Yesterday, MK sent me a link to a Reuter's piece by someone named Scott Malone. The article reported on some dweeb in the Massachusetts legislature introducing a bill restricting the serving of Fluffernutters in school cafeterias.
I am happy to report that I have moved out of that state, and that my new state legislators wrapped up their session with something much more weighty -- the designation of a new official state ladybug.
Anyway, the following is an email that I sent to the editors of Reuters after reading the piece. I'll share it with you, since they are still dithering over their reply.
Dear Ma'am or Sir:
I just finished reading Scott Malone's piece, "Kerfuffle over 'Fluffernutters' in Massachusetts." At first, I thought it was funny. Then I started getting annoyed.
One of my pet peeves is the rampant innumeracy of practically everyone in the news media. This article was a classic example.
In the article, Mr. Malone reports: "A two-tablespoon serving of [F]luff . . . 60 calories." Why did he not offer for comparison, say the calories contained in an equal portion of jelly or jam (typically, about 80)? Why did he not provide some sense of scale for what 60 calories means? It turns out that practically no single serving of anything is this low; e.g., a small apple has about 55 calories, an 8-oz glass of orange juice has about 110, and a two-tablespoon serving of peanut butter has about 190.
It's kind of funny (oh, no, wait, it's sad) that the legislatures in this country seem focused on banal issues such as these. It's doubly hilarious (depressing) that reporters are unable to call them on it in any meaningful way.
Granted, I might be taking this a bit too far. After all . . . it was a Fluff piece.
3 comments:
Before the Department of Homeland Security and the Secret Service get their panties in a bunch, not to mention the more literate among you, I apologize for misquoting Shakespeare's Dicke The Butcher, who said, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the Lawyers."
I should have checked before posting. My bad.
You have to give some sort of credit to the legislature for trying to deal with the largest public health problem today: obesity.
Notwithstanding your valid points about innumeracy, of course.
My favorite piece of diet info of late: The South Beach Diet doctor points out that peanut M&Ms beat most other foods on the glycemic index. Hooray! So, I eat them to keep my blood sugar stable. The pounds are simply melting away ...
If legislators were truly trying to do something to deal with obesity, I would be the first to give them credit. However, introducing a bill to restrict Fluffernutters in school cafeterias is not dealing with the problem. It is instead a cheap attempt to appear to be doing something. It's a camera-ready BandAid, held up in front of a broken bone.
Real dealing with obesity might start with a law that forbids agribusiness from having so much clout when it comes to developing the new food pyramid and other FDA guidelines. A good second step would be to take real action on regulating the terms "organic," "low impact agriculture," and "all-natural." Third could be restoring funding to schools, so that gym and intramural sports might be readily available. Fourth could be programs designed to encourage exercise -- funding for bike lanes, tax breaks for businesses that install showers and locker rooms at the office, CAFE standards with teeth, . . . the list goes on.
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