DailyDirt: Serious Food Regulations That Don't Sound So Serious...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Fri, Oct 19th 2012 5:00pm — Michael Ho

There are plenty of cases where food regulations are reasonable safety measures, but sometimes there are serious government decisions that sound a bit ridiculous (eg. the Supreme Court deciding that a tomato is a vegetable in 1893). Here are just a few examples of more recent politically-charged food proposals.

Pizza is not a vegetable, but just 1/8 of a cup of tomato paste counts the same as a half cup of vegetables, according to Congress. It's actually not that easy to directly compare the nutritional value of various servings of fruits and vegetables, but plenty of people simply see highly-processed foods as an unacceptable component of school lunches. [url]
The USDA had a suggestion to try out a "Meatless Monday" recommendation, but it quickly backed off doing so. The proposal would have encouraged corporate and school cafeterias to offer a vegetarian meal on Mondays, but there were obvious objections from parts of the agriculture industry. [url]
California's Proposition 37 would require labels on genetically modified foods -- and consumers will likely be surprised at the amount of GMOs in their diet. If it passes, the result of this vote could make GM foods a larger national issue. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Filed Under: food, gmo, meatless mondays, pizza, prop37, regulations, usda, vegetable

11 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 19 Oct 2012 @ 5:25pm

the USDA should suggest meatless fridays...
during Lent, and see how that goes over.
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- Anonymous Coward, 21 Oct 2012 @ 6:30am
  
  Re: the USDA should suggest meatless fridays...
  Does anybody actually observe that anymore?
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  - Joe Escalante (profile), 21 Oct 2012 @ 10:35pm
    
    Re: Re: the USDA should suggest meatless fridays...
    Millions do, millions don't. The rule is you have to either give up meat on Friday, or pick another penance. It's very simple but it's a common myth that it's not required anymore.
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abc gum, 19 Oct 2012 @ 6:15pm

Many people actually read the list of ingredients on packaging and believe that GMO should be listed, this is a contentious issue for many reasons blah blah blah. But the attempt to block competitors from stating that their product does not contain something (GMO, hormones, whatever) is simply ridiculous. If a product actually does not contain some ingredient and the producer believes this fact is a selling point which needs to be advertised, then they have a right to do so.
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JeroenW, 19 Oct 2012 @ 11:34pm

So.... A recommendation, which people can ignore, of having one meatless day is being lobbied away? Despite that fact that it would be a simple way to do something to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
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- Anonymous Coward, 20 Oct 2012 @ 7:51am
  
  Re:
  We have a person, an animal and some oxygen producing plants inside a room. Not eating the animal, instead consuming one of the plants and letting the animal consume another so so can reduce that terrible greenhouse gas known as oxygen.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 22 Oct 2012 @ 2:42pm
    
    Re: Re:
    By the year 2065, you're saying, we'll be overwhelmed by cow breath if we remain vegetarians.
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Rekrul, 20 Oct 2012 @ 1:32am

Great, now I have a craving for pizza...
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Joe Escalante (profile), 20 Oct 2012 @ 10:33am

Meatless Mondays
They could have piggy-backed on the Meatless Fridays tradition already in place (for centuries) and followed by tens of millions of Catholics like me all over the world. We would have helped. It's rather dismissive to try to start a new campaign on Mondays just because you hate Catholics. Missed opportunity. Fail.
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DNY (profile), 20 Oct 2012 @ 10:35am

Secular Fasting (a.k.a. Meatless Monday) vs. Christian Fasting (Wednesdays and Fridays and....)
In the Orthodox Church, we are bidden to fast on almost every Wednesday and Friday, throughout the 40 day Nativity Fast, the 50 day Great Lent, the variable length Apostles' Fast, and the 15 day Dormition Fast. Fasting consists not in not eating (though there are periods when the strictly observant do that for a day or a few days running) but in eating less than usual and abstaining from all products of vertebrates (meat, milk, eggs, though on certain days fish is permitted), from olive oil (some say all cooking oils) and from wine (and strong drink, some hold beer counts, some don't).

I and my coreligionists jolly well aren't going to go meatless on the Mondays when Holy Mother Church allows us to eat meat just because the USDA or some pack of officious we-know-what's-good-for-you health nuts or "save the planet" do-gooders tells us we should eat less meat for the health and environmental benefits. I invite anyone who thinks people in general should eat less meat to join us on our schedule of not eating meat, from which they will gain more of the same benefits advertised for meatless Mondays (albeit without the alliteration -- of course, "Lunes sin carnes", "lundi sans vivande",... don't alliterate).
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- Joe Escalante (profile), 20 Oct 2012 @ 10:49am
  
  Re: Secular Fasting (a.k.a. Meatless Monday) vs. Christian Fasting (Wednesdays and Fridays and....)
  Well put. These Meatless Mondays people are clueless.
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