government rating health of food in grocery stores?

New food rating system coming soon...

I don't know how I feel about this--I actually think it is a bad idea. While the overall point seems sensible (rating the health of foods, because amidst labels like "smart choice," many consumers are confused)--this is not teaching shoppers how to make productive lifestyle choices for themselves, the food pyramid is a bias dietary guide, low-calorie and healthy are conflated in ways that are not sane, and lastly, this is just fuel for the "obesity epidemic."

It is hard for me to understand how a literate person with moderate education cannot grapple nutritional content. Actually, as long as you are literate, have common sense, and some life experience, you should be fine. But I guess the truth is, most Americans don't know how to feed themselves in optimal ways. At the same time, I can only imagine that consumers will blindly consume products based on these news ratings, and not because they have learned anything about health and their bodies.

On that same token, in the age of corporate influence and lobby power, I can hardly see how anything but intense scrutiny can ensure the accountability of labels--and I doubt consumers or any federal oversight would accomplish this. I guess this is just begging for another watchdog organization.

Also, what will these ratings be based on? The food pyramid is sort of this mythical map of health that is actually heavily swayed by the meat industry. In reality, you don't need to eat animals and all of their products to be healthy. But we live in a country that just wants you to be straight and eat meat, so I guess that shouldn't come as a surprise.

What I am most concerned about is the conflation between calories and health, which may at times overlap, but are not synonymous! If any products with synthetic sugars are given high health ratings, I am leaving the country. That is bull shit. Fake sugar is poison.

Call me crazy, but the idea that the government could have a large influence in what we put in our bodies is creepy...

My last qualm is that this is all fuel for the fallacy of the obesity epidemic. Maybe over-eating in this country is a problem, but there is not an obesity epidemic for the love of science. What is defined as obesity is seriously skewed, the public perception of what a healthy body looks like is very off-kilter, and the way we measure weight (BMI) is totally inadequate. Check out this BMI slide show from Shapely Prose for a demonstration. The multi-billion dollar diet industry has a heavy investment in America's fat phobia, and that is not going to get any better if we continue to substitute questionable labels with actual knowledge.

On the up side, though, I will concede that perhaps consumers will finally realize what shit they are eating when they see all of the pathetic scores that will undoubtedly be saturating the market. If we rate and commodify health, that would likely serve as incentive for businesses to make better food. Let's just hope the standards are legitimate.