010213 Restaurateurs Blasts “Food Cops” & Other “Busybodies”Washington - The following is a statement from the Guest Choice Network: 2000 was a momentous year for “nannies” -- that growing fraternity of food cops, anti-biotech activists, vegetarian scolds and meddling bureaucrats who “know what's best for you.” While every nanny worked tirelessly last year to restrict our food and beverage choices, a few demonstrated outstanding initiative, creativity and determination in their efforts to protect us from ourselves. To honor those outstanding busybodies, we present the 2000 “Nanny” Awards for the most meddlesome public servants, the most self-serving activists, the “Spoilsport of the Year,” and, of course, the 2000 “Nanny of the Year.” This year, the 2000 “Nanny of the Year” Award goes to ... the nannies at the Center for Science in the Public Interest who will do and say almost anything to get the government to slap a “Twinkie tax” on the foods they don't want us to eat. Last spring, for example, CSPI took out a newspaper ad in The Washington Post claiming that high-calorie foods “kill more people than tobacco.” In it, CSPI declared that obesity is responsible for “more than $71 billion a year in added health-care and related costs.” According to the USDA, which CSPI cited as the source of the “$71 billion” claim, obesity is a “factor” in the “incidence of ... diabetes, hypertension and stroke, osteoporosis, heart disease and some types of cancer.” It is these ailments, and not obesity, that “cost society an estimated $71 billion.” The 2000 Nanny Award for “The most egregious example of activism undertaken for financial gain” goes to Prince Charles for repeatedly raising the alarm over genetically improved food, saying without evidence that biotechnology could have “disastrous consequences.” Luckily for Charles, his comments helped generate enough fear in the public to create an exploding market for organic food. Prince Charles, you see, owns the UK's leading independent organic-food brand. The “Public Disservice” Award They make the laws and regulations we have to live by. Sometimes that power goes to their head. The Nanny Award for “A government bureaucrat or agency that overstepped its authority to trample a personal choice” goes to Mayor Alfred Muller of Friendship Heights, MD. Muller, who said he had an obligation to do what he could to achieve “a smoke-free society,” decided that it was up to him to get people to stop smoking by eliminating any public puffing, even outdoors, in his tiny hamlet of 5,000 residents. The Guest Choice Network sends out an Honorable Mention to Dr. Rajen Anand, the director of the USDA's Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, which publishes the national “food pyramid,” for his quote: “People don't have the knowledge or willpower to select the right kind of food.” The “Too Many Cooks” Award One of the strangest aspects of 2000's war on choice was the media coverage of Chefs Collaborative, a group of celebrity chef activists who insist that people eat only in-season, locally-grown, organic food. The Nanny Award for the “Best reason why Chefs Collaborative should stick to cooking and stop pushing anti-choice policy before they marginalize their credibility altogether” goes to Peter Hoffman. Hoffman, the chair of Chefs Collaborative, argued at a press conference that there is “no need” for the genetically improved “Golden Rice” technology, which TIME magazine said would save a million lives and prevent hundreds of thousands of cases of blindness in children each year. The Nanny Award for “The most outrageous school policy” goes to Greenwood (IN) High School which fired high school teacher and swim coach Lori Gallagher for drinking a beer ... one beer ... with dinner in front of high school students at an after-swim-meet event. The “Anti-Meat Terrorist of the Year” Award goes to the Animal Liberation Front for leading animal rights activists in firebombing a meat plant, blowing up meat trucks, and leaving cyanide at a McDonald's in Minneapolis. The “Most Outrageous Quote of the Year” Award goes to PETA's European campaign coordinator Toni Vernelli, for saying, “Serving a burger to your family today, knowing what we know, constitutes child abuse. You might as well give them weed killer.” The “Spoilsport of the Year” Award winner is United Poultry Concerns for disrupting the annual White House Easter Egg Roll by scaring children attending the event with stories of the suffering of egg-laying hens. We lift a glass of non-alcoholic, sugar-free, preservative-free sparkling water to you all. For more on the 2000 Nanny Awards, including a full roster of the runners up, visit http://www.NannyCulture.com. The Guest Choice Network is a coalition of more than 30,000 restaurant and tavern operators working together to protect the public's right to a full menu of dining and entertainment choices, through education, training and public outreach.
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