Heather Mallick Column on Obesity.

[Bonam]

Like I said... if its 1500 then put it on the box, and on the menu. The most important part of making good food choices is that the information is disclosed to you.

Restaurants should have the same rules as Grocers.

First, nutrition information is already prominently displayed in multiple locations in most fast food establishments. It was certainly there both on the box and on the menu last time I went to a McDonalds.

Second, people who are "fat and lazy" likely won't care or understand the nutrition information anyway. Sad as it may be, it is far outside the intellectual capabilities of many people to comprehend numbers like "1400" and to add them up with other numbers like "500" and evaluate whether the result is greater than or less than a third number such as "2000" on any kind of regular basis.

Third, people who lead a healthy lifestyle can and should eat when they are hungry, until they aren't hungry anymore, and will maintain a stable weight. If you lead a healthy lifestyle, counting your calories is a pointless waste of time. I eat about 2x as much as most people and haven't gained any weight since I was like 18. Then again, I bike to and from work every day and climb a mountain every weekend.

Fact is, much like almost anything else, being fat/obese is a result of one's own choices and actions (except for a very few people who have genetic disorders related to obesity). If you're obese, chances are you have no one to blame but yourself, or, if you're a kid, your parents.

Edited September 14, 2011 by Bonam

[bloodyminded]

I just want to say that there's nothing wrong with criticizing Mcdonalds...and that doing so doesn't constitute "anti-freedom," as was early posited.

(Some folks evidently are suffering a "the commies are coming!" hangover. Which is a sort of tragicomic delusion.)

Second, Heather Mallick is singularly unimpressive, in my view.

Edited September 14, 2011 by bloodyminded

[Bonam]

(Some folks evidently are suffering a "the commies are coming!" hangover. Which is a sort of tragicomic delusion.)

The commies ARE coming. Or have you missed the posts by some of our latest commie forum members?

[bloodyminded]

The commies ARE coming. Or have you missed the posts by some of our latest commie forum members?

They're of no consequence. Hell, we can't even accurately condemn China's "communism" anymore (though their totalitarianism remains pretty robust), and there's a lot of noise about Cuban reform as well.

The Red Panickers are so desperate now that they're calling what used to be centrist-conservative notions "socialism."

But they're going to lose. Even the Tea-Partiers don't want to give up Social Security and Medicare, even if their elected leaders do.

The Mixed Economy ideas are winning and are going to win. That's just as it should be.

[Bonam]

The Mixed Economy ideas are winning and are going to win.

Of course they are. But that doesn't mean that there aren't plenty of real people whose views really are pretty close to the tenets of communism, and that there ideas and ramblings shouldn't continue to be confronted and rejected in debates.

[bloodyminded]

Of course they are. But that doesn't mean that there aren't plenty of real people whose views really are pretty close to the tenets of communism, and that there ideas and ramblings shouldn't continue to be confronted and rejected in debates.

Yeah, why not, eh?

[Bob]

Thoughts on this column?

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/1051886--mallick-a-canadian-walks-into-a-burger-bar

I find this woman to be loathsome. This column smacks of some of the most anti-capitalism anti freedom sentiments I've ever heard.

100% agreed, and that's just based on the excerpt you've pasted in your OP.

Clearly the benefits of freedom are lost on the left.

I would add one important thing to this important point, that the left hates the responsibility that comes with being free. Freedom is a two-sided coin, with responsibility being the other side that the left wishes to erase.

This woman is just another rat journalist doing her thing as an apparatchik for what Ezra Levant and other accurately describe as the "consensus media". They fancy themselves as anointed, the philosopher kings and queens of our time who will guide us to perfection with their intellects and benevolence.

Edited September 15, 2011 by Bob