The Teapot of Evil

Tea is now in the sights of the puritans who would treat food in the same way that they have treated tobacco. And this being the USA, they do it though law suits.

The lawyers who took on the big US tobacco companies, and won, have now set their sights on the food industry.

These slime balls behave as if they are doing us a favour, as if they are fighting the good fight against some evil, yet it is they who are evil. We do not need food to be labelled in a particular way, we can figure it out for ourselves. No one seriously believes that crisps and chips are particularly good for you. Taken in moderation, they certainly are not bad. Like everything, moderation is the key and it is a matter for the individual, not the government and not some shyster lawyers to make the decision for us.

On the list of evil foods is, as Pat Nurse observes, tea. For fuck’s sake, tea. Just how long have we been drinking this stuff? Do we really need a crusading lawyer to force through regulation on how it is labelled? Anyone died lately from tea consumption? Anyone got fat as a consequence of tea drinking? Answer; no. Piss off already.

We’re not saying the food industry is the same as the tobacco industry that kills 500,000 Americans a year, but we are saying there is an epidemic of obesity that is affecting the overall health of the American people.

Given that being fat is not an infectious disease, there is no obesity epidemic. Sure, there are a significant number of fat people. People get fat because they consume more energy than they expend. They have a choice. Whatever choice they make is their business, not that of self-righteous lawyers who think it their business to sue manufacturers on their behalf.

Mr Barrett cites another example, foods whose labels suggest they should be kept in the fridge once opened, thus giving the impression that they contain no preservative, and are fresher than they actually are.

It means nothing of the sort. It means precisely what it says, that once opened the item should be kept in the fridge. Just because Barrett is devious enough think that it means that it is suggesting there are no preservatives, it doesn’t mean that it is true and it isn’t. It means; refrigerate once opened, nothing more, nothing less.

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

C S Lewis

These people are evil, make no mistake about that.