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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (52043)	3/6/2008 9:18:24 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 540877

the way US children are eating is just sickening Concur. we'd have the same old crap Yes, we'd have the same old crap. For all the reasons you state, but not just because of the big, bad producers and lobbyists but because people like crap. They'd eat crap even if it weren't so cheap. have public health professionals choose the healthiest products to subsidize I don't think you could subsidize carrots enough to get people to choose them over potato chips. You'd have to pay people to eat them and then you'd only get those who are so poor they're starving. The majority of kids will still turn their noses up at them if offered in school. And how many of those voters would vote for public health professionals taking away their crap? I think what you'd end up with is the goodies that your exquisite taste demands not being available to you. I think it takes capitalism to offer products to your niche market. Another problem with having public health officials decide is that they don't necessarily know what they're doing, either. The wisdom of the nutrition people is constantly being called into question. Low fat diets aren't necessarily the best for your heart, vegetable oils may not be so good for you, chocolate is good for you, etc. etc. I think that's unmanageable. how do you fix it? You don't. You do some education in schools, offer public service messages, have health sections in newspapers and recognize that people won't always choose according to your values. And that that is their right.

To: epicure who wrote (52043)	3/6/2008 6:26:05 PM
From: Oeconomicus	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 540877

"If, because of our capitalist system, those people were captured by special interests, then we'd have the same old crap." Government officials being "captured by special interests", presumably to do things not in the public interest, is not a flaw of capitalism, but rather of representative government. The solution is not to scrap either capitalism or representative government, but simply to make and enforce better government ethics laws. Also, eliminating capitalism and the profit motive doesn't eliminate special interests. It just moves them inside government. As for whether we'd get "the same old crap", what makes you think the profits are better on the crap than on the fancy, healthy stuff you buy at Trader Joe's?