Friday, November 10, 2006

BC "Bans" Junk Food In Hospitals

Don't get too excited.

On Tuesday Gordon Campbell, BC's premier, announced that by 2009 "junk food" will be phased out of vending machines from all government owned buildings (including hospitals).

While that sounds lovely there are some obvious shortcomings of that statement.

Firstly, what will constitute junk food?

In a prior post I talked about Slammers, a new skim milk based chocolate bar in a bottle which meets at least the American Beverage Association/Clinton Foundation and the American federal government's dairy checkoff program which will be sold in vending machines in elementary schools. I imagine 100% juice will be there as well, in servings sizes larger than those recommended for children and adults by the proposed Beverage Guidance Panel championed by, you guessed it, Dr. Walter Willett (along with Barry Popkin, Lawrence Armstrong, George Bray, Benjamin Caballero and Balz Frei).

Secondly, what about the junk food restaurants?

I was horrified to learn that The Ottawa Heart Institute is bringing in a Tim Horton's.

What a nice one stop shop.

Chase down your quadruple bypass with one of Tim Horton's new Sausage, Egg and Cheese breakfast sandwiches with 20gr of saturated fat and 920mg of sodium. Gotta keep business, I mean patients, coming I guess.

I'll have to get to Funny Friday later...right now I'm too ticked off.

Pathetic.