ngdawg

We can't pump our own gas, smoke anywhere other than outdoors, can only buy beer and wine in liquor stores, now our fat intake may come under law:
article here

This is getting ridiculous!!! If Karcher wants to police what her own kids eat, fine, but I'm not her kid. Karcher's father, Alan, was a NJ senator-a very large boisterous man. I've met him and the man could chow down. He died several years ago, but of lung cancer, not a heart attack or stroke.
How far should we allow these lawmakers to go? I seem to recall somewhere someone proposed a ban on smoking in one's own car.
/me bangs head on desk....oh wait, is that allowed?

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Carno

wtf? This shit is not the job of the government.

He should focus instead on trying to make New Jersey smell less. I swear, Jersey is the shittiest smelling state I have ever been to.

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ngdawg

I used to defend that. Then I went to KC for 4 days. As soon as I got outside the airport, I thought 'Gawddamn, this state STINKS!' Funny thing is, I'm usually travelling a couple times a year to other states(but by driving), but it really hit me that time, probably because I wasn't just in my car door-to-door. But yea, this state smells funny. But we'll be fat-free!!!

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Ustwo

And here I thought only Chicago had law makers this stupid.

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magictoy

"We're the government, and we know what's best for you."

Sultana

Wow. There should be a penalty for law-makers even thinking this stupidly. Do they even remember the consequenses of the Prohibition? They'll make McDonald's the most lucrative mafia family on the East Coast! ;P

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Carno

Haha! People will be going to speakeasy's for a Big Mac.

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n0nsensical

I'm sure California won't be far behind. Hopefully the Governator will Terminate it. Give me trans fat or give me death!

roachboy

i am confused...is the problem with this that it is happening at all or do folk have some strange affection for transfats?

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it make you sick.

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ngdawg

The fact that anyone would even think to legislate fat. That's wrong on so many levels-total waste of what we're paying our lawmakers for, total waste of time and money for anyone in the food business, sticking the nose of the law into our mouths, making presumptions that we're too stupid to make our own dietary decisions, so we need legislation to direct us....

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Ustwo

Well most people are too stupid to make their own dietary decisions, but I support peoples right to be stupid.

If you think this is fun now, wait till the government is your doctor

Oh and I just had french fries.

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ngdawg

And I just had 6 slices of bacon and a scrambled egg-with butter
Take THAT, Ellen Karcher!!! ( I just sent an email to her to drop it, there's better and more important things to do)

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roachboy

huh.

well transfats aren't regular fats: they are jsut one of the many industrial food processing byproducts that are effectively dumped on american consumers to the self-evident detriment of their health. in the same league as high-frustose corn syrup. there is a problem with the subordination of food to the requirements of highly centralized capitalism...
so in principle i would have no problem with this kind of law.

but it is unfortunate that it follows the replication of the chicago foie gras thing, which does make it all seem stupid.

there is an interesting and growing rejection of the mainstream food system which is linked to a rejection of the american style of capitalist agricultural production--and its state correlates in subsidies that enable the systematic dumping of nutirionally worthless corn types on all of us. whether this shift--which i think of as a kind of revolt--is best left to consumer movements is a separate question that i dont really have a position on yet--i am still thinking about it, gathering information, etc...

but this movement--if you want to call it that--cuts to the heart of american capitalism. personally, i think that is a good thing and am inclined to support anything that extends the reach of it because i think that the present system is totally unsustainable.

but i deploy my position through choices to do with what i eat, what kind of information i want about what i eat, etc..

restaurants seem to me a slightly different matter, though: if you are eating at home and you make choices about food based on criteria you think important, then fine--but if you are going out, you usually have less information to go on concerning what you are eating.

and if there is information--and plenty of it--that transfats are detrimental to general well-being and that they are among a cluster of nutritionally worthless industrial byproducts that are at the core of problems like obesity, etc., then their use in restos constitutes something of a violation of public health standards, doesn't it?

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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

ObieX

Hopefully this will get laughed out of the state senate. Big waste of time and money that our state simply does not have. I have an idea.. why don't we work on GETTING RID of some of the many many laws we already have before piling in more useless tax-raising ones that people will simply ignore anyway?

roach - no one forces anyone to eat out anywhere. and many places that have these high risks of trans fat have already taken many steps to let you know that their food is saturated with heart-clogging fat.. many by law. So if you are going to burger king and you dont know you're getting jammed with fat at this point you should have your head examined.

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roachboy

obie: this is why i said in the post that i dont have anything like a strong position in support of such laws....

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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

sapiens

My family is from Iowa and that's not funny. Corn=good! Corn=good, dammit!

Seems like a good idea.

I might support legislation that requires information posted about the ingredients on menus, but I wouldn't support legislation restricting what people can eat.

Ustwo

Oh capitalism, is there nothing you do right?

We now eat 24.5% more than we did in 1970.

9.5 of that increase in calories is from grains, 9.0 from fat and 4.7 from sugar and some leftover %. We also eat slightly less eggs/dairy.

Blaming transfats for people not shutting their pieholes is just stupid, but I suppose its just a symptom of the nanny state mentality.

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Zeraph

Shrug, sounds like a good law. I'm guessing most of you don't know too much about nutrition.

ngdawg

Do you want the government regulating what you eat and how you eat it? Don't assume because we happen to LIKE a nice thick steak and fries that we don't know about nutrition. That was a bad guess.
How is making a law to rid restaurants of a perfectly lawful food 'good'? No more Denny Grand Slams because some woman with fat, unhealthy kids thinks we all should cowtow to her own choices isn't 'good law'-it's assinine and not what she's being paid to do.

Then, by that reasoning, soda should be banned. It's devoid of anything even remotely resembling nutrition and has, in fact, been found to lessen the absorption of nutrients. It's bubbly sugary calories and has no place in the american diet.....but.....we like it.
Where does the line get drawn? In 20 years, are we going to be forced by law to only get the salad and some wheat bread when going out to eat? Maybe wash it down with some mineral water or green tea.

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maleficent

at least nj hasn't banned foie gras..

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Bill O'Rights

Ok...with all due respect to Zeraph......that statement scares the living shit out of me.

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ngdawg

Awww...*hands BOR a bag of Doritos*....These big bad health freaks won't hurt you.

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Bill O'Rights

Well...no, but they're gonna tax the holy hell out of that bag of Doritos, and forbid me to eat them anywhere but inside my own home.


Give it time.

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"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires." - Susan B. Anthony

"Hedonism with rules isn't hedonism at all, it's the Republican party." - JumpinJesus

It is indisputable that true beauty lies within...but a nice rack sure doesn't hurt.

roachboy

i dont see the slippery slope argument you ran out as being particularly germaine, ng.

you don't see the the various massive corporate farming subsidy programs the united states has had in place for decades now an official policy directed toward a particular set of dietary choices? you dont see in already existing legal standards that define categories and stipulate what types of nutritional values are to be emphasized what you are afraid will follow from laws like this one? for example, in both the us and england right now there is tremendous pressure being brought to bear on regulatory agencies to redefine the category "organic" so that the growth in demand for such products can be streamed into the already existing mass production-based food system...what is that but a lobying effort undertaken by large-scale firms to change the legal framework within which they operate?

the laws that you are afraid of are already fully in place: the policies that you are afraid of have been shaping mass market dietary choices for many years...so i really do not understand why you would react as you do to this law, as if with it the legal framework behind a particular sequence of food choices was suddenly getting started.

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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Ustwo

I would hardely put the misguided food pyramid or the desire to expand the 'organic' labeling on the same plane as BANNING some foods.

One can be avoided by an educated consumer, the other just tells you what you can and can't do.

I don't know about you, but when I walk into a groccery store all I see are dietary choices, from the low yield sad looking organic crops, to the beefy DNA modified steak tomato, from tastey corn fed beef to wild fish (you can get wild meats here too but not at the supermarket). This awful capitalistic system has produced an abundance of food that is the envy of the world. Perhaps its too much of a good thing, but it beats the days of racid meats and food grown in human shit, available only in season (the foods of course not the shit).

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ngdawg

The recent e-coli situation with 'organic' fresh spinach points to the need for 'some' regulation of organic produce.
I worked for a candy manufacturer for several years. We had to answer to the weights and measures people, the health dept and OSHA.
The farming subsidy programs in place are archaic forms of regulations; if I'm not mistaken, they are left over from FDR days, when he set out to make sure everyone had a piece of the pie and to insure that agriculture didn't just plant nothing but corn.
This is not the same thing. A-transfats aren't grown in manure and therefore need to be overseen as being fit for consumption. B-transfats are only involved in W&M or health dept to insure there's no contamination in processing or overly and mistakenly included in manufacturing.
This is a choice issue, plain and simple. Transfats are used for flavor and preserving. The restaurant industry is already heavily regulated, at least in NJ. Before you can even open an eatery, there's a litany of laws, regulations, guidelines, etc., from the type of light housings allowed to how hot your dishwashing water has to be to how cold your refridgeration has to be. How many seats are they allowed? Is there adequate kitchen ventilation and fire extinguishers? (nothing like having a broiler fire 5 minutes before the fire marshall makes a surprise inspection). Frying oil is checked, spoilage noted, etc.
In manufacturing, ingredients such as corn syrup, flavorings, etc., are inspected as are their containers, which have to be cleaned with foodsafe cleansers and the machines that make the candy and package it must be maintained with only foodsafe materials.
NJ's cities are disgusting, riddled with crime and falling apart economically. Our property taxes are highest in all 50 states. We have bankrupt schools, outrageous car insurance rates and toxic industrial sites.
And this woman wants to get rid of some fat????? The only slippery slope I can see is coming from Karcher (who, if I remember correctly, was a portly child much like her dad). Instead of dealing with the true problems of this state that would affect everyone, she hones in on an industry that by and large, is made up of small business people just trying to get by as it is because her own kids eat too many french fries! Here's a clue, Ms. Karcher...don't feed them what you don't want them to have. Or better yet, toss the kids into the backyard with a basketball, close the door and do something more constructive with the time., like...I don't know..... find a way to clean up Camden?

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Seaver

Look, the great thing about Capitalism is that if people cared enough about this issue there would be restaurants springing up that have said labels. If people obviously do not care, who in their right minds expects public support for this?

I'm all about eating healthy, I do almost all the time. But sometimes I want my big ass cardio-bypass surgery causing, gut-busting, dripping with alvacado, cheese, and mayo burger. And I dont want any retard telling me I can't have one.

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roachboy

it is nice that you like hamburgers, seaver.

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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

host

Your thread has an invite to move to the p-o-l-i-t-i-c-s forum....

ngdawg

That's only because you feel more comfortable writing 15,000 word dissertations over there...

Somehow, I feel....safer...over here.

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Ustwo

That smiley.....sort of scares me.

Its like a clown in the dark sort of evil potential.

Maybe someone took its frenchfries and doughnuts away.

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ObieX

As a side note, i kinda like not having to pump my own gas here. Sitting in my comfy car while someone else gets their hands dirty out in the wind and rain and snow and heat and other crappy extreme weather we get here is ok by me. Its not they charge more for it (as far as i can tell) and gas here is still kinda cheap compaired to other states.

Yes, I'm extremely lazy and proud of it.

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SugahBritches

Heh. So, is the full service gas station coming back to NJ? Cool.

I have to agree with the fact that the government has gradually took over the food chain. I sigh everytime I think of the good old days where we had our own gardens and grew our own produce. Were we fat people then? Heh. I don't think so! We were a working together family! And we worked hard together to get what we had. Lazy, we were not.

But, that is another era long gone. It's neither here nor there now. But, I think what is mostly being said is this: When our government actually starts regulating EVERYTHING that we can or can not do is not the "American" way. THAT's when it gets scary! But, since they have done it in moderation over the years, it's not been so drastic as the article above shows.

Health is a primary example of what is happening in our schools. Our children are increasingly becoming obese. Since we as parents (I'm meaning this as a whole--not pointing fingers) are not taking charge of it, the state and law makers will. And they have. And there are many other programs besides HEALTH that the state/law makers have had to step up to the plate to take care of because WE, as a current society, hasn't.

n0nsensical

It never went anywhere..

SugahBritches

Well, I still have to physically get out of my car and pump my gas!! Must be just a Florida thing then. But, it is handy to stick in your card, fill the tank, and drive off. I'll check the oil stick, air in tires, and windshield wash when I get home. Other than getting the gas, looks like I do the full service at home. **grins and shrugs her shoulders**

n0nsensical

No, I mean it never went anywhere in New Jersey. It's illegal to pump your own gas there. Apparently that's the case in Oregon too. I know, nobody else can believe it either.

SugahBritches

It's illegal??? To pump your own gas????? Holly cow patties!!

NG, find somewhere else to live girl! The dag gum Nazis has took over there! Good grief, I thought you Yankees had a reign on things!!!???

Now you can really laugh n0nsense! I never knew there were states that didn't let you pump your own gas!! Oh man. This has blew my mind!

Ustwo

I wouldn't trust most people in NJ to handle gasoline either.

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Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

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ngdawg

Every effort to have self-serve stations in NJ has failed. I absolutely HATE having to sit there waiting for some minimum wage kid to saunter over to do what I can do in two minutes.
Here's a typical scenario (happened to me after a long road trip and got back into NJ and needed gas):
Pull into a gas station, there's a line of cars ahead, maybe 5. One worker. After about 10 minutes, the woman in front of me has her turn. Hands the kid her credit card. He goes into his booth, swipes the card. No good. Goes back to the car, gets another credit card. By now her tank is full. He goes back to booth, swipes, gets receipt. Back to the car for signature. Finally, it's my turn. But he had to put his copy in the booth first, so I wait.
As to the point made that we don't have to 'get out and stand in bad weather', except for really old stations, not one I have gone to is totally out in the open-they have canopies. Not to mention it's no big deal to get the pump going and sit in your nice warm car. Another factor, albeit a small one-many attendants in this state have been arrested and charged with double-dipping; they will charge your credit card twice and take the cash. A local station attendant was charged with stealing almost $30k doing that. Another scam they pull is not bringing the pump to zero-I was charged $10 more the one time I didn't bother to check the numbers. They then pocket that extra. It's getting harder to do that one since many stations have changed to the same pumps seen in self-serve, but for those that haven't yet, you have to be aware.

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maleficent

It's also illegal in Oregon.... and it's not a baf thing.. why on earth would a person want to get out of their car, in the cold and handle a smelly gas nozzle... it's not like it'd be any cheaper...

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