Opinion
If only we could hook up turbines to the wagging fingers of the nanny statists, we’d have abundant renewable energy, forever. There’s nothing these taxpayer-funded nosey-parkers don’t see fit to hector and finger-wag us about. Especially food. “Food,” as blogger Skepchick said, “is for white liberals what sex is for the religious right”.
Except that, even the most cat’s-bum-mouthed Puritan would be taken aback by the pulpit-pounding zealotry of the “public health” bureaucrats. When they’re not scowling at our children’s lunchboxes, these busybodies are rifling through our fridges with pursed lips.
And don’t even get them started on “climate change”.
The federal government’s official advice on diets will now incorporate the impact of certain foods on climate change, sparking outrage from farmers who fear it is driven by an “ideological agenda” against red meat.
It could lead to consumers being told to reduce steak and lamb chop intakes in favour of alternatives like chicken, which some scientists say has a lower carbon footprint.
It will almost certainly also lead to consumers telling the curtain-twitching bureaucrats to shove their advice where the climate don’t change.
The statutory authority’s dietary guidelines expert committee says the change is based on “stakeholder feedback” and has already started setting up a sustainability working group to help its review of the 2013 guidelines, due by the end of 2026.
“Stakeholder feedback”, with whom? The Greens and animal activist groups, no doubt.
But it begs the question: what f-ing business is it of theirs, anyway?
Red Meat Advisory Council chair John McKillop accused the NHMRC, which is responsible for funding medical research and providing health and nutrition recommendations to the government, of straying beyond its remit. “These developments are an overreach by the dietary guidelines expert committee that go well beyond the policy intent of the Australian Dietary Guidelines to provide recommendations on healthy foods and dietary patterns,” he said.
“The red meat industry has a strong story about sustainability, so our concerns are not because we believe it’s a weakness but because it’s not the role of the dietary guidelines nor is it the expertise of the dietary guidelines expert committee. The nation’s dietary guidelines should be focused on promoting public health, preventing chronic diseases and ensuring that all Australian have access to accurate and reliable information about their basic nutritional requirements” […]
Mr McKillop said expanding the scope of the dietary guidelines into other non-nutritional topics would undermine their purpose and the public’s confidence in them.
The Australian
It’s far too late for that. I suspect that most Australians long ago twigged to this lot.
Joyless, inquisitorial troughers whose life purpose is to squeeze the joy out of Australians’ lives — and keep their own little taxpayer-funded empires relentlessly expanding.