Britain is set to be put on a nationwide diet from March this year as public health officials impose new calorie caps.
Lunches and dinners are to be cut to 600 calories at fast food outlets and on ready meal shelves at supermarkets, in new guidelines from Public Health England (PHE).
Breakfast portions will be cut down to 400 calories as the government aims to stop Britons overeating and combat high obesity rates.
FFS; is there no area of our lives that is exempt from this busybody we-know-what’s-best-for-you bullshit? (My advice: if the nu-meal seems inadequate, buy two instead of one. That will do two things: stick it in their eye, and end your stomach’s growling.)
But it gets worse, O My Readers. From the same article:
A separate study by researchers at Oxford University also found that current alcohol guidelines may be too generous.
As one of my heroes once put it:
As any fule kno, I’m on a diet at the moment. But when I see shit like this, I want to go to a pub, eat a double portion of fish ‘n chips, and wash it down with five pints of Wadworth 6x. Here’s the starter:
Or, if this bullshit ever comes to this side of The Pond, take down a couple-three family buckets of KFC (Original Recipe) with a dozen Classic Cokes.
Now, this wouldn’t be a pretty sight. But it would be a lot prettier than the alternative:
I learned a long time ago that there are people who take joy in removing all sources of joy from people’s lives, often even their own.
The ninny nannies never stop. They have to be slapped down, every time or you will never escape their reach.
By “slapped down”, do you mean hanging or shooting? Because I do.
Oh, I’d be happy with any method that has a low rate of recidivism.
This is not a new problem, and was recognized long ago.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
― C.S. Lewis
Fortunately, in almost every case, these sorts of restrictions seem to be counterproductive: they encourage people to resist them, and in the end, remind people of just how intrusive and dangerous a large, entangling modern state can be. It reminds people that the government is indeed a leviathan.
In the long run, these sort of overreaches often come back to bite the state that tries them. See: Mayer Bloomberg’s soda tax, the current soda tax in Seattle.
Of course, the modern state combines the “best” features of robber barons AND moral busybodies!
Government health care is the foundation for the most intrusive and invasive controls of all.
400 calories for breakfast! Heck, I pass that mark with my first cup of coffee.
“Government health care is the foundation for the most intrusive and invasive controls of all.”
Yup, if they are going to pay for your health care (with our money) then by God, they’re gonna make you healthy if it kills you!
“Or, if this bullshit ever comes to this side of The Pond, take down a couple-three family buckets of KFC (Original Recipe) with a dozen Classic Cokes.”
Insty had a great reply yesterday to the reporter who asked how Trump could get to be as healthy ask 0bama: take up smoking.
All those reporters really hated it when the doctor said if the President was eating better 20 years ago he could live to 200.