Thirsty? Dehydrated? Be careful… European Food Standards Authority has ruled bottled water distributors can’t advertise that their products prevent dehydration.
It took this commission THREE years to reach the conclusion that water just doesn’t meet their standards for preventing dehydration. And any violators of their mandate (who advertise that water does prevent dehydration) could face prison time.
Sure this happened in Europe, but who can honestly say they would be surprised to hear the same claim from the bereaucrats here in the U.S.? Think of the money wasted on the three year study, the meetings, the documentation, and these people’s salaries. On the plus side, this is a perfect opportunity to clean house of dead weight bereaucrats. Anybody who had anything to do with this study should be humiliated and sacked. On the negative side, this (sacking idiots) has never happened before; so it probably won’t happen this time.
This is a perfect example of why government should concentrate on a few constitutionally mandated things (protect the borders, fight wars for oil interests) and leave the rest to the private sector.
In the movie Idiocracy, a literal average Joe is put in hibernation and wakes up 500 years in the future; where he is now the smartest person on the planet (due to stupid people breeding like rabbits). One key plotline is that the sports drink Brawndo has replaced water; because everyone knows that “Brawndo has electrolytes!”
When Joe asks for a drink of water one of the citizens laughs and says “You want to drink the stuff from the toilet?”; which is about the only thing water is used for anymore…
And we want to be more like these guys?
* (click on cartoon for bigger/readable view)
I saw a commercial this morning that advertised Idaho potatoes, which just got the seal from the American Heart Association:
“When it comes to heart-healthy produce, consumers can put a check next to Idaho® potatoes on their shopping list. The Idaho Potato Commission (IPC) announced today that the American Heart Association has certified that fresh Idaho® potatoes meet its criteria for saturated fat and cholesterol.”
Vegetables don’t have cholesterol; that’s an animal product. And only some nuts and seeds have saturated fat.
So, yeah, European produce bureaucracies are dumb. American produce lobbyists are dumb too — but in bold, new ways. Both depend on the profound ignorance of the average citizen.
>Anybody who had anything to do with this study should be humiliated and sacked.
Well… we’ve all gotten stuck with seriously dumb-ass projects. I agree, whichever *executive* spearheaded this stupid thing should get sacked.
>This is a perfect example of why government should concentrate on a few constitutionally mandated things (protect the borders, fight wars for oil interests) and leave the rest to the private sector.
HA! Nice. Glad the founding fathers agreed we should only invade countries (a) with oil and (b) without nukes.
But beyond baiting me with the oil joke… yeah, I don’t think the private sector is the cure to all of society’s problems. It’s very good at what it does best (as you’ve said, like a shark), but it needs to be kept on a leash. Now, when the leash holder in gov’t is an ex-CEO or lobbyist… who goes back to being a CEO or lobbyist after his time in Congress… then we have the system we have today, where the gov’t relaxes regulations and then bails them out when they naturally destroy their own economies because they were free to do so.
This is why the fact that Romney and Cain have business backgrounds is not really refreshing. Bush and Cheney were CEOs, too. It’s all the same people, just switching hats.