Feds soon to be in a long-overdue food-fight?

Folks, you know I'm not much for government over-regulation.

For instance: I think the banning of certain kinds of advertisements, for instance, is a slippery slope. I thought it was wrong in the early 1970s when cigarette advertisements were banned from TV - especially since glossy ads for prescription drugs (which are INARGUABLY deadly) flourish in primetime Technicolor…

For me, the bottom line is that as long as an advertisement isn't patently false or clearly misleading, adults should be able to decide for themselves what to put into their bodies or not. And as much as I rail against fast-food joints, junk-food makers, and soda bottlers, I'd defend their right to try to legally make a buck - even by seducing the weak-minded or uninformed into stuffing themselves into obesity.

It's only when the government helps Big Junk Food by publishing ridiculously wrong-headed "guidelines" (read: the Food Pyramid) that encourage people to eat unhealthily that I get my bowels in an uproar…

That, and when kids get exploited.

That's why I'm all for the Feds taking a closer look at TV advertising for junk foods that are aimed at children. According to an Associated Press article from September 27, the Federal Communications Commission is casting its powerful eye on the link between kids' TV viewing habits and the EATING habits…

Reports cited in the AP piece estimate that the average child views 40,000 TV ads every year - the bulk of which are for soda pop, cereal, candy, and fast food (especially if they're watching TV on Saturday morning). This correlates to current estimates that fully one third of the sub-adult population in the United States is overweight or obese.

As of right now, it can only be speculated whether the FCC will decide to ban certain kinds of advertising during certain time slots, or adopt some other regulatory measures to help curb the unhealthy brainwashing kids get every time they tune in. But it's pretty clear that they're looking to adopt some kind of controls here. I'm hoping they decide to, because the matter is getting out of hand, and the future health of this nation is at stake. Keep reading…

Look, before you start thinking I've turned into some anti-capitalist liberal victim-weenie who thinks we need the government to protect us from ourselves, let me clarify a bit…

In a perfect world (or at least in the one our Constitution's Framers envisioned), very little in the way of governmental regulatory measures would be needed. We would all govern ourselves with temperance, moderation and sense, relying on the government only to keep us informed of risks so we could decide whether or not to take them. And in a perfect world, PARENTS would do this for their children - by either setting guidelines and examples that promote healthy eating, or switching off the TV altogether. Or both.

But this ISN'T a perfect world, and it's a sad-but-true fact that in the world we live in now, American parents fall woefully short in their child-rearing skills on many levels. The evidence can be seen from kindergarten onward on both bathroom scales and on standardized testing - and later on, in STD and abortion clinics, and in the number of unwed (and unwanted) pregnancies in the U.S…

And ironically enough, a lot of these problems for children stem from governmental intervention in our lives, in my opinion. Teachers have become clucking nanny know-it-alls, guidance counselors ADHD-sniffing pseudo-psychiatrists - and principals are so paralyzed by the threat of lawsuits that they can no longer discipline their charges.

However, with the fate of our nation - its people, its medical system, its economy, and even its fighting force - hanging in the balance, we really have no choice but to rely on the Feds to act. Hopefully they'll get something right this time! Naturally, Big Junk Food will fight with everything they've got to keep hooking kids on sugar and sodas, which it's their right to try to do under the double-edged sword of classical capitalism…

The bottom line is that if the government is going to take parents out of the equation with nanny-state brainwashing in schools - or if they're going to allow bad parents to raise ignorant and undisciplined kids - they HAVE TO enact advertising bans or some other similar measures to curb the obesity epidemic they helped to create.

So get it done, FCC. That's what we're paying you for. Fix the mess your comrades on the hill have made for you. I'll keep you all posted as this story develops, naturally…