Tell McDonald’s: Stop Using Toys to Push Junk Food on Kids

If you want to know who is making your kids fat, ask Shrek. Or Barbie. Or Yoda, Darth Vader, and R2-D2. These are all characters that McDonald’s uses to entice kids into its restaurants so they can chow down on Happy Meals. But one non-profit aims to call the company out for using toys to unfairly market junk food to impressionable children.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) recently issued a challenge to McDonald’s: Stop using toys to pimp out unhealthy foods to kids, or we’ll sue you. CSPI claims that using toys to market unhealthy meals to children is a practice that’s unfair, deceptive, and illegal under some states’ consumer protection laws.

And while McDonald’s responded to CSPI’s demands by reiterating its commitment to stocking all Happy Meals with toys, it seems like the company might actually be running scared. In its very public demands to McDonald’s, CSPI highlighted the fact that all 24 Happy Meal combos contained more than 430 calories, the recommended caloric intake for lunches eaten by kids ages four-to-eight. According to the Appetite for Profit blog, just three days after CSPI issued its request to McDonald’s, the Golden Arches updated its Happy Meal nutritional content information on its Web site. The new info indicates that three Happy Meal combos contain fewer than 430 calories. McDonald’s claims it simply noticed an error in its nutritional information, but the timing seems a little too coincidental.

While McDonald’s is hardly the only restaurant that uses kid-friendly characters to market unhealthy foods, CSPI makes a good case against Happy Meal toys. According to CSPI, back in 2007, McDonald’s agreed to only advertise kids’ food that meets certain nutrition standards, an agreement reached under Council of Better Business Bureau’s Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative. But despite the fact that Shrek may only advertise Apple Dippers and low-fat milk on TV, a CSPI study showed that when kids or parents order Happy Meals, they’re given French fries 93 percent of the time. Kids get lured into the restaurant through the promise of a new toy — they’re rewarded with foods high in fat, sugar, calories, and salt.

From the McDonald’s example — and countless others, for that matter — it’s clear that using cartoon characters and other kid-friendly incentives to push junk food contributes heavily to America’s childhood obesity epidemic. Kids beg parents to go to McDonald’s to get Happy Meal toys. When children or parents order Happy Meals, they are
automatically given French fries 93 percent of the time, and offered soda first 78 percent of the time. These sugary and salty snacks give kids a taste for unhealthy foods, so the cycle repeats itself, setting children up for an increased risk of obesity, diabetes, and other diet-related disorders.

And sure, it’s up to parents to say no to their kids. But McDonald’s and other junk food purveyors make parental duties exceedingly more difficult. “I try my best to educate my kids about healthy eating, but it’s hard when I am competing against the allure of a new Shrek toy,” Sheila Nesbitt, a mother of two kids, told CSPI.

A Happy Meal toy may make kids giddy in the short-term, but developing obesity and diabetes sets children up for a lifetime of health issues. Support CSPI and sign its petition demanding that McDonald’s stop using toys to market unhealthy meals to children.

Photo credit: Cosmic Kitty via Flickr

Dirty Water Kills

Every day, millions of us wake up and turn on the faucet to make our coffee, brush our teeth, or wash our faces. Not for a second do we think this water could be lethal.

Billions of people around the world aren’t as lucky. Since World War II, contaminated water has killed more people around the globe than all wars and other forms of violence combined.

The growing crisis is the result of increased pollution, increased water demand, and the corporate control of water access, making clean water one of the scarcest resources for the world’s poor.

This week we have the rare chance to address this problem head-on. This Wednesday, July 28th, the United Nations General Assembly will debate a historic resolution to recognize safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right. It’s the first time ever that the world’s governing body will debate and vote on the crucial question of water, and it could be the stepping stone toward making access to safe and clean water an international norm.

There’s just one problem. The United States, along with Canada and the United Kingdom, want to kill the vote. Although 190 countries have already affirmed the right to clean water, the most privileged of nations don’t want the responsibility of helping others gain equal access.

But affirming this human right is not just a selfless act. The next world war could easily be fought over water. The world’s great rivers and aquifers don’t obey national borders, and already Israel and Palestine, India and Pakistan, and even the U.S. and Mexico are arguing over water. The crisis in Darfur was in part a war over water.

The U.N. debate over water rights takes place Wednesday, so the window to take action to affirm that access to clean water is a fundamental right is closing. Join us in calling on U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice to support the human right to water without further delay.

This survey asked questions to find out what each candidate believes about the issues that are important to constitutional government and liberty.

Click here to see how the candidates in your area answered.

In Liberty,

John Tate

President

It can be hard enough to decipher the term “organic” when it comes to food. Are there hormones in that skim milk? Did those chicken wings get enough exercise? But when it comes to personal care items like toothpaste and body lotion, claims like “made with organic ingredients” or “authentically organic” can flummox even the greenest consumer. No federal agency polices organic claims for personal care items — at least not yet — so manufacturers have been able to use these customer-pleasing terms loosely and liberally.

But now Whole Foods Market is blowing the whistle. As of next June, the retailer will require all health and beauty products making organic claims to be certified by one of two sources: either the Agriculture Department’s National Organic Program, which sets standards for food; or NSF International, a nonprofit based in Ann Arbor, Mich., that issues its own certification mark.

As of June 1, 2011, any products that make organic claims and don’t get the certification will be removed from the shelves of Whole Foods stores. (The company will continue to carry nonorganic products as long as they don’t make organic claims.)

“We’re trying to make it so that our customers don’t have to switch standards and expectations when they cross from grocery into the body care aisle,” said Joe Dickson, the Whole Foods quality standards coordinator.

The policy, announced June 18, is already shaking things up among companies that make — or claim to make — organic beauty items. Many of these companies rely on Whole Foods for the majority of their sales, so the new rule will have broad repercussions.

“People aren’t going to have two labels in the market, one for Whole Foods and one for everyone else,” said David Bronner, president of Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps, a line of products (most of them soaps) sold in Whole Foods and certified as organic by the Agriculture Department. As a result, he said, the Whole Foods policy could become the de facto standard.

“Right now we’re being drowned out by all these cheaters,” Mr. Bronner said. “But this has the potential to be a game changer.”

The Agriculture Department has been enforcing organic claims on food sold in the United States since 2002, but does not do the same for other items. The agency does invite manufacturers of personal care products to apply for its National Organic Program label, but it does not go after them if they make unsubstantiated claims.

Just who should be in charge of enforcing those claims has been the topic of some debate and at least one lawsuit. A spokeswoman for the Food and Drug Administration said that her agency and the Agriculture Department were working together to develop labeling standards, but that there was no projected due date.

Lynn Anne Miller, author of a blog called OrganicMania that purports to help people live more greenly, said that even she frequently finds herself unsure of what to buy.

“It’s hard because your kids are hanging on you, and you’re already trying to compare prices,” she said. “But then, standing in the aisle trying to read the ingredient list on a bottle of shampoo? It’s impractical.”

She once bought a lice shampoo for her children, at a local supermarket in the Washington area, that claimed to be all-natural and organic, but that turned out to contain at least six chemicals deemed risky by the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit advocacy group. “I was furious,” she said. Organic activists are energized over the prospect that the new Whole Foods policy could bring some clarity to the organic health and beauty market. Ronnie Cummins, national director of the Organic Consumers Association, said his group had been pressuring Whole Foods for years to adopt this sort of policy.

“We’re typically in a conflictive relationship with Whole Foods,” said Mr. Cummins, whose group contends that the store has been reluctant to crack down on manufacturers of not-quite-organic products, which account for a good portion of its bottom line. “But the good thing about them doing the right thing now is they’re such a big player that they move the whole industry.” Mr. Dickson of Whole Foods said that the new policy was not expected to reduce revenue and that the only reason it wasn’t adopted sooner was that NSF International was still developing its standards. It was Mr. Cummins’s group that sued the Agriculture Department in 2005 for its decision not to police organic personal care items. This past January, the group also filed a false-advertising suit against 14 companies that it said were making fraudulent organic claims.

Some Whole Foods competitors are happy about the new policy, even if they’re not ready to adopt it themselves. At Pharmaca, an organic pharmacy chain with 22 stores in the western United States, “We are eagerly awaiting the results” of the Whole Foods policy change, said Laura Coblentz, vice president for marketing.

Pharmaca hopes one day to be to the pharmacy business what Whole Foods is to grocery stores, but that doesn’t mean it will expunge questionable organic claims from its aisles. At least not soon.

“It’s very complicated in personal care,” said Ms. Coblentz, because many products rely on chemicals that can’t be made organically. These include surfactants, the active ingredient in many shampoos, and emulsifiers, which prevent separation in suspension liquids.

For now, Pharmaca will continue to stock certified and non-certified organic items, “because we want to give the choice to our consumers,” she said.

The dream scenario for organic activists is that the Whole Foods policy will prompt companies to revamp their formulas. But the reality is that, for now at least, many will simply change their labels.

Such is the case at Aubrey Organics, a 45-year-old company that makes everything from deodorant to dog shampoo. While many of its products have already earned organic certification, others have not — and cannot with their current formulation.

“There are just certain things that our raw-materials manufacturers haven’t figured out how to make organic yet,” said Curt Valva, general manager of Aubrey Organics, referring mostly to abrasive soaps and cleansers.

Rather than compromise the strength of its products, the company is instead creating a second brand known simply as Aubrey. “That’s what everyone calls us anyway,” Mr. Valva said. The new brand — without the organic claim — will be available at Whole Foods and alongside Aubrey Organics.

Ms. Miller, the blogger, said that branding changes like this will only sow more confusion. In an ideal world, she said, “Mom just needs to look for a trusted seal. If it’s there, it’s organic. If not, it’s not.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/15/fashion/15skin.html?pagewanted=1&_r=4&ref=fashion

“I think it’s sensible that people who knowingly live unhealthily carry a responsibility for it in a financial respect,” said Mr Wanderwitz, who is also head of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats’s group of young parliamentarians .
He was supported by Juergen Wasem, an economist who said foods like chocolate should carry health warnings.

“As with tobacco, we should tax the purchase of unhealthy consumer goods at a higher rate and pay that tax into the health system,” he said.

Germany’s health system is funded by a series of mandatory health insurance funds, all of which are reporting serious deficits as the system is overused.

Bild, the German newspaper, estimated that treatment for obesity-related illnesses cost Germany some £16 billion a year.

Recently the German Teachers’ Association recommended weighing children in class each day and reporting the seriously overweight to social services, who would have the power to remove them to clinics.

Although opposition politicians blasted the “fat-tax” proposal, researchers at the Jacobs University in Bremen claimed its work proved that the majority of the public would back a tax on people whose unhealthy lifestyles landed them in hospital or under other medical care.

Do Jewish citizens require more heathcare? Let’s hope not.

Sources for this story.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/7904990/Overweight-people-should-pay-fat-tax-to-cover-healthcare-costs-German-MP-says.html

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Although I  disagree still with how they are going to work this, I can’t help to have an agreement that it does hurt a already destroy socialism structure for health care if people are going to live unhealthy. But there’s got to be better way to work the system then taking kids out of school & taxing the living day lights out of people who are already taxed to death as it is.

In fact, if this is done, we can dramatically see more and more of these people getting farther underneath the table economically. Cheap food is fattening, at least it is in the states. The less money they have the less good and healthy food these people can consume. Lets try getting them support in learning how to manage their life styles with good foods and exercise .

They can’t be even be close to America in statistics of overweight individuals, so I think there is a chance of helping this situation before diving into such a Nazi philosophy so soon.

-Simranjeet

Together we can WIN this race for Larimer County Sheriff!  Now it’s time to SPRINT to the FINISH!

Thanks to our dedicated volunteers for going door-to-door and canvassing your precincts, making phone calls, and attending events supporting Carl Bruning, “Your Constitutional Sheriff”!

Now we need to DOUBLE DOWN TO WIN!  Here’s how you can support Carl in achieving VICTORY:

1)  We need to raise $7,500 immediately for our direct-mailing campaign!  There are no donation limits, and all donations are greatly appreciated.  Everyone who donates $250 or more will be seated at the VIP tables!  http://carlbruning.com/donate/

2)  G.O.T.V. (“Get Out The Vote”)!  Do you have friends in Larimer County?  Call them and make sure they vote for Carl Bruning, “Your Constitutional Sheriff”!  And forward this email to all your friends!

3)  LTE’s (“Letters to the Editor”).  Have you written a letter to your local newspaper?  If you would like assistance, please contact Jeanette at:  jmkmountainmama@msn.com

4)  Larimer County Fair Parade, Wed, August 4^th:  We need 25 confirmed walkers for the parade in downtown Loveland.  We are meeting at 4:00 pm at the staging area.  RSVP to Jeanette:  jmkmountainmama@msn.com

http://www.larimercountyfair.org/parade.html

5)  Larimer County Fair, August 6^th-10^th:  All posse members are invited to join us and help “man the booth” and handout literature!  The fair is at “The Ranch” (near I-25 in Loveland), and is open Fri (4pm-10pm), Sat/Sun (10am-10pm), and Mon/Tues (4pm-10pm).  Meet us at the GOP booth and wear your “Bruning for Sheriff” t-shirt!http://www.larimercountyfair.org/

6)  Forward these articles to all your 2^nd Amendment friends today!

http://www.rmgo.org/alerts/2010-LarimerSheriff.shtml

http://www.coloradoan.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2010307270010

Thank you to everyone for your incredible dedication and support with our campaign!  And thanks to those who have endorsed me!  I am truly honored by your support!   http://carlbruning.com/category/endorsements/

Together, WE can WIN this race, and elect Carl Bruning, “Your Constitutional Sheriff”!

For Liberty,

Carl Bruning

www.carlbruning.com

970-988-0194

Today, we ask you to take the lead in your community by supporting a local effort to stop profiling, as well as government surveillance, where you live.

Copycat laws modeled on Arizona’s have been introduced in more than a dozen states. This victory for civil rights in Arizona–which remains at risk on appeal–is hardly the end of the struggle to stop racial profiling and other law enforcement excesses.

As SB 1070 demonstrates, one of the most powerful tools in struggles over civil rights is legislative change at the local level. City and state officeholders are more accessible than their federal counterparts and have more influence over the legislatures in which they serve. We at the Bill of Rights Defense Committee have developed a strategy for stopping racial profiling city by city and town by town, and but we can’t put it into action without your help.

Help us defend the Constitution, restore the Fourth Amendment, and stop profiling and government spying.

Sign up to work on an effort to stop racial profiling in your community.

We’re eager to provide you with resources and assistance to take action at the local level.

In struggle,

Shahid Buttar
Executive Director

NOT!

Click here to Say “NO!” to Seasonal Flu Vaccines With H1N1

Act Here Now!
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=4376

H1N1 (Swine Flu) is a cruel hoax, but, like some hideous nightmare, the bizarre threat that it might become a threat is being repeated over and over again like some noxious mantra.  Here are the facts:

1. During the past year, during the WHO and FDA’s hoax “Pandemic” people stayed away from Swine Flu vaccine in droves.  They did not get their flu shots.  This was the lightest flu season since vaccines for flu were introduced.  In fact, the vaccines CREATE the epidemic.  Read the FDA-approved inserts.

2. There is not one shred of evidence that we are being menaced by a new tide of Swine Flu danger this coming flu season.  The previously hastily approved vaccines expired and were burned (there goes 6.7 Billion US dollars, by the way), releasing meurcury into the air, by the way.  Now FDA has announced that NEW H1N1 vaccine will be incorporated into this season’s [worthless and dangerous] seasonal flu vaccines.

3. Seasonal flu vaccines cause flu and lead to increased life threatening asthma, Alzheimer’s Disease, immune dysfunction and death from all causes.

4. Every vaccination is dangerous, without exception. With or without mercury, these vaccines contain a host of dangerous substances which weaken the immune system, lead to infertility, increase dangerous short and long term events, including killing babies in the womb.

If there were ever a time to say “NO!” and mean it, to pass this informaiton along to your contacts and ask them to take the Action Item above and then pass it along to their contacts, and so on.

Remember, last year the US was getting ready institute a compulsory vaccination program.  We, in our millions, rose up and spoke truth to power: |NO! we said.  And the US government backed down.  Do you see any reason that we cannot do that again?  No.  Neither do I.

Yours in health and freedom,

Dr. Rima