CSPI does it again - anti-choice statist ninnies

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http://www.reason.com/hod/js081806.shtml


Remember Caesar Barber, the New York maintenance worker who blamed McDonald’s for making him fat? “They said, ‘100 percent beef.’ I thought that meant it was good for you,” he claimed in July 2002.

Barber's story was harder to swallow than a super-sized Big Mac meal. So what are we to make of Arthur Hoyte, a retired physician from Rockville, Maryland, who is suing KFC because he thought fried chicken was a health food? In a lawsuit sponsored by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, Hoyte claims he had no idea the restaurant chain fries its food in partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. “If I had known that KFC uses an unnatural frying oil, and that the food was so high in trans fat, I would have reconsidered my choices," he says.

Aren’t doctors supposed to be smart, at least when it comes to health-related issues? If Hoyte has no way of knowing about all the trans fat in KFC’s dishes, what chance do the rest of us have?

CSPI's would-be class action, based on Washington, D.C. consumer protection law, accuses the chain of failing to disclose “material facts” about its food and demands that it either stop using partially hydrogenated oil or post trans fat warning signs. According to CSPI Executive Director Michael Jacobson (who is not known for his rhetorical subtlety), KFC “recklessly puts its customers at risk of a Kentucky Fried Coronary” and is “making its unsuspecting consumers’ arteries Extra Crispy.” To support these claims, CSPI’s online statement links to three pages of nutritional information about the KFC menu.

But who is that bearded, white-haired gentleman in the upper left corner of each page in this damning indictment? It turns out the trans fat secrets Colonel Sanders is keeping from his customers—information so arcane even a medical specialist cannot reasonably be expected to know it—is contained in a “Nutrition Guide” on KFC’s Web site and on big, conspicuous posters in KFC outlets.