Water does not prevent dehydration

[El Moose Monstero]

Oh man, tell me about it. Just the other day I was demanding to know why the Environment Agency were wasting their time doing foolish things like monitoring water quality in my local river when they could be adding their collective insight into solving the financial crisis.

[Simon_Jester]

ITT we discover the EU has petty bureaucrats who can pass petty rules while the edifice begins to crumble around them. How American.

Would you rather have petty bureaucrats who turn into screaming raving useless loonies as soon as anything bad happens, and are unable to do the jobs your money pays them to do, because of a crisis in a totally unrelated area that has nothing to do with their responsibilities?

[Count Chocula]

Not really, Simon, no. However, if a financial crisis provokes austerity measures that retire a few dozen thousand petty bureaucrats, I'm okay with that.

[evilsoup]

This may seem like a useless thing (well actually it is, I doubt putting claims that water 'provides hydration' have ever harmed anyone), but the general EFSA regulations against false advertising in food is pretty important. This is just one of those fringe cases that get reported disproportionately.

Chocula, do you think we should go to the American model and let pizza be categorised as a fruit? Because without these agencies, that's what we'd get (in the dodgier EU countries anyway).

[Teebs]

Not really, Simon, no. However, if a financial crisis provokes austerity measures that retire a few dozen thousand petty bureaucrats, I'm okay with that.

While I make no comment on whether the efficiency of the EU's employees could be improved, it's worth noting that the Commission (essentially the EU's government service) employees only 33,000 people. This is fairly similar to Birmingham city council and is far less than is normally implied.

[Count Chocula]

Chocula, do you think we should go to the American model and let pizza be categorised as a fruit? Because without these agencies, that's what we'd get (in the dodgier EU countries anyway).

Ah, so we're like the dodgier EU countries? In that case yes, yes I would. Whoever those dodgier EU countries are. Pizza is good and if manufacturers and lunchrooms have to play games to keep it on the bureaucrats' 'approved' list, so be it. See my earlier comment about fewer bureaucrats not being a bad thing.

[Duckie]

The American tolerance for institutional corruption of government by business for a profit never ceases to astound me. Those poor oppressed millionaires at the pizza industry, being forced to accurately classify their product's nutritional value. But then, we knew Chocula would be saying this- he was probably alongside all the other fat fucks screeching about "First Lady Food Fascism!" in the first place.

"I like the taste of Pizza" is certainly a great basis on whether the frozen pizza industry should be able to tell schools their product is a balanced component of a child's diet. While we're at it, why not cease the farce of pretending the US government regulates business instead of the other way around, and elect Digiorno the USDA Commissioner? (As a corporate person, shouldn't it have the same right to office as you or I?)

[Lord Zentei]

While we're at it, why not cease the farce of pretending the US government regulates business instead of the other way around, and elect Digiorno the USDA Commissioner? (As a corporate person, shouldn't it have the same right to office as you or I?)

Don't give them any more ideas.

But this classification of Pizza as a vegetable - doesn't it fall afoul of existing false advertisement regulations? Or are those around anymore?

[Stark]

Don't you see? Pizza is 'good', which means any level of corruption required to keep it within reach of the most obese children in the world BAR AUSTRALIA is totally acceptable.

Corruption is only bad when you disagree with the outcome, after all. That's why the military industrial complex is A-ok.

[Count Chocula]

Corruption is only bad when you disagree with the outcome, after all. That's why the military industrial complex is A-ok.

We're OT now, but believe me, there's a llllLLLLOOOOOTTTTtttt (a real shit-ton) of stuff wrong with our milind complex. Can you say Stryker? F-35? No light tanks? No cheap fighters? Corrupt acquisiton processes and revolving doors from military to defense contractor? Sure you can. Our forces still kick ass AFY!, but we could get better results with less money if the corruption in selection and purchasing of weapon systems was kept in check. Of course, that would probably mean CEOs, some Generals and Admirals, and Congressmen and Senators going to jail...not that I'm opposed to that. It just doesn't seem likely.

[Todeswind]

You do realize that they didn't declare "Pizza" to be a vegetable right? They simply didn't re-define the guidelines for how nutrition is calculated for marinara sauce in school lunches. Under the current guidelines schools can "round up" the amount of marinara they use on each pie, meaning they can use a half a cup or a quarter cup of marinara sauce but claim that they're providing a cup's worth of vegetable serving ( and a cup's worth of nutrition) because tomato sauce occupies a strange legal grey area in US law for some bizarre reason.

if you scour the agriculture appropriations bill, referenced in numerous stories, you won’t find a single mention of the word “pizza,” or even “vegetable,” for that matter.

This is not a fight over pizza. It is, instead, a fight about tomato paste. Specifically, it’s a fight about how much of the product counts as one serving of vegetables.

Right now, tomato paste gets a sort of special treatment under school lunch regulations. Just “an eighth of a cup of tomato paste is credited with as much nutritional value as half a cup of vegetables,” my colleague Dina ElBoghdady explained last week.

The Obama administration guidelines, outlined in January, would have nixed tomato paste’s extra credit, counting a half cup as a half cup. “Under this proposal, schools would credit tomato paste and puree based on actual volume as served,” the regulation, published in the Federal Register on Jan. 13, 2011, explains. “Schools would not be allowed to credit a volume of fruits or vegetables that is more than the actual serving size.”

What happened this week was that Congress blocked that change: Tomato paste will continue to get outsized credit, with one-eighth of a cup essentially counted as something four times larger.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezr ... _blog.html

[Spoonist]

That goes back to the "great" Reagan so Chocula's position is clear...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketchup_as_a_vegetable

Who needs healthier school-lunches anyway...

But what US hypocracy have to do with EU false advertisement rules I just don't understand???
Its quite obvious that the water vs dehydration ruling was pro-consumer vs false marketing thing so how someone can see that as too much bureaucracy is just strange to me, who would be better to protect consumer rights vs private companies than bureacrats? Heck complaining about too many bureacrats in that context is just ludicrous when the need is for more not less bureacrats to protect consumers.

[Bakustra]

It's really very simple. Libertarians/small-government types view government, and bureaucracy, as largely inessential to the functioning of society. So stuff like this, which is odd to ridiculous at first glance, gets trumpeted as validation of their views and as a thin end of the wedge towards getting rid of public schools, welfare, and the like by rendering all government ridiculous, at which point we enter into a magical land full of purestrain gold and natural rights, unhindered by government or society.

In other words, it's pretty much just "Hurf, durf, government is bad".