Free the Panda!

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We're a little late to the party as this story has been blowing up on the conservative interwebs this past week and rightly so because it really is the free-market feel-good story of the year.

Recall the Happy Meal ban put in place in San Francisco where McDonald's was prohibited from including any toys with said meal.

Don't get us wrong. We despise McDonald's. Not for their ubiquitous success nor for their LSD-inspired characters but simply because they serve up the worst hamburgers known to mankind. We haven't had one of their burgers in probably 15 years such is the revulsion with which our digestive tract greets them.

Having said that, we are pleased as punch with respect to this free-market end-around to the benevolent liberal fascism being imposed on the citizenry of San Francisco.

A ban against toy giveaways with high-fat meals doesn’t seem to have fazed San Francisco McDonald’s franchise owners. They’ve found a way to circumvent it.

Instead of doing away with the small Happy Meal toys that usually come free with each Happy Meal purchased, San Francisco McDonald’s owners will now charge 10 cents for the trinket. They say the extra money will go toward the Ronald McDonald House, a McDonald’s charity that supports sick children and their families.

Scott Rodrick, owner of 10 of the 19 McDonald’s in San Francisco, told the San Francisco Chronicle that the 10 cent cost “complies with the letter of the law.

“This law is not what my customers wanted or asked for, but the law’s the law,” he told the newspaper.

Your dern tootin' it's the law and there are unintended consequences to such laws that are solely about politics and not public health as so ably demonstrated by Mr. Rodrick.



And cue the nanny state whining:

But Dr. David Katz, director of the Yale Prevention Center, supports the toy ban, saying that the toys and the trinkets “clearly goad children to prefer and request less nutritional meals.”

He said the 10-cent charge shifts the toy, and less nutritious meals, from default mode and into parental decision-making.

Without any goading whatsoever, we would've preferred Fruit Loops and Skittles at every meal while growing up but Mom and Dad had other ideas. Slouching off parental responsibilities upon corporations is counter-intuitive, counter-productive and completely misses the point.

The government leveraging the law to alter the menus of fast food restaurants as a replacement to sound parenting makes about as much sense as it sounds.


Thank you, Mr. Rodrick, you've made our week.

Hey, teachers, leave those lunches alone!

First, they came for the Happy Meals.


There was a time in this country when schools were worried about kids bringing knives and guns to school from home. Now it appears there is a new threat, not on the horizon but afflicting our dear school children even as we speak. What is this new danger that can only be dealt with via the tried and true zero tolerance policies that schools use to deal with weaponry?

Mom's PB&Js?

Fernando Dominguez cut the figure of a young revolutionary leader during a recent lunch period at his elementary school.

"Who thinks the lunch is not good enough?" the seventh-grader shouted to his lunch mates in Spanish and English.

Dozens of hands flew in the air and fellow students shouted along: "We should bring our own lunch! We should bring our own lunch! We should bring our own lunch!"

Fernando waved his hand over the crowd and asked a visiting reporter: "Do you see the situation?"

At his public school, Little Village Academy on Chicago's West Side, students are not allowed to pack lunches from home. Unless they have a medical excuse, they must eat the food served in the cafeteria.

Principal Elsa Carmona said her intention is to protect students from their own unhealthful food choices.

"Nutrition wise, it is better for the children to eat at the school," Carmona said. "It's about the nutrition and the excellent quality food that they are able to serve (in the lunchroom). It's milk versus a Coke. But with allergies and any medical issue, of course, we would make an exception."

Of course, it's not really about nutrition now is it?

Any school that bans homemade lunches also puts more money in the pockets of the district's food provider, Chartwells-Thompson. The federal government pays the district for each free or reduced-price lunch taken, and the caterer receives a set fee from the district per lunch

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Yes, we're being quite cynical in wanting you to believe its just about pocket-lining and the potential for graft but as the budding young revolutionaries at the top of the article have been too quick to figure out, it's also about power and control and in this case, the power wielded by the state to control the kids' eating habits to what the state sees as correct diets.


Unfortunately, for the statist authoritarians in Chicago, kids don't like crappy institutional food anymore than prisoners adults do.

At Little Village, most students must take the meals served in the cafeteria or go hungry or both. During a recent visit to the school, dozens of students took the lunch but threw most of it in the garbage uneaten. Though CPS has improved the nutritional quality of its meals this year, it also has seen a drop-off in meal participation among students, many of whom say the food tastes bad.

"Some of the kids don't like the food they give at our school for lunch or breakfast," said Little Village parent Erica Martinez. "So it would be a good idea if they could bring their lunch so they could at least eat something."

Do you know what else would be a good idea? For schools to get the hell out of the meals program, altogether.


Alas, this statism via the cafeteria has addled the minds of some nanny-state parents.

But parent Miguel Medina said he thinks the "no home lunch policy" is a good one. "The school food is very healthy," he said, "and when they bring the food from home, there is no control over the food."

What were we saying again about control? Why an apparently well-meaning Mr. Medina should care what any other parent is putting in his kid's lunch is completely beyond us.

Oh, and to top it all off, this mandatory lunch program runs $2.25/day which in many cases exceeds the cost families pay for their childrens' lunches, healthy or not. And what if parents are sending their children to school with healthier lunches than the crap slung over the sneeze guard by the school? Who gets screwed then?


Then again, maybe we're not giving the schools the credit they deserve. Maybe it's actually a brilliant plan to get the kids to eat healthier by making them eat the crap they are providing.

Many Little Village students claim that, given the opportunity, they would make sound choices.

"They're afraid that we'll all bring in greasy food instead of healthy food and it won't be as good as what they give us at school," said student Yesenia Gutierrez. "It's really lame. If we could bring in our own lunches, everyone knows what they'd bring. For example, the vegetarians could bring in their own veggie food."

"I would bring a sandwich or a Subway and maybe a juice," said seventh-grader Ashley Valdez.

Second-grader Gerardo Ramos said, "I would bring a banana, orange and some grapes."

"I would bring a juice and like a sandwich," said fourth-grader Eric Sanchez.

"Sometimes I would bring the healthy stuff," second-grader Julian Ruiz said, "but sometimes I would bring Lunchables."

You can almost sense the fear in their words. It's like the "Scared Straight" of healthy diets.

No matter - because of stuff like this, schools need to get out of the school lunch program. We can see in this case alone of no better reason why.

Not evidentiary

Officials in China are struggling with allegations that a tainted baby powdered-milk formula is to blame for an alleged outbreak in infant puberty.







If that is true, it's clear that it never effected one particular segment of the population.

It's come to this

If it will bend the cost curve downward, then we suppose everything is on the table... or off the table as the case may be.

H/T: Weasel Zippers

We can't be accused of using the "N"-word...

… because the L.A. Times did for us.

Thank g#d, we’ve got not just one but two legislative bodies in this country looking out for us. The California Assembly passed AB 97 which, if signed by the Governor, would ban trans fats. California would become the first state to do so as the cities of Philadelphia and New York have similar bans in effect.

But the L.A. Times, in a fit of rationality and common sense has come out against the ban and have used rather strong and controversial language in doing so.

“Laws that protect consumers from their own unhealthful habits have more than a whiff of the nanny state about them,….”

Dude. Really, now.

But the Times is exactly right because similar to the cell phone-while-driving ban, a ban on trans fats may actually be counterproductive as the substitutes for trans fats, palm and coconut oils, are only moderately better and which also gives the consumer a false sense of confidence while loading up his plate with even more muffins thinking he’s in the cholesterol clear.

Also, one of the reasons trans fats are popular with restaurants is because it maintains its shelf-life for longer periods without refrigeration. So eliminating trans fats will require more refrigeration which, of course, requires more energy and….. how is that good for the economy or the environment?

The U.S. Congress and the California Assembly: two very unhealthy, hazardous and counterproductive entities from which the general public would certainly benefit from a ban of its own.