Aaargh! Forget nutrition and medical guidelines, carbon footprint is the new diet selector.
Climate Change Activists to Meet Food Police at Closed-Door Meeting March 14
New York, NY / Washington DC – At a closed-door meeting to take place March 14, the Obama Administration’s Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services plan to update the nation’s “dietary guidelines” — a document with significant repercussions for food stamps, military and school meals programs — to include anti-global warming activism.
In an article, “Obama administration pollutes guidelines for healthy eating with unhealthy ideologies,” published Sunday by the Washington Examiner, National Center Senior Fellow and Risk Analysis Division Director Jeff Stier says environmental activists within the U.S. government plan to change the nation’s dietary guidelines to promote foods that they believe have “a smaller carbon footprint.”
In the past, says Stier, the federal government’s dietary guidelines were intended exclusively to “promote health and reduce risk for major chronic diseases.”
No more, says Stier: “For the first time in the history of the guidelines, ‘sustainability’ is part of the agenda. Actual items on their Dietary Guidelines working group agenda include ‘immigration,’ ‘global climate change’ and ‘agriculture/aquaculture sustainability.'”
What’s more, says Stier, these new guidelines will cost the public money: “By favoring foods which activists think have a smaller carbon footprint, the new guidelines will increase the prices you pay for your food. It will also increase the cost to all taxpayers, since the Dietary Guidelines are used to set policy for food stamps (SNAP) and military diets,” he says.
“The food guidelines, by law, are supposed to be based on a ‘preponderance of scientific and medical knowledge,'” said Amy Ridenour, chairman of the National Center for Public Policy Research, who has studied climate change polices for over a quarter century. “Science can say with authority that eating green vegetables is good for you. It can’t say that humans are causing catastrophic global warming with any more certainty than it can explain why the planet hasn’t warmed since the Clinton Administration. Moms and Dads across America deserve — and, as taxpayers, have paid for — dietary guidelines they can use to help them feed their families wisely. No one benefits from causing people to wonder if the nutritional advice they are getting from their government isn’t focused on nutrition at all, but has been polluted by environmental activists.”
The full Washington Examiner article can be read here.
New York City-based Jeff Stier is a Senior Fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research in Washington, D.C., and heads its Risk Analysis Division. Stier is a frequent guest on CNBC, and has addressed health policy on CNN, Fox News Channel, MSNBC, as well as network newscasts. Stier’s National Center op-eds have been published in top outlets, including the Los Angeles Times, the New York Post, Newsday, Forbes, the Washington Examiner and National Review Online. He also frequently discusses risk issues on Twitter at @JeffaStier.
Washington-based Amy Ridenour, founding CEO of the National Center and currently co-CEO with her husband, David Ridenour, has been interviewed on television or radio thousands of times, and had her op-ed published in newspapers thousands of times, on nearly every major public policy issue since the National Center’s 1982 founding. Newspapers running her op-eds within the year include the Denver Post, Providence Journal, Las Vegas Sun, Arizona Daily Star, Boston Herald, Deseret News, Duluth News Tribune, Orange County Register, Honolulu Star-Advertiser, Omaha World-Herald and many others. She discusses issues on Twitter at @AmyRidenour.
The National Center for Public Policy Research, founded in 1982, is a non-partisan, free-market, independent conservative think-tank. Ninety-four percent of its support comes from individuals, less than four percent from foundations, and less than two percent from corporations. It receives over 350,000 individual contributions a year from over 96,000 active recent contributors.
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Yes, I must admit, I’m firmly committed to the idea that the carbon footprint of the American diet should most definitely be scrutinized. And, to develop the proper scrutinization method, where better to seek an example than from none other than the White House’s and the lovely Michelle Obama’s personal chef: one of Washington’s 50 most people; none other than Sam Kass? Here, from Vogue:
http://m.vogue.com/magazine/article/the-talk-of-the-town-alex-wagner-and-sam-kass-politics-it-couple/
‘Sam Kass has the day off from cooking for the president, which is good news for his fiancée, Alex Wagner—and also for me, their guest for dinner. We’re at Kass’s duplex apartment in Washington’s Logan Circle, and Kass is slicing serrano peppers to go with collard greens while Wagner sets out cheese and olives and searches his bachelor’s refrigerator (champagne, mustard) for a bottle of rosé she remembers from her last visit. In about 30 minutes, a delicious meal is nearly ready: butterflied roast chicken with tarragon and preserved lemons, farro risotto with wild mushrooms and leeks, and a green salad with buttermilk dressing.
While Kass works efficiently in the kitchen, Wagner stirs the conversation. I hear about the couple’s favorite New York restaurants: Blue Hill, Carbone, Franny’s, and Vinegar Hill House; about friends in Italy who made the Barbaresco we’re now drinking; and about his hand-forged Carter Cutlery knives, which are produced by a Japanese-trained bladesmith in Oregon. She complains in mock horror that every trip to the high-end knife shop in D.C.’s Union Market “costs us about $500.”’
Heck, that $500 knife sharpening’s going to be cheap compared to what this wrecking crew’s gonna’ be pickin’ from our pockets. All together now: Tar. Feathers. Pitchforks. Crow bars.
graphicconception says:
March 10, 2014 at 11:26 am
Well, that is one of the best jokes I heard recently: carbon free carbohydrates, something on the same level as the dangers of DHMO, I suppose…
The new diet considers whether or not it slims down Mother Gaia before it slims down you. Completely insane.
Soylent Green
philjourdan says:
March 10, 2014 at 11:10 am
Reminds me eerily of Ceaușescu and his wife.
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How’d that turn out? Oh yeah, I remember. Golly, hope nothing like that happens to Barry and Michelle Antoinette!
Chairman Maobama’s 5 year plan for the US is shaping up nicely.
Remember they get donations and special interest brownie points with each inconsequential policy move in lieu of revival of the Waxman-Markey disaster money bill for carbon taxes and redistribution of wealth and side payments to community organizers.
They want you near a state of emaciation so that you will die more quickly due to the effects of chronic hypothermia and fuel poverty.
Blind, ignorant, clumsy Narcissists.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
March 10, 2014 at 11:38 am
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It’s really too bad that the devastating environmental effects of DMHO are largely ignored outside of a few people involved with chemistry.
@Mike Tremblay – and lifeguards.
Hope and Change takes mysterious ways.
Just like progressive madness.
Time to send in the white coats with the straight jackets
Tom J says:
March 10, 2014 at 11:35 am
******
Tar, feathers? You are too kind.
What an idiot, this man is worse than Bush!;]
Indoctrination gets more effective every day.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/30333ab6-0431-11e3-8aab-00144feab7de.html#axzz2vaUzgtRv
The Whitehouse back in 2013 –
Aide to the Chairman – “Psst, a word in your ear Chairman Maobama, the figures
are coming in,
World corn, rice, soyabean and wheat production will break records this year, the US Department of Agriculture estimated this week. The International Grains Council in London expects grain inventories in critical exporters such as Argentina, Australia, Europe, Russia and the US to rise 40 per cent- what shall we do Chairman”
Chairman Maobama – ” This must be hushed up, the planet is doomed and we must take control of everything and anything”
I am still waiting for the punchline from Obama. Little did we know he was a frustrated standup comedian.
How long do you have to put up with this stuff. In British Commonwealth countries, parliaments can take a vote of non-confidence and an election is then necessary. Americans have to stiff it out for the full fifteen rounds.
So the government will discriminate against foods shipped in from long distances.
Sounds like a violation of NAFTA.
The only people resisting this bunch of Globalist crack pots are the freaking Russians.
Can we sink any deeper before we decide to pull the plug on the Obama Administration. Dear Leader better gets his act together before we’re nuked out of existence?
@ur momisugly “graphicconception says:
March 10, 2014 at 11:26 am
I am sure it was on this site where I was first made aware of carbon-free sugar.
http://www.dominosugar.com/carbonfree/
What is not to like?”
They missed the balance; they did not account for farts… thus carbon free no more
Can they not see the unintended consequences from this? By politicizing dietary guidelines, they will destroy any trust people may have had in them, making them useless.
Do these people ever lose interest in controlling every aspect of other people’s lives? I’m convinced that if they could starve to death 90 percent of the world’s population, they would not only celebrate but would feel morally superior for having saved Gaia from the human parasite.
Sounds like the plot out of one of the Robocop movies. Spends his days rescuing kittens and shooting jaywalkers and smokers. Bank robbers and similar villains he ignores.
Control it has always been about control.
“Moms and Dads across America deserve — and, as taxpayers, have paid for — dietary guidelines they can use to help them feed their families wisely.”
Anyone who still trusts the government dietary guidelines is, by definition, not acting wisely.
Also, in a “modest proposal” vein, to reduce carbon in the atmosphere, we have to sequester it. How can humans directly sequester more carbon? Obesity! If we call get tremedously fat, then have ourselves buried in airtight, corrosion-resistant coffins, we’ll all be sequestering large amounts of carbon!
Eat that extra donut, folks — it’s for the planet!
I expect there will be little effect due to this – the governmental dietary guidelines are already politicized – people are already encouraged to eat the unhealthiest foods we know under the guise that they’re actually good for us. As mentioned above – grains and other carbohydrates (in particular “healthywholewheat”) are the cause of the chronic disease that are crippling our nation but unsurprisingly are the foods that we’re supposed to base our diet upon.
As always my general rule of thumb applies – if the US government is recommending one thing doing the opposite is probably the better choice.
Follow the money. If this drives up the price of food, then there’s someone benefiting from that price increase. Who?