malls and red states of the heartland. Worse still, there's disturbing evidence that many otherwise responsible people are being tricked into taking this substance; horrifying report after horrifying report of innocent and unsuspecting individuals swallowing food cynically spiked with this silent and seductive killer, a killer which is, some say, responsible for the loss of 150,000 Americans—that's nearly forty times the battlefield death toll at Antietam—each year.

The name of this killer? Salt. That's right. SALT. As in shakers. As on plates. As on fries. Good old, familiar, deceitful sodium chloride, unmasked at last as a Dahmer at dinner and a Bundy at breakfast, a smooth-flowing serial killer found lurking even in our morning cereal. And who has done the unmasking? Somehow I think that you can already know the answer. Yup, once again that bizarre collection of neurotics, nannies, killjoys, hysterics, and scolds better, if misleadingly, known as the Center for Science in the Public Interest, has dreamt up yet another way to poison the pleasure that Americans take in their food.

At the end of February, CSPI published a new report, "Salt: The Forgotten Killer," and announced legal action against the FDA. Its lawsuit is designed to compel the agency to declare salt a "food additive", something that could be the prelude to mandating lower sodium levels in processed and restaurant foods. There is "no way", claimed CSPI executive director Michael Jacobson, that the "FDA can look at the science and say with a straight face that salt is 'generally recognized as safe'".

To be fair, there is slightly more justification for the assault on salt than many earlier campaigns against just about anything that might cheer up a meal (caffeine, frozen desserts, fried mozzarella sticks, garlic bread, General Tso's chicken, alcohol, fettuccine Alfredo, meatloaf, cookie dough, the Cold Stone Creamery's Mud Pie Mojo, and so, so much more). Most medical professionals do indeed believe that too much salt in the diet can lead to high blood pressure (high blood pressure is a major contributory factor in cardiovascular disease), but there are dissenters. To Jacobson, those who disagree with his views are nothing more than noisy "contrarians" basing their conclusions on "flawed, misinterpreted" or "fragmentary" research, harsh words that, coming from CSPI, conjure up thoughts of stones and glass houses.

In fact, the science is somewhat less clear-cut than the Center's researchers would like you to know. Their report has nothing to say about a 2002 study published in The British Medical Journal that showed no decrease in either the death rate or the incidence of cardiovascular disease among the subjects of the study who reduced their salt intake. Jacobson is also silent about the fact that, despite years of research, links between lower sodium intake and improved health in the general population remain awkwardly elusive. As for those noisy "contrarians," their ranks include former presidents of the American Heart Association and the American Society of Hypertension, and, just last year, a number of Canadian medical groups including the Canadian Hypertension Society, the Canadian Coalition for High Blood Pressure Prevention and Control, and the College of Family Physicians of Canada.

Jacobson does, however, find time to bring his readers the good news about the Yanomami, rainforest Indians, who consume only 20 mg of sodium a day (less than one percent of the average American's intake) and "are healthy, do not gain weight as they age, and are totally free of high blood pressure." Curiously, he does not bother to explain that the Yanomami live in miserable Stone Age squalor, eat the powdered bones of their dead (mixed in with a banana soup, since you ask), and on average only just make it past the age of 40. Call me fussy, Dr. Jacobson, but I'll look elsewhere for nutritional inspiration.

Perhaps it's best to sidestep this controversy for now and just take time to savor Jacobson's jeremiad as yet another sample of how the CSPI's chow-time Comstocks manipulate the media, the science and the public in the interest of taking aim, yet again, at their real foe: fun.

As is its usual practice, CSPI begins this latest onslaught with tales of a spectacular death toll (those 150,000 hardy, but unfortunate, Americans who manage to escape the carnage brought by passive smoking, obesity and the Second Amendment only to succumb to a condiment) and then piles on from there. "This innocent-looking white substance" may, says Jacobson, a man clearly unaware of what anchovy can do to pizza, "be the single deadliest ingredient in our food supply."

And as usual, the language of these latter-day puritans resembles nothing so much as the darker, more lurid sermons of their stern black-hat/black-suit predecessors of three centuries before. The report is morbid and overblown; its author appears fixated on the horrible fate that awaits those who have sinned: "[T]he salt in our diets has turned our hearts and arteries into ticking time bombs, time bombs that explode in tens of thousands of Americans every year."

That's not to say that reading this grim, grating report is entirely without its rewards. The CSPI is justly celebrated for its obsessive exploration of the wilder regions of American food rococo, and, in this respect at least, Salt: The Forgotten Killer does not disappoint. While the appearance of that notorious repeat offender, General Tso's chicken (with rice, 3,150 mg of sodium), on CSPI's salty rap sheet won't come as much of a surprise, fans of extreme cuisine will be delighted to learn of the existence of two salt-mountainous treats from Denny's—the robust Lumberjack Slam (two eggs, three hotcakes with margarine and syrup, ham, two strips of bacon, two sausage links and 4,460 mg of Lot's wife), and the disturbingly-named Moons Over My Hammy (ham and egg sandwich with Swiss and American cheese on sourdough and a mere 2,700 mg of the deadliest single ingredient in our food supply).

Jacobson argues that those who feast on such delicacies are unaware quite how much salt they are consuming, an argument that dovetails neatly with CSPI's longstanding campaign to compel chain restaurants to list nutritional data on their menus. Eating out is, writes Jacobson, "basically a nutritional crap shoot", a statement that implies that most people are too dumb to understand that Moons Over My Hammy may not exactly pass muster as health food. But Jacobson's claims should come as no surprise. Without the assumption that Americans are incapable of deciding for themselves what to eat, there would be no room for the big government paternalism so relentlessly advocated by CSPI.

But, ironically, if consumers are unclear as to what they ought to be munching, it is organizations such as CSPI that must take their share of the blame. Jacobson half-acknowledges this when, in the course of bemoaning the fact that Americans seem less worried about sodium than they were some years ago, he notes that "the public's concern about salt's harmfulness has steadily diminished, as controversies over low-carb diets, trans fats, genetically engineered foods, and other topics have dominated the headlines," controversies (which Jacobson might have said, but didn't) in which his own center has played no small part. The constant food scares generated by the health mullahs at a time when average life expectancy in the U.S. has just reached a new high have done nothing other than increase consumers' confusion, cynicism, and the chance that genuinely good advice gets junked as junk science.

The best counsel remains, as it always has been, a balanced diet, moderate exercise and, good news, maybe a drink or two, but then that's the sort of common sense that would leave no room for a CSPI, let alone the overbearing measures that Jacobson would like to see imposed on the rest of us. It's revealing that the center is trying to bully the FDA through litigation rather than by more democratic measures, but its lawsuit against the government agency is doubtless only the beginning. If salt were to be no longer "generally recognized as safe" by the FDA, it would only be a matter of time before the usual cabal of "public interest" lawyers and the tort bar turn their attention to the food companies and restaurant chains and dig up a salt-scarred plaintiff or two.

And that would not be the end of it. Jacobson's report concludes with "an agenda for action" that includes mandatory sodium limits in processed food, and consideration of a "salt tax" (in addition, presumably, to the proposed Twinkie tax we have all read so much about). In short, therefore, the policy recommendations from an organization often misdescribed as a consumer group would, if implemented, mean less choice, not more.

They need to be taken with a pinch of you know what.

Crushing Mr. Creosote

National Review Online, April 29, 2004

Soso Whaley

Soso Whaley is a feisty not quite fiftysomething animal trainer based in New Hampshire, a champion roller skater (a silver medal for her tango!), the hostess of Camo-Country TV's Critter Corner and an adjunct fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market think tank. (Oh, did I mention that she's a filmmaker with plans to make a documentary about camel-racing in Nevada?) When we ate together the day before Tax Day, in a drably functional midtown Manhattan McDonald's Express filled with surprisingly skinny teens, this is what she chose: six Chicken McNuggets, sweet 'n sour sauce, and two baked apple pies (one for later).

This April that's not unusual fare for Soso. She's eating at McDonald's a lot this month. In fact, she's only eating McDonald's this month. By the 14th, she had dined (I've seen the pile of receipts, neatly collected, dated, and filed) on Crispy Chicken; Chicken McNuggets (six-pack and ten); Chicken McGrill; McChicken; for a touch of the exotic, Hot 'n Spicy McChicken; and, in a welcome break for the nation's poultry, hamburger, double cheeseburger, Quarter Pounder with Cheese, Big Mac, Big N' Tasty with Cheese (no, I have no idea what that is), and Filet-O-Fish; Egg McMuffin, a bewildering selection of McGriddles (bacon, egg and cheese; sausage, egg, and cheese; and the ascetic sausage alone), hash browns, hotcakes, the wildly multicultural sausage breakfast burrito, Fruit 'n Yogurt Parfait ("I love that," sighs Soso), hot fudge sundae, a flurry of McFlurries (Butterfinger, M&M, Oreo—the Nestle Crunch is yet to come) and much, much more.

And, she says, she's feeling "great" (her diary can be viewed on the Competitive Enterprise Institute's website), and she's lost weight (around five pounds by the time we met). Poor, sad Morgan Spurlock didn't do quite so well. Around 20 years younger than Soso, this tall, seemingly robust New Yorker also spent a month eating only at McDonald's and made Super Size Me, a film about the experience. The movie looks as if it will do well, but Spurlock did badly, very badly.

Neither Soso nor I know exactly what Spurlock ate (Super Size Me comes out on May 7), but, as he has described them in numerous interviews, the results were nastier than a four-day-old Bacon Ranch Salad: headaches, vomiting, depression, a super-sized gut and—sad, sad news for his girlfriend (a vegan chef, conspiracy theorists please note)—a shrunken libido. The numbers tell their own terrible story. Spurlock gained 25 pounds and his cholesterol soared (from a modest 165 to a more challenging 230). His body "basically fell apart over the course of thirty days." His face—oh the horror, the horror—turned "splotchy," his knees "started to hurt from the extra weight coming on so quickly," and as for his liver, well, don't ask. O.K., you can ask. Spurlock's liver had, in the less than reassuring words of his doctor, "turned into paté."

Soso, by contrast, is made of sterner, more stoic stuff, a daughter of Eisenhower's Kansas, a creation of a sterner, more stoic time, a woman, I can report, whose face is splotch-free. Our lunch together was marred neither by vomiting, nor depression, nor headaches, and the "gas" that had been a rather distressing feature ("all that extra fiber") of the early days of her McDonald's diet had, mercifully, disappeared. Questions about her sex drive were met with a wry chuckle. This robust Heartland heroine, "a meat and potatoes gal," has even survived a few rounds with Hell's tubers, McDonald's revolting French fries, themselves. "Oh, they're OK," said Soso, smiling over her pile of McNuggets, but she didn't, I noticed, order any fries.

So what was Spurlock's problem? Could it have been something he ate? On his movie's website, Spurlock sets out the ground rules. He was to subsist only on McDonald's products, he had to eat every item on the menu at least once, but he was not allowed to choose Super-sized portions unless they were offered, in which case he had to accept them. More challenging still, his plate or, as we are talking McDonald's, his tray, had to be scraped clean. Completely clean.

And when it comes to his movie, many critics have, appropriately enough, lapped it up. Ebert & Roeper gave Super Size Me "two thumbs up", while Variety found it an "entertaining, gross-out cautionary tale" that "leaves little doubt that eating this stuff on a regular (or even occasional) basis is bad, bad, bad for ya." To the New York Times it was one of a clutch of "entertaining, moving and historically significant" movies at this year's Sundance Film Festival, a festival where Spurlock won the award for best director for what The Hollywood Reporter has dubbed his "brilliantly subversive" work.

Subversive? Hardly. Fashionable? Certainly. Blaming "Big Food" for America's big people is merely the Left's latest big lie. For real rebellion, try Soso. She's an autodidact, an individualist, a contrarian, an ornery soul, someone who likes to find stuff out for herself. "I understood I was being misinformed by the media and that made me mad." It began with animal rights. Soso's work with our furry friends led her to question the frequently uncritical acceptance of the stories being peddled by the likes of PETA, and from there it was a short jump to doubting the gimcrack orthodoxies of "global warming" and after that, provoked by the hype surrounding Super Size Me, a date with destiny under the golden arches.

Spurlock shot a movie about his time at McDonald's, and now Soso is shooting a movie about hers. "Spurlock made his film to make his point and I'm making my film to make mine." The Competitive Enterprise Institute is helping with the publicity, but other than that, Soso has kept her independence. McDonald's has no involvement in her project (and, I was told, is not a CEI donor). When Soso buys a bacon, egg & cheese McGriddle she does so on her own dime.

Soso's ground rules were similar to Spurlock's, but without the compulsory super-sizing, the obligation to finish everything up or, most importantly, the intention of eating, as Soso has put it, "like a troglodyte." She's got a point. Condemning McDonald's on the basis of the kamikaze consumption of Super Size Me makes about as much sense as using Monty Python's Mr. Creosote as an example of typical restaurant dining. Spurlock's bizarre breakfasts, lunatic lunches, and demented dinners added up to some 5,000 calories a day, freak-show feasting that proves nothing about McDonald's. It wasn't what the greedy slob ate, but how much.

Soso feeds where Spurlock fed, but her more modest meals are amounting to a little less than 2,000 calories a day, a still far-from-frugal discipline that leaves room for cheeseburgers, choice, and Fruit 'n Yogurt Parfait. In some ways, it can be argued that her new diet has been an improvement over the old, not much of a feat given its emphasis (the Portsmouth, N.H., Herald reported, a touch disapprovingly) on "lots of meat and too many on-the-go meals like candy bars and doughnuts," something that may have contributed to the rather disappointing cholesterol count with which Soso began the month.

Above all, Soso's long march through Mickey D's menu is an effective demonstration that maligning McDonald's as one uniquely lethal food group is ridiculous in an age when its restaurants offer far more variety than in the past. There's green in those golden arches. Vegetables have been spotted! And by vegetables I don't mean either the wrecks of a Russet that the burger chain calls "fries" or, for that matter, the people prepared to eat them. McDonald's sells salads, lots of them. Two weeks into her big adventure, Soso had already chowed down on side salad, and, scourge of the henhouse that she is, Bacon Ranch Salad with Grilled Chicken, Caesar Salad with Crispy Chicken, and the California Cobb Salad.

But there's no need to feel guilty about sucking down a few burgers as well. They too can be part of a balanced diet, "it's food," adds Soso. "Food is food. Don't eat too much." People, she argues, need to think about what they eat, and then take responsibility for the consequences. Some exercise would also help. "It's just too easy to blame McDonald's."

Not any more.

++++++

Soso went on to make a splendid film,  "Mickey D and Me", about her experience. I appear briefly in the course of this segment. 

Goodbye to All That

National Review Online, April 27, 2004

They banned Ulysses, the authorities did, they banned it as "obscene" in Britain, and they banned it as obscene in America, and they banned it as obscene just about anywhere else where English speakers could be shocked, offended, or otherwise appalled by James Joyce's strange, lovely mix of prose poetry, incomprehensibility, genius, and naughty talk. That was then. Nowadays, Leopold Bloom's Dublin odyssey is revered, a masterpiece, a monument, a part of our high culture, but its author would still be in trouble. Not for his book, but for his lunch. Times and taboos change, but killjoys and scolds do not.

Joyce used to eat in Davy Byrne's pub, a meal he later bequeathed to Bloom, a Gorgonzola sandwich, a glass of burgundy and a cigarette. The sandwich? No problem, so long as the cheese had been labeled as required by EU regulations. The Burgundy? Well, "glowing wine on his palate lingered swallowed. Crushing in the winepress grapes of Burgundy. Sun's heat it is." Who's going to argue with that? Not you, not me, not even Brussels. But that cigarette, oh dear, that cigarette.

Since late March, those addictive little sticks of dangerous delight been banned from Davy Byrne's, and every other pub in Ireland. They've been banned in restaurants, they've been banned in offices, they've been banned in factories and they've been banned just about anywhere else the Irish government considers a workplace, even banned, let Willy Loman howl, in company cars. There are exceptions, but most of them are not a lot of fun—prisons, nunneries, the Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum and, with grim, but kindly logic, hospices.

And Micheal Martin, the instigator of the ban? He's the typographically challenging busybody-in-chief, a bore, and a smug, self-righteous zealot. His one experience of a cigarette, as a foolish "teenager" naturally, was "disgusting." While he may have a drink now and then, he never, never gets "tipsy." Of course he doesn't. He's too busy planning his next crusade, pondering ways to restrict the advertising of alcohol. And when he's done thinking about that, this nanny, this ninny, this drone, this nosey, hectoring clown is "very tentatively" mulling a fat tax. Ireland's tragedy is that this monstrous figure has the job of his dreams—and everybody else's nightmares. By being appointed Ireland's Minister for Health and, wait for it, "Children," Martin was given a blank check for bossiness. On January 30, 2003, he cashed it.

On that dark day, Martin made a speech. Citing the findings of an "independent scientific working group," he announced that, "on the best of international scientific evidence...there is harm in Environmental Tobacco Smoke. Proven harm about which there is not only a consensus in the worldwide scientific community, but a significant substantial consensus." What's the difference between a "significant substantial" consensus and an ordinary consensus? Who knows? All we do know is that the Martin consensus evidently does not include all that awkward, inconvenient research showing that the health effect of passive smoking on adults is minimal, nonexistent, or statistically irrelevant. That data does not count.

And while we're talking data, let's chat about dosage. A substance can be perfectly safe, even good for you, in low quantities, but lethal in large amounts. Martin has no time for such quibbling. So far as this Einstein, this Galileo, this prince of precision, was concerned, all that we simpletons needed to be told was that in a smoky room, we'd be breathing in "a load of" dangerous chemicals that "do us enormous damage." This horrifying state of affairs had, Martin explained, led him to take "radical new measures.... I'm banning smoking in the workplace...I am publishing draft regulations.... I'm doing this because—as this report makes inescapably clear—I have no choice. There is no other option open to me...as you know, I've already taken a number of initiatives to reduce tobacco consumption...I've raised the age limit for buying tobacco.... I've stopped tobacco advertising in newspapers and magazines.... I believe that in every decade, we are presented with one major choice where...we change the future for the better.... I'm making the call the way it must be made."

"I", "I", "I", "I", "me", "I", "I", "I", "I", "I". Did I mention that our Mr. Martin is a tad self-important?

To be fair, there wasn't a lot of "we" about it. Martin may have had "no choice," but nor did members of the Irish parliament, let alone their electors. There was no vote approving the ban. The minister simply exercised the discretion given to him by an earlier piece of legislation. It's a well-known trick to anyone familiar with the way that the EU imposes its rules and in a way, that's only fitting. For while, behind the (forgive the phrase) smokescreen of healthcare concern, the real motives behind this move include Martin's ego and the uncontrollable urge of politicians to control their fellow citizens, one critical additional element has been the Irish establishment's determination to prove to the outside world how their country is modern, "European," Communautaire, international.

Turn again to that January 30 speech, with its reference to consensus in "the worldwide scientific community", the "best of international scientific evidence and to "the use of internationally recognized experts on tobacco control." A year later, Martin was boasting (not inaccurately) that his initiative had triggered "significant momentum across Europe." Foreigners impressed! That's what counted. The ban he had earlier described as "a massive cultural change" was (the Belfast News Letter reported) marking Ireland out as a "forward-thinking, modern society." "Ireland had," Martin said, "transformed itself in many ways over the last decade...Irish people have demonstrated their capacity to change and to adapt." Indeed they have, but as anyone familiar with the destruction of Georgian Dublin will know, unthinking modernization, or what passes for modernization, can come at a high price.

Writing in the London Independent late last year, a journalist recalled walking one rainy day into a pub in County Clare:

"A warm miasma...reached over and enfolded us in its arms. It was a heady mélange of smells—of burning turf and spilt beer, of mushroom soup and cigarette smoke and wet tweed slowly drying...The atmosphere was extraordinary—thick and savory and textured, like anchovy toast, like the barmbrack spread with butter that my aunt gave us every teatime. The embracing fog of fragrances was practically visible in the fumes that rose to the murky ceiling from every corner of the room. Fumes of sweet turf-smoke, fumes from our drying clothes, fumes of burning tobacco and exhaled smoke, all of it drifting lazily upward like a sacrifice to the household gods. We stuck around. What else could you do?"

History be hanged. In Micheal Martin's antiseptic, go-ahead Celtic tiger there can be no place for messy, awkward anachronisms such as the fug, the fellowship and the fumes of a country pub on a rainy day. The much-heralded choice, 'diversity' and openness of the New Ireland do not, it turns out, mean very much. If, as is always claimed, most drinkers prefer no-smoking pubs, then the market should be left to provide them with that choice. To argue that some supposed fundamental freedom to hang out in a smoke-free bar means that all pubs have to renounce tobacco is to make a mockery of liberty in a country where generations fought, and died, for the real thing.

You'd think that, in the land of craic, cussedness, conflict, and Cuchulain that there would have been more opposition, but while there was some grumbling, some debate, some jeering, only the splendid Deirdre Healy of John Player & Sons (the manufacturers of Eire's most popular cigarette) struck a note that, in its defiance and its poetry was, somehow, very, very Irish. The impact of the ban on her company's business would, said this warrior queen, be no more than "a slap in the face from a butterfly's wings."

Some butterfly, some wings. Prohibition has been introduced, on schedule and on the lines that Martin wanted. Worse still, like so much nanny state nagging, the new law seems to have been accepted, something that was even acknowledged by two visiting statesmen, two giants of our time, Gerrit Zalm, Holland's finance minister, and Jean-Claude Juncker, the premier of mighty Luxembourg. The two men were in Ireland for an EU summit and, in what was possibly the most supine diplomatic gesture seen in Europe since Neville Chamberlain boarded that plane to Munich, they smoked their cigarettes out in the cold.

But, in Ireland's worst moments a hero usually emerges to inspire, enchant, and Irish history being what it is, come to an unfortunate end. On March 30, John Deasy, a member of the Irish parliament, did just that. He committed an unthinkable act in one of the Dail's bars. He smoked not one cigarette, but three (some say two). The whole story remains, so to speak, cloudy, but it appears that Deasy first asked for a fire door to be opened so he could step outside into an alleyway. Request denied! It had not yet been designated a smoking area (it has now—too late for Deasy). Thwarted, the MP remained at the bar, enjoyed his three (or was it two?) cigarettes regardless, washed down, quite possibly, with three pints of beer (whether the barman served this outlaw, this smoker, is still under investigation). Retribution was inevitable. In Micheal Martin's Ireland, such open defiance could not be left unpunished.

And it wasn't. These days there's no smoking without a firing. Deasy was promptly removed as Fine Gael's justice spokesman. More was to come. On April 13 this wretch, this reprobate, this renegade, this rebel, was questioned for half an hour by officers from Dublin's feared South West Area Health Board. He runs the risk of prosecution and a fine of over $3,000. Yes, yes, yes, I know. As an MP, let alone a justice spokesman, Deasy should, of course, have complied with the law (which, disgracefully, he had done nothing before to oppose). But, when you read how this freedom fighter has refused to apologize and, better still, has told the media ("a bunch of hypocrites") to take "a running jump," it's impossible not to cheer.

James Joyce, I suspect, would have felt the same way.

Ronald’s Bad Choice

National Review Online, February 5, 2004

Chicago, September 1989 © Andrew Stuttaford

Whoever thought up the weird blend of menu, sermon, and keep-fit manual that McDonald's has now dubbed "Real Life Choices," he has at least proved one thing. Creepy Ronald is not the only clown working under those famous golden arches. Thanks to this initiative, diners waddling into any branch of the burger chain located in the New York tri-state area can participate in a program designed "to help [them] stay on track with [their] diet regimen and incorporate McDonald's food without feeling guilty." However, before going any further in describing this latest insult to the nation's intelligence, I have one small request. Please get up from your chair and remain standing while incorporating the rest of this article. Thank you. I'll explain later. When a junk-food joint offers a "program" as well as a menu, it should stir suspicion even among its most gullible customers. (You remember them. They were the trusting fools that actually ate a McLean Deluxe.) And when that program is given a name so drenched in corporate saccharine as "Real Life Choices" only two things are certain: It will be a complete fantasy and there will be no additional "choice." An exaggeration? Well, let's look at that "choice." Speaking to MSNBC, a marketing director for McDonalds brightly conceded that, no, the program was not exactly a new menu option, but rather "a new way of ordering." Ah, I see.

This is how it works. Fearful of fat? Cautious about calories? Chary of carbohydrates? Well, the program will allow you to request standard menu items modified to take account of your specific dietary concerns. It really isn't that difficult. Feel free to tuck into six (white meat) Chicken McNuggets(r) and a side salad, but only use half a package of Newman's Own Low Fat Balsamic Vinaigrette Dressing. I feel slimmer already.

The company has said that it is trying to "[teach] consumers how to eat the McDonald's food they love." Just in case any consumers are offended by the notion that they need teaching how to eat, McDonald's has added celebrity glitz to Real Life by recruiting Pamela Smith, "a leader in the wellness movement... best-selling author" and "wellness coach" to Shaq O'Neal, to help design the program.

Full details are set out in a handy leaflet. The advice is straightforward and insulting only to those with an IQ above that of a French fry. So, for example, fatphobic Chicken McGrill Sandwich ® fanciers are told to forget the mayo, but pick Picante, BBQ, or Buffalo sauce instead. The carbohydrate-averse are also allowed a Chicken McGrill Sandwich ® — so long as they drop the lettuce and tomato. But be careful! Dieters who prefer watching fat and calories to casting an eye over carbohydrates should add lettuce and tomato to their sandwiches. And what, you may ask, about desperate diners worried about fat, calories, and carbohydrates? What are they meant to do when confronted with the troubling dilemma posed by lettuce leaf and tomato slice? You may ask, but McDonald's has no answer. Those losers, clearly, are on their own.

But there's more to Real Life Choices than slim pickings. The program also boasts "tips for healthful living." Take advantage of "hum-drum tasks...by doing them with vigor!" Vigorously stand up to take a phone call (vigorously rising to your feet to read this article would, I reckon be just as effective), vigorously park at the far end of the lot, and vigorously wash your car by hand. "Any extra movement boosts the metabolism and burns calories better." There's no word on how many calories would be burned tearing up patronizing propaganda, but, as a service to readers, I'll pass on a few more of the ways in which McDonald's suggests that the hum-drum can be made more vigorous. Make sure you comply.

"Walk to a co-worker's desk, as opposed to calling them."

So, what's behind this nonsense? If we rule out theories that the tri-state McDonald's hierarchy has either descended into a form of collective insanity or been possessed by mischievous demons, the only possible explanation is that the company is trying to formulate a response to chatter about a supposed obesity "epidemic." The lawsuit filed against McDonald's earlier last year by two chunky children may have been dismissed for a second time (the judge barred the plaintiffs from re-filing, saying, rather tactlessly under the circumstances, that they did not deserve "a third bite at the apple"), but no one seriously doubts that there will be others in its wake.

"Use a carry-basket at the supermarket, as opposed to pushing a cart."

Equally ominous is the fact that legislators and bureaucrats are showing mounting interest in this issue. For example, last October Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson took time out from his doubtless demanding schedule to "commend" McDonald's and Burger King for introducing some lower-fat items on their menus. "It was," he condescended, "a step in the right direction of providing consumers with less fat." Meanwhile, there's draft legislation both in Congress and, locally, the New York state assembly that would oblige fast-food chains to post calorie counts on their menu boards. Over on the left coast, Oakland's mayor Jerry Brown, an always-reliable bellwether of the modishly bizarre, has come out in favor of a tax based on "the unhealthy quality of foods." Even poor old Joe Lieberman has tried to get in on the act. He wants the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the way that fast food and other snacks are marketed.

"Walk to pick up the morning paper instead of having it delivered."

The notion that the increasing rate of obesity is the fault of the capitalists who sell fast food, rather than the consumers who eat it is, has proved popular among many overweight Americans willing to blame anyone other than themselves for the aesthetic tragedies that are their stretch pants. Everyone loves an alibi. The cranks, busybodies, and lovers of self-denial now peering through our restaurant windows are only too happy to oblige. As Mary Wootan, the director of nutrition policy for the deranged, but influential, Center for Science in the Public Interest explained at the American Public Health Association's annual meeting last November, "we have got to move beyond personal responsibility."

"Make several trips up and down the stairs instead of using the elevator."

Happily, judging by the estimated $40 billion a year they spend in the pursuit of one diet or another, there are still plenty of Americans who disagree. Seen in this light, McDonald's Real Life Choices are nothing more than shrewd marketing, a canny attempt to make sure that the chain doesn't lose customers frightened by the flap over flab, and perhaps even to attract a few more. Premium salads introduced by the company last April have reportedly been something of a success. And, to be fair, it is possible to eat perfectly healthily at McDonald's. Contrary to the killjoys' shrill claims, there really is no such thing as "bad" food. What matters is a balanced — and moderate — diet. There's no reason that a cheeseburger (or two) cannot be a part of it.

"Use a push-mower instead of a riding mower to mow the lawn."

Likewise there's probably nothing, other than absurdity (and remember, laughter uses up a few calories), actually wrong with all those hints for a healthier humdrum. Yes, they are irritating, but following them wouldn't hurt. It might even help — a little. However, the irony for McDonald's is that in launching a program surely designed, at least in part, to head off lawsuits it may have actually increased its legal risk.

The company's most effective response to potential plaintiffs is the (entirely reasonable) argument that its meals are safe. If some folk choose to overindulge, the consequences are their responsibility, and theirs alone: It is not up to Mickey D's to police how much people choose to pile onto their trays. To use a legal term, McDonald's does not owe a "duty of care" to its clients' waistlines, arteries, or bathroom scales. Unfortunately, measures such as the Real Life Choices program, or, to take another example, the somewhat surreal decision to hire Oprah's personal trainer as a consultant) muddy the message. They seem, if only implicitly, to acknowledge that the company's critics may have a point. Any trial lawyer worth his salt (forgive the nutritionally incorrect phrase) will portray such steps as an admission by McDonald's that it bears some legal responsibility for the obesity "epidemic."

And even the details of such programs can, in the hands of a skilful attorney, be turned into a courtroom nightmare. If McDonald's believed that the program was necessary, why did it wait until 2004 before introducing it — and then only in three states? Worse still, were some of "the tips for healthful living," to use a dread word, "misleading"? After all, they included the counterintuitive, and undeniably self-serving, suggestion that diners should "plan ahead to have "power snacks" or meals every 3-4 hours, energizing choices such as fruit and yogurt or cheese, tortilla roll with meat or cheese, or sandwich [that] can do the body good!" Now, I'm no expert on the human metabolism, but recommendations that we should all graze our way to good health may raise an eyebrow or two.

There's not much more reason to think that the company's efforts will do anything to lessen the political pressures it is going to face. Indeed, by increasing the perception that the food giant is somehow to blame for our plague of pudginess, it may well worsen them. That the company is apparently so spineless in the face of these threats should be no surprise. All too often, the boardroom answer to ideologically driven criticism (and if you think the attack on fast-food restaurants is really to do with waistlines, I have a bridge to sell you) is appeasement. McDonald's, it seems, is no exception and, as that company is about to discover, appeasement never works.

O.K., you can sit down now.

++++

I talked to MSNBC about this topic here. 

The Fat Police

Kelly Brownell and Katherine Battle Horgen:  Food Fight - The Inside Story of the Food Industry, America's Obesity Crisis, and What We Can Do about It                

National Review, January 26, 2004

Santa Fe, New Mexico, January 1999   ©  Andrew Stuttaford

It is difficult to single out what is most objectionable about this hectoring, lecturing, and altogether dejecting piece of work, but perhaps it's the moment when its authors credit the rest of us with the IQs of greedy rodents. Quoting a study that shows that, presented with a cornucopia of carbohydrates and wicked fatty treats, laboratory rats will abandon a balanced, healthy diet in favor of dangerous excess, they draw a rather insulting conclusion: Civilization's success in creating so much abundance has come at a terrible price, a "toxic environment" so overflowing with temptation that, like those Rabelaisian rats, humanity will be unable to resist. We will eat ourselves if not to death, then to diabetes, decrepitude, and stretch pants.

The "obesity epidemic" is becoming a tiresome refrain and Yale professor Kelly Brownell is one of its most tireless advocates. Nevertheless, for those with the stomach for more on the fat threat, Food Fight is worth a look for what it reveals about the motives and objectives of the busybodies pining to police your plate.

But let's start with the "epidemic" itself. With a relish they are unlikely to show at the dinner table, the authors pepper their readers with data purporting to show that roughly two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese, products of a feeding frenzy that is dangerous medically and drives up health-care costs by tens of billions of dollars. Some of the numbers may need to be taken with a pinch of low sodium salt, but the trends they represent are a matter of concern. In this at least Food Fight is right.

Over the past couple of decades. Americans have indeed put on some pounds. All too often, heavy isn't healthy. The mere fact of being too fat (calculating what is "too" fat takes more, however, than a wistful glance at the pages of Vogue) can cause problems such as arthritis and a range of other, sometimes serious, diseases. Despite this, corpulence should be seen as symptom of ill health as much as a cause: Being fat won't necessarily kill you, but the sloth and the gluttony that got you there just might.

To their credit, the authors do cite research showing that fit fatties are at lower risk that unfit string beans. Still, they tend to concentrate on obesity as a problem in its own right - and, ironically, that's something that may be counterproductive. Befuddled by standardized notions of an ideal weight, Americans spend an estimated $40 billion a year in the generally unsuccessful pursuit of one miracle diet or another. The result is yo-yoing weight - something often less healthful that having a few too many pounds - and unjustified self-congratulation for a population that likes to tell itself that it is "doing something" about its health, when, in fact, it is doing anything but.

Highlighting fatness, that soft, billowing symbol of self-indulgence, reflects an agenda that has expanded beyond legitimate health concerns to embrace asceticism for its own sake. There's a hint of this in the way the authors respond to the idea that all foods can find a place in a properly balanced diet. While conceding that such an approach has "some utility" in individual cases, they see the argument that flows from it (that no food is intrinsically "bad") as a distraction. They are wrong. An emphasis on balance is the best chance of persuading this country to eat more healthily - and, importantly, to stick with this decision. To Brownell and Horgen, more comfortable with proscription and self-denial than compromise and cheeseburgers, this is, doubtless, dismayingly lax.

Their language too is a giveaway. There is tut-tut-ting over the "glorification of candy" and anguish over restaurants "notorious" for their large portions. Under the circumstances, it's no shock that the reliably alarmist "Center for Science in the Public Interest," an organization famous for its efforts to drain away our pleasures, rates frequent and favorable mention.

Asceticism often brings with it a sense of moral superiority and the urge to spread the joys of deprivation amongst the less enlightened masses - by persuasion if possible, by compulsion if necessary, and sometimes by something that falls in between. So Brownell and Horgen lament the lack of "incentive" for recipients of food stamps to purchase "healthy foods." Common sense, apparently, is not enough. Worse, these wretches might even be tempted into "overbuying." Who knew the food-stamp program was so generous?

With tobacco a useful precedent, it's not difficult to see where all this is going. Brimming with tales of carnage, soaring health-care costs, and the threat to "the children," Food Fight follows a familiar script. That's not to say its writers don't make some telling points. The ways, for instance, in which junk food is marketed to America's no-longer-so-tiny tots are troubling, but at its core this book rests on the unpalatable belief that even adults cannot be trusted with a menu. The authors' solutions include regulation, censorship. subsidies, propaganda, public-spending boondoggles, and a faintly totalitarian-sounding "national strategic plan to increase physical activity." Oh, did I mention the "small" taxes on the sale of "unhealthy" food?

Food Fight is a preview of the techniques that will be used to persuade a chubby country to agree to all this. There are scare tactics (death! disease!), a convenient capitalist demon ) "big food"), and, best of all, an alibi. It's not our fault that we are fat. Yes, the importance of getting up off that sofa is fully acknowledged in Food Fight, but the book's soothing subtext is that we are all so helpless in the face of advertising and abundance that we can no longer be held fully responsible for what we are eating. Even the ultimate alibi (food might be addictive!) makes a tentative appearance, but whether this theory is true is, readers are informed, not "yet" clear.

The notion that eating too much is somehow involuntary is ludicrous, but it fits in with the view repeated in this book that "overconsumption has replaced malnutrition as the world's top food problem," a repugnant claim that makes sense only if feast is indeed no more of a choice that famine. Anyone who believes that will have no problem in arguing that, as people cannot reasonably be expected to fend off Colonel Sanders by themselves, government should step in. And "if the political process is ineffective" (voters can be inconveniently ornery), Brownell and Horgen would back litigation. Such cases might be tricky, but even the treat of mass lawsuits "regardless of legal merit" could, they note, help "encourage" the food industry to change its ways.

And that thuggish suggestion is more nauseating that anything Ronald McDonald could ever cook up.

Iced Vice

National Review Online, August 28, 2003

First they came for the beef and cheese nachos. Now they have come for Cold Stone Creamery's Mud Pie Mojo. In a development that was as predictable as it is absurd, the killjoy cranks over at CSPI, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, have issued a report denouncing ice-cream shops for hawking "coronaries in cones." Well, no surprise there. Writing in the July issue of Reason magazine, Jacob Sullum describes how the center (despite its name, it has nothing do with either science or the public interest) has a menu of menaces that must not be allowed anywhere near a dining room. These include fried mozzarella sticks ("just say no"), double cheeseburgers ("a coronary by-pass special"), and even fettuccine Alfredo ("a heart attack on a plate"). Hold the salt on those fries (Hypertension!), in fact, hold the fries too (Acrylamide! Cancer!), fly from buffalo wings, peel away from crispy orange beef and put down that "culinary equivalent of a loaded pistol," a baked potato with butter, sour cream, bacon bits and cheese.

Danger doesn't end with the main course. Desserts, such as the Cheesecake Factory's notorious carrot cake, have also come in for stern criticism: It was, clearly, only a matter of time before Ben & Jerry's, Haagen-Dazs, and even poor, bland, TCBY heard the knock on the door.

But does it matter? CSPI immodestly describes its researchers (even that seems too generous a word) as "food sleuths," but for now, these self-appointed calorie cops have no warrant. This does not mean that their critics can relax. The center may peddle hysteria, half-truths, and the guilty pleasures of self-denial, but they have a way with the media and in the lunatic world of the gathering "war against obesity" theirs is likely to be an influential voice. For that reason, if no other, their crusade against cones is worth a closer look.

Let's start with the hype. No campaign of this type is complete without a crisis. The Greens make Chicken-Licken look like an optimist, the gun-control crowd never cease to amaze with their tales of carnage and then, of course, there's "passive smoking." The junk-food jihadists are no less melodramatic. Sound the alarm! There's an "obesity epidemic"! Why call it an epidemic? Well, epidemics demand a tough response. If Americans can be convinced that they are in peril from a plague of pudginess, there's no saying what they won't agree to.

CSPI's ice-cream screed is a reminder that the center is a master of hyperbole, if not of science. Those "coronaries in cones" are capped by the warning that a Baskin-Robbins large Vanilla shake is "worse for your heart" than "drinking three Quarter Pounders," a disgusting image that should not be allowed to obscure the fact that no food as such is bad for your heart. What matters is the overall composition of your diet, the amount of exercise you do, and so on. This report won't tell you that. Instead CSPI's propagandists prefer to pursue their morbid rhetoric of heart disease ("you'll need… cholesterol-lowering …drugs" to cope with a Friendly's Caramel Fudge Brownie Sundae) and death (a "super" version of one of Friendly's Candy Shop Sundaes is for the "self-destructive"). Oh, please.

Hand in hand with the hype (indeed it's a corollary of it) is the assumption that Americans are not responsible for what they eat. This gives the fat police an excuse (if people can't control their eating then someone — usually government — must step in to do it for them) and the overweight an alibi — thus its appeal. At its most extreme this line of thinking manifests itself in the ludicrous claim that fast food is somehow addictive, but generally the girth Gestapo confine themselves to behaving as if the man at the lunch counter is not much more intelligent than the cow that went into his sandwich. He is, it seems, a dull, helpless dolt, unable to take a rational decision for himself, a clueless creature, powerless before the might of a well-crafted commercial.

This is the idea that underpins remarks by Jayne Hurley, a "senior nutritionist" for CSPI, that it is "as if these ice cream shops were competing with each other to see who could inflict the greatest toll on…arteries and waistlines." That's a good sound bite, but like a CSPI-approved diet, there's not a lot to it. In reality, the only people "competing" to put on the pounds are the vanilla-chasing ruminants who choose (and that's the word) to dine there. They may not know the exact number of calories involved (a key CSPI complaint), but, believe me, Jayne, the customers who opt for a Ben & Jerry's Chunky Monkey in a chocolate-dipped waffle cone understand that it ain't no health food.

The third, all too familiar, element in this drama is the feeble response of the food industry. In particular, management at Kraft Foods appears to have learnt nothing from the tobacco fiasco — despite sharing a parent company with Philip Morris. An essential part of any successful litigation against Kraft will be to show that the company owed a "duty" to protect its customers from their own greed. That's an argument that is laughable, but it's also lethal. The moment that the food companies concede that there's something to it, they are in deep, deep trouble. Needless to say, this is exactly what Kraft has done. The company's stock has fallen sharply, and deservedly so, since it made the announcement (about reducing portion sizes and calorie content) that will be a key building block in any case against it. Lemmings, of course, plunge in packs. PepsiCo and McDonald's are amongst the other food giants busily making the same mistake.

There are early signs that the ice-cream chains may turn out to be just as misguided. The correct response to CSPI-style criticism is to say that consumers — and consumers alone — are responsible for the results of their overindulgence. Period. No more discussion. Pass the creamy peanut-butter sauce. Instead, there was, so to speak, a touch of waffle in the response from the Cold Stone Creamery. This included the observation that "lower calorie options for our customers…are also made available in all our stores." So what? Even if the only treat on offer was regular sweet-cream ice cream with a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, roasted almonds, and hot fudge in a chocolate-dipped waffle cone (1,400 calories!), that shouldn't matter. No one is forced to buy it, and if you do, the consequences are yours and yours alone.

But if we have a leaner future ahead of us, the same is not true of trial lawyers. They may well have a very rich feast to look forward to. There is one obstacle they will have to watch out for, however. Tobacco litigation was in one sense relatively straightforward. If some wheezing patient could be shown to have puffed away at a certain brand of cigarettes for years, the first steps of a case against the manufacturer of those smokes could then be taken. Imagine, though, the difficulty faced by a lawyer confronted by the potential junk-food plaintiff who has just waddled in through his door. The fees could be as large as the litigant, but who to sue? To be sure, there are trenchermen who confine their eating to just one spot, but most do not. Apportioning the blame for super-sized portions won't be easy. Did the pizzas cause the damage or was it the pies, the pralines, the penne or, heaven forbid, the plaintiffs themselves? CSPI's executive director has acknowledged as much. The ice-cream extravaganza, he says, has "something to do with the size of Americans' pants," but "no one disputes that the obesity epidemic has many causes." True enough, and that simple fact could greatly complicate any litigation.

The best way for trial lawyers to avoid such difficulties will be to follow the precedent of that piece of extortion better known as the tobacco "settlement." Rather than have to prove the cases of individual plaintiffs, with those tricky facts and awkward questions of causation, it will be far easier to claim that obesity has "cost" state and federal governments countless billions of dollars. Rapacious and unprincipled governments (that's all of them, in case you wondered) will play along. It will be argued that the bill for obesity should be paid by the industry that allegedly created the problem. There will be dark talk of "misleading" advertising, "irresponsible" marketing and "dangerous" ingredients. As their legal expenses mount, companies will slim down menus, various tasty ingredients will disappear, and countless "advisory councils" on nutrition will be hired. It will do no good. Confronted by the power of big government and the greed of big law, big food will, so to speak, chicken out and negotiate a pay-off.

Get your Toffee Coffee Cappuccino Chiller while there's still time.

Mac Attacked

National Review Online, July 7, 2003

Chicago, October 1989  © Andrew Stuttaford

The realization came as I chowed down on a good breakfast of egg, sliced Canadian style bacon (water added!), sweeteners (one or more of sugar, dextrose or corn syrup solids), the salts of the earth and laboratory (specifically sodiums phosphate, pyrophosphate, aluminum phosphate, erythorbate, nitrite, citrate, stearoyl-2-lactylate and good old salt), enriched (a cocktail of thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, iron and folic acid), bleached wheat flour (confusingly, wheat flour may contain malted barley flour), vital wheat gluten, trivial wheat gluten, yeast, (and, self-sufficiently, yeast nutrients — ammonium sulfate, calcium sulfate, calcium carbonate, ammonium chloride, non-calcium phosphate), partially hydrogenated (more water!) soybean oil (except when it's cottonseed), vinegar, high fructose corn syrup, corn meal, soy flour, soy lecithin, lecithin without soy, dough conditioners (an intriguing blend of calcium peroxide, mono-and diglycerides), numerous acids (fumaric, acetic, citric, sorbic and ascorbic), calcium propionate, potassium sorbate, corn starch, beta carotene, eye of newt (all right, I made that one up), cultured milk, cheese culture, unsophisticated cream, enzymes, sinister-sounding "fungal" enzymes and, a touch weirdly under the circumstances, colors and flavors just known as "artificial," all washed down with carbonated water, caramel color, more acid (phosphoric and citric this time), more sodium (saccharin — "cause[s] cancer in laboratory animals!"), "natural" flavors (and, helping nature out, potassium benzoate "to protect taste"), caffeine, potassium citrate, aspartame, and, finally, that proofreader's nightmare, dimethylpolysiloxane. McDonald's really, really wanted me to know the contents of an Egg McMuffin and a Diet Coke and, yes, there is, indeed, such a thing as too much information.

I was in a Mickey D's on a main street somewhere in northern Massachusetts. It was a bleak, blue collar, pink slip of a town, the sort of town that is more Dunkin' Donuts than Starbucks, the sort of town where someone ought to be able to find a scrap of fat and a bad for you bun without running the risk of a lecture. No such luck.

There, amid the dispirited detritus of a tarnished Golden Arches, amongst the straws, the stains, the rumpled napkins and those sad, sad sachets of tomato ketchup were some new, perky strangers, politically correct pamphlets (printed, naturally, on "acid-free recycled paper, 30% post-consumer waste") in NPR beige and Sierra Club green. McDonald's is, I learned, a "socially responsible" neighbor, busily promoting "environmentally sustainable practices" and the work of Dr. Temple Grandin, "one of the world's foremost authorities on animal behavior" (until that ugly moment at the abattoir, future happy meals need to be kept, well, happy).

And, yes, there's more. "Nutrition," the reader is told, "is a long-standing priority at McDonald's." So I should hope. The place is a restaurant after all.

Unfortunately, that is not what Mickey D's means. Nutrition is not food. Food is super-sized, fatty, and fun. It's burgers (add cheese!), fries (add salt!), hot dogs (add mustard!), and it's a barbecue in July (add beer!). Nutrition, by contrast is glum, not fun. It's subtract, not add. It's greens, not fries. Food is a chocolate shake. Nutrition is no-fat milk. Food is an all-you-can-eat buffet. Nutrition is a doctor checking your cholesterol, a bureaucrat vetting your dinner plate and a fast-food chain beginning to sweat. Most of the leaflets on display were designed to demonstrate McDonald's commitment to "balanced eating" and to help its clients with their "nutrition goals": The truly obsessed could find out more on the company's website or by dialing a special number.

Well, my nutrition goal that day was an Egg McMuffin, a choice that a disturbing number of people would find upsetting, reprehensible, and, quite probably, suicidal. For, "obesity," it is increasingly obvious, is set to be the new tobacco. The Savonarolas of self-denial have found another pleasure to wreck, and a scold of "advocates," cranks, and worrywarts has, so to speak, weighed in with relish. To take just two examples, the American Obesity Association (yes, really) is referring to obesity as an "epidemic" that is shaping up to become "the leading public health issue of the 21st Century" — and, no, they are not bragging. Meanwhile, the never knowingly under-alarmist Center for Science in the Public Interest is gleefully quoting HHS statistics showing that gluttony and sloth "contribute to" (whatever that might mean) between 310,000 to 580,000 deaths in America each year, a hungry man holocaust that's "13 times" greater than the death toll from that more familiar liberal bogeyman — the firearm.

Needless to say, attorneys too are preparing to feed at this tempting new trough. The first lawsuits have been filed, each for a Quarter Pounder (or more) of flesh. These have faced difficulties, but all the ingredients for a successful rerun of the great tobacco shakedown are clearly falling into place — the defendants (the fast-food chains) have enticingly deep pockets and their wares can be linked to health problems that come, supposedly, with a high cost to this country (around $117 billion annually according to the junk statisticians at the Centers for Disease Control) and which are, ominously, coming under scrutiny from within the (ever expanding) beltway as well as the trial bar. Naturally, none of this is blamed on the tubby "victims" themselves. Much like those unfortunate geese conscripted into the cause of  pâté de foie gras, they are said to have had little choice in what was slid down their gullets.

So, as we saw in the cigarette wars, notions of personal responsibility are either watered down — "dealing with overweight and obesity…is also a community responsibility," explained (now former) Surgeon General Satcher — or denied altogether. It's now claimed that Big Mac mavens may, like smokers, have been tricked into their unhealthy habit — all those munching and, we can be sure, litigious morons had absolutely no idea that mountains of burgers, fries, nuggets and shakes might lead them to put on a pound or two. Better still, fast food may even be, wait for it, "addictive." John Banzhaf, the "public interest" law professor who pioneered tobacco litigation, has argued that "fast foods can produce addictive effects — like nicotine — in many users; and that the chains deliberately manipulate the foods to make them far more dangerous and habit-forming than they would otherwise be."

When this sort of nonsense appears on the agenda, "the children" are never far behind. Sure enough, fast food's foes are busy pointing to the fact that the nation's tots are not so tiny any more. Across the fruited plain, tubby tykes (most of them, presumably, orphans: in this discussion we never seem to hear very much about parental responsibility for their kids' diet) are waddling their way through an "obesity epidemic" all their own. The need to save them from this peril will inevitably be used to justify both litigation and, almost certainly, intrusive and patronizing legislation — the not so thin end of a very bulky wedge. It's only a matter of time before Ronald McDonald is Joe Cameled by the calorie cops.

With pockets that aren't just deep, but super-sized, McDonald's is right to be worried. Ironically, its very success will count against it. Those golden arches are ubiquitous (millions and millions of potential litigants) and, worse, they have become a symbol of all that infuriates the anti-corporate crowd about big-business America. Anticipating the struggles to come, McDonald's France has already started to wave the white napkin, suggesting (in a paid magazine "advertorial") that customers should not visit its restaurants more than once a week. No word yet on whether Vichy water will be added to the menu.

Sterner souls on this side of the Atlantic have since disavowed this attempt at surrender, but, even in the U.S., the company's tactics look dangerously like appeasement. As the cigarette companies discovered, appeasement is unlikely to work. The leaflets displayed in that Massachusetts McDonald's are a pointless gesture — little more than drivel sprinkled on grease — and they will not do any good. The information they contain may be technically complete, if mildly insulting (most customers are quite capable of working out for themselves the purpose of different serving sizes without additional explanation), but it falls far short of the health warnings (basically, "you're doomed if you eat any of this") and other "disclosures" sought by the restaurant chain's critics, critics who will be aided by lawyers as insatiable as the pudgy plaintiffs they purport to represent.

What's more, by this and other moves (it has, for instance, recently announced the creation of an "advisory council on healthy lifestyles") the company may well be conceding, if only by implication, the core of its assailants' case — that fast-food joints have some sort of duty to guide their clients towards (to borrow McDonald's tortured language) more "healthful eating." That's a mistake, legally, politically, and intellectually. It takes the debate into territory where a burger behemoth will find it difficult to prevail: far better, instead, to render leaflets and advisory council into post-consumer waste. If diners choose to eat none too wisely, but all too well, the consequences should be their responsibility and theirs alone — and Mickey D's should say so.

McDonald's has no need to apologize for what it does best — delivering cheap, sinful, and surprisingly succulent slop to those who don't have the time, inclination, or talent to make other arrangements. And, if, despite what the sad saga of the McLean Deluxe might suggest, there really is a demand for "healthier" food under the golden arches, the logic of the marketplace will lead McDonald's to salad bar, tofu and side orders of carrots. For now, the company is stressing the healthiness of its salads, Fruit 'n Yogurt parfaits (280 calories without granola!) and Chicken McGrill (300 calories without the mayo!), but, don't worry, it has not abandoned those who prefer a fattier feast. The new bacon, egg, and cheese McGriddles (450 calories! 80 percent of your daily cholesterol, ahem, "value"!) show obvious promise and, in another exciting development, McDonald's is looking at adding more sugar to its buns (to make them toast more easily).

Now that's what I call heartening.

Turn Off, Tune Out & Drop Out: Do you know what week it is?

National Review  Online, April 23, 2003

If there’s one fashion disaster that has endured throughout the ages it is the hair shirt. There is something perverse about our species, a self-indulgent sense of guilt that makes us take rather too much delight in self-denial. Ever since the awful moment when the first caveman was hectored by the first Neanderthal nag, the killjoy has been a malign presence at our side, a preaching, prattling parasite condemning and chastising, perennially telling humanity what to do — always for our own good, naturally. The excuse for such interference used to be the Hereafter, the preservation of the immortal soul, the pitch to avoid the sulfur, fire, and brimstone. But we live in more secular times these days — and with the afterlife increasingly an afterthought, do-gooders are busily turning their attention to this life too. Health is the new holiness. Narcotics are a no-no, sex is “high risk,” boozers are losers, tobacco is a taboo, the Big Mac is a lawsuit, and, now, seemingly in a final insult, one of the last remaining pleasures, television — that flickering, fascinating window into countless different worlds, that most kindly of household appliances — is coming under savage attack.

Yes, April 21-27 is TV-Turnoff Week! Just days after televised images of toppled statues and desert heroics transfixed this nation, an organization calling itself the TV-Turnoff Network is advising us to switch off the tube for what could be a long, long week. In a press release issued, fittingly enough, on that annual hair-shirt holiday, April 15, the Network predicted that “more than seven million people will participate in over 17,000 organized Turnoffs in every state in the U.S., as well as numerous other countries.”

I don’t know about you, but there’s something about the idea of an “organized Turnoff” that sounds deeply depressing to me. A quick check of a list of the Turnoff’s supporters is enough to confirm that, despite some benign participants, its core is indeed a killjoy cabal. Signatories of a letter supporting the Turnoff Week include the American Medical Association and the American Heart Association, miscellaneous “advocacy” groups including “The Alliance for Childhood” (opposed to “test-stress” but, readers will be relieved to know, in favor of a “new national commitment to peace education”) and, inevitably, Hillary’s old chums at the Children’s Defense Fund, as well as an organization with a name — Shape up America! — that led to some unaccustomed exertion on my part: a shudder of fear as, slumped on the sofa, I hastily put down my drink and reached for the remote, desperate to find something, anything, that would push the thought of “shaping up” far from my mind.

Superficially, at least one of the points made by those who have signed that letter might seem to have some appeal: “Research demonstrates conclusively that turning off the TV boosts school performance. Federal studies show that at all grade levels, students who watch an hour or less of TV per day consistently have better reading skills than other students — and this disparity increases at higher grade levels.” Well, maybe, but after a moment of thought, it’s not hard to see that this argument muddles cause with effect. Brighter kids — or children with more actively involved parents — are far more likely than their dimmer brethren to look for intellectual excitement beyond the boob tube. The contrary notion, the idea that Jackass addicts will, once their sets have been switched off, turn to Dickens, Melville, and Hemingway for their thrills is, quite simply, absurd.

There is, of course, potential for serious discussion about how much television Americans, and particularly younger Americans, choose to watch; but that’s not what the Turnoff Taliban is really about. Look a little closer at what their supporters have to say, and it’s easy to see that their destination is Rodham County: “Watching less television also means less exposure to a wide array of antisocial behaviors, including violence, over-consumption and racial and gender stereotyping.” It’s not difficult to suspect that the Turnoff Network’s greatest objection is not to the medium, but to what they see as its message.

These folks choke over their lattes at what they call “commercialism.” In other words, they disdain the cheery excesses of American capitalism, the ceaseless, chattering parade of vulgar hucksters, relentless hustlers, and insistent ad men who play so important a part in the consumer capitalism that the Turnoff crowd so affects to despise. They look down on the greedy, grabby, gabby, glittering, energetic mess of a culture that has brought this country so much prosperity, and its people so much opportunity.

That’s an old — and familiar — form of snobbery. But these days, of course, the hair shirt comes mainly in green, and so it’s no surprise to discover that amid the alternative forms of entertainment proposed for TV-Turnoff Week is a celebration of the most dismal of all the killjoy carnivals — Earth Day (April 22). “Turn off the tube and go for a hike, help in a stream clean-up, or write a letter to a legislator about an environmental issue that’s important to you.” Help in a stream clean up?

Further suggestions carry less ideological freight and don’t, at least, involve waterproof clothing. They can, however, be just plain goofy — “Shakespeare’s birthday is traditionally observed on April 22 or April 23 (depending on your source). Take an evening and read some of his sonnets as a family, or act out a scene from a play.” Well, if it’s dad who has decided to deprive his wretched offspring of the joys of television, King Lear might be a selection to avoid. Other choices included in the Network’s list of “101 screen-free activities” include (and I’m not making this up) watching the clouds, looking at stars, and learning about native trees and flowers. And if watching the clouds, looking at stars, and studying native flora is not excitement enough, why not “make paper bag costumes and have a parade?”

As with most liberal campaigns, not only do “the children” play a prominent part in the Turnoff Network’s message, but so does a health threat — in this case, smoking’s most likely successor as national scapegoat: the pudgy menace of “obesity” currently waddling across the fruited plain and dooming us all to early, if substantial, graves.

Fear of fat already seems set to tarnish the allure of those infamous Golden Arches and may now, it seems, be used to cast a shadow over the simple pleasures of a night with Seinfeld. “More than one in four American adults is obese,” we are warned, and tiny tots, it appears, are no longer so tiny — “more than one in ten children is obese.” All is not lost, however. “Turning off the TV reduces sedentary behavior — because no other waking activity is as sedentary as watching TV — and can affect nutritional choices, as it means seeing fewer advertisements for high-fat, high sugar foods” — advertisements which we poor peons are, presumably, powerless to resist on our own.

Of course, the Turnoff is not intended to stop at a week. Those seven days are just a first step. Worse is to come. Parents are urged to “try and restrict viewing to a half-hour per day or one hour every other evening.” That’s an unnecessarily rigid approach which will not only succeed in isolating their children from much of contemporary culture — good as well as bad — but which also makes very little intellectual sense. When it comes to deciding what children should watch on TV, quality should surely be a more important measure than quantity, a notion clearly lost on an organization that, for bad measure, also recommends canceling your cable — thus banishing from the home even relatively educational programming, such as A&E and the History Channel.

And the TV-Turnoff Network even has plans for those of us who, despite all the dangers, persist with the tube. In its opinion, viewers need to be subjected to a little improving propaganda every now and then. In a recent filing with the FCC, the Network called on the Commission to “adopt a regulation that requires all TV broadcast stations to run periodic announcements throughout the broadcast week and in all dayparts [sic] reminding viewers that excessive television-viewing has negative health, academic and other consequences for children and that parents and guardians retain and should exercise their First Amendment right and ability to turn off their television sets and limit their children’s viewing time.”

That’s a pretty strange way to look at the First Amendment, but unfortunately I don’t have time to discuss it.

Buffy is on in a couple of minutes.