Ever wondered how many calories are in your food when you dine out?

No. Never.

Or in the snack you’ve just chosen in a vending machine? Or indeed your early morning latte?

Now you’re getting silly.

Well whether you have or not makes no difference.

Thought not.

Because the FDA are now proposing that the amount of calories on each item on a menu be clearly posted for customers to see.

Under the new labelling requirements, restaurant chains, bakeries, grocery stores, convenience stores, coffee chains and even vending machines will have to clearly post the amount of calories in each item.

The calorie counts will apply to an estimated 280,000 establishments required as part of a health overhaul legislation signed into law last year.

This will add even more strain to the catering industry. For example, in the UK, restaurant owners already need to check the temperature of their fridges four times a day and keep records. There is a local butcher who admits to checking his a couple of times a week and inventing all the other numbers, so I would trust his calorie estimates as far as I could throw one of his fridges.

They are designed to give restaurant diners information that has long been available on packaged goods cooked at home.

Which I don’t look at. And anyway, a mass-produced, pre-packaged meal can be reliably measured. In a restaurant or cafe, the size of portions will vary, especially if there is more than one chef. Some things, like fish, come in different sizes. Some restaurants put dishes of chips and veg on the table for everyone to dip into. If there is a large group of people, food will probably end up being passed around: “does anyone want my onion rings?”

The move is the latest in a series of changes to battle the nation’s epidemic of obesity.

FDA deputy commissioner for foods Mike Taylor said: ‘We’ve got a huge obesity problem in this country and its due in part to excess calorie consumption outside the home.

‘We see this as part of the overall effort to fight obesity.’

A California law requiring chain restaurants to display calorie counts has been in effect since January, but many counties have put off enforcing the regulation until the release of the federal guidelines.

Although public health and nutrition specialists welcomed the new rules, few suggested that they would make a substantial difference in the epidemic of overeating that adds an estimated $150billion a year to the nation’s medical bill.

I get so tired of reading these (probably made up) figures. Do they think anyone is going to change their lifestyle because unimaginable amounts of money are quoted? People tend to change because they want to – and especially when they have encouragement and support. When I lived in south-east London in the mid-90s, I tried to get help for my alcohol addiction. The first port of call for help was nearly always the GP. I found them generally unhelpful and uncaring, but one in particular – a very fat lady, as it happens – seemed like she was in the wrong job. She so looked down on me because she could smell drink on me that she made me feel worthless and frustrated. She finished the consultation (or ‘insultation,’ more like) by asking if I was going to drink less. I was so annoyed that I told her I was going to carry on drinking, and walked out. She put me off seeking help again for about a year as I recall.

The rate of obesity has more than doubled over the last 40 years. In 1971, an estimated 14.5 per cent of adults in the U.S. were obese, compared with about 35 per cent in 2008.

But haven’t Americans always eaten a lot? I suspect there is a lot more than just the number of calories in the equation. Exercise, or lack of, is obviously a factor for many.

On the rare occasion that I do look at the calorie count on the packaging of a product, it is on ready meals. If there are only three or four hundred calories then I don’t see the point in buying it. I’m still going be hungry and will end up pigging out on biscuits, cake and crisps. Could these “healthy meals” which wouldn’t fill a cat actually be doing more harm than good? Who wants to feel hungry all evening? Who’s not going to snack?

And if the FDA really cared about public health, the first thing they would do is outlaw aspartame. Over 80% of the complains that the FDA receives are said to be aspartame related. Despite being an artificial sweetener, it is claimed that it causes obesity (among dozens of other things).

When I stayed in France for a week in 2003, one thing I noticed when eating out was that although the portions were smaller, the food was tastier and more interesting and varied than we are used to in the UK. The smaller amounts entertained the palate sufficiently to satisfy me. I suppose the enjoyment was in the actual eating, whereas the bland offerings we tend to get in this country mean that the enjoyment is achieved mainly through feeling “stuffed.”

Which is probably why this looks so good.

It is clear that the social changes of the past few decades have seen us spending less time preparing good healthy meals and then sitting down as a family to eat slowly in a relaxed atmosphere. I know that sometimes I can sit in front of the telly and shovel in my dinner and not experience the joy of eating. I was only eating to feel full. I was concentrating on whatever I was watching and probably wouldn’t have noticed if I’d eaten a slug along with the lettuce.

The answer is not yet more facts and figures on food, which we nearly all ignore, but to start eating proper food and enjoy the taste. Our eating seems to be like our drinking – we don’t do it for the taste as much as for the auxiliary effects from overeating/drinking.

And as in 1930’s Germany, there are millions of people in the UK today who are happy the way freedoms are being removed. Selfish non-smokers (and ex-smokers, like Hitler!) love the smoking ban because everywhere is now smoke-free, even the places they never went into and never intend to visit in the future – ever. They believe the polluting propaganda exhaled by fakecharities like ASH and think that everyone needs to comply.

Similarly, envirofascists believe the selective data they are fed and want to impose controls on the rest of us.

Had I not experienced an all-time low in motivation last week, I would have blogged about the American “charity” that has landed in Britain to hand out money to drug addicts to be sterilised. A YouGov poll out yesterday shows less than half the respondents believe this eugenics method to be morally wrong.

Moral confusion

There is an unusually high number of don’t knows for a survey, reflecting the moral confusion which now reigns.

To bang on about Marie Stopes again, and I think it is worth repeating as the fakecharity named after her is a major player in the abortion and sterilisation trade,

Marie Stopes [was] a feminist who opened the first birth control clinic in Britain in 1921 as well as being a Nazi sympathizer and a eugenicist who advocated that non-whites and the poor be sterilized.

Stopes, a racist and an anti-Semite, campaigned for selective breeding to achieve racial purity, a passion she shared with Adolf Hitler in adoring letters and poems that she sent the leader of the Third Reich.

The feminist also attended the Nazi congress on population science in Berlin in 1935, while calling for the “compulsory sterilisation of the diseased, drunkards, or simply those of bad character.” Stopes acted on her appalling theories by concentrating her abortion clinics in poor areas so as to reduce the birth rate of the lower classes.

Stopes left most of her estate to the Eugenics Society, an organization that shared her passion for racial purity and still exists today under the new name The Galton Institute. The society has included members such as Charles Galton Darwin (grandson of the evolutionist), Julian Huxley and Margaret Sanger.

Like Stopes, this latest atrocity of a “charity” believes that no life at all is better than a chance at life and that people who are disadvantaged will remain that way forever. As a former unemployable alcoholic myself, Marie Stopes and “Project Prevention” would have wanted me to have a vasectomy to avoid the danger of me polluting humanity with offspring who might have a less-than-perfect start in life.

With all this going on, can we now declare Godwin’s Law to be dead?

an initiative by the UK Government to halve the number of people smoking by 2010. The strategy includes a crackdown on cigarette smoking.

A crackdown?! You mean a total ban in all enclosed public places is not already a crackdown?

So, what does this latest crackdown entail?

Quite a lot. Labour made a manifesto ‘promise’ to continue to allow smoking in pubs where food wasn’t served. They lied about that and so people have to stand outside if they want a cigarette. Now the Health Secretary, Andy Burnham, also wants to ban smoking in walkways and near the entrances of buildings. Of course, this will increase the demise of the pub trade as even more people decide to stay at home where they can smoke.

But if you smoke, don’t get too comfy in your own home, because the government wants to ban you from smoking in your house and your car if you have children.

It doesn’t take a genius to see that what naturally follows from this is a total ban on smoking in all cars and all homes at all times and from the ban on smoking outside buildings, to smoking outside, period.

So, no smoking inside and no smoking outside. Burnham really doesn’t want us to burn ‘em. (Sorry.) Of course, tobacco products themselves won’t be illegal because the government needs the vast tax revenue. Maybe they reckon that because smokers will have one or two problems trying to find a place to smoke that is neither inside nor outside, that there will be huge scope for issuing fixed penalty fines and thus smokers, as well as funding the NHS, will also be able to pay off the national debt.

Another idea that has been doing the rounds for a while, presumably to condition us to get used to the idea before it is written into law, is for all cigarettes to be sold in plain packaging.

John Walsh writes today in The Independent,

Lastly, he [Burnham] wants to force tobacco companies to drop brand artwork. “Now that we’ve banned advertising and will soon see an end to attractive displays in shops,” says Mr Birdbrain, sounding smugger than a human really should, “the only remaining method of advertising tobacco is the packaging.” He wants to see only plain fag packets in the future. As if that will make a single smoker think: “Oh no! Twenty cigarettes with no mention of the words ‘Marlboro Lights’ anywhere! I’m so horrified, I will cease this filthy habit immediately.” Andy, seriously, if you’re desperate for a cigarette, issues such as artwork don’t come into your head.

Will that be the end of it? Of course not. The little sadists will soon insist on cigarettes being sold singly rather than in packets, to be taken home in brown paper bags, like mushrooms.

Are the tobacco companies worried?

Imperial Tobacco also responded to the UK government’s new Tobacco Control Strategy, which endorses the plain packaging of tobacco products. The company said that it remains strongly opposed to the strategy and that it believes there is no credible evidence that young people start smoking or adult smokers continue to smoke because of tobacco packaging. According to Imperial Tobacco, making all tobacco products available in the same generic plain packaging will further fuel the growth in illicit trade and undermine the government’s plans to increase investment in tackling smuggling and counterfeiting.

And wouldn’t you know that the government is also trying to ‘crack down’ on smugglers of cheap cigarettes?

Good old New Labour, they’re not just there for the nasty things in life. Well, actually, they are. Here we see more of their planned legislation that is contradictory, won’t work, is draconian and that nobody voted for.

Some people even want smokers to be required to pay for a licence before they are allowed to buy cigarettes. No doubt there are also plans to licence drinkers and fast-food junkies.

1) Stop following people on Twitter who are of no interest. For example, I follow one chap (I think he started following me first, so to be kind, I followed him) who gives regular reports from Grimsby Town matches. No offence to him or the football club, but I really don’t have time for things like this. A few people tweet often, but they say things that are worth reading more often than not. But some people will tweet things like just took some chicken out the freezer to defrost. Like I need to know this.

2) Greatly reduce commenting on politicians’ blogs, because they just don’t listen – at least the ones I comment on, which tend to be New Labourites. I just thought that some honest dialogue with politicians would reap some rewards, but it just seems to be an infuriating waste of time. There have to be more effective ways of improving life in the UK.

3) Don’t get involved in potentially lengthy discussions when there is work to do. Last time I was on Richard Dawkins’ blog, I spent six hours defending my beliefs against maybe twenty others. I even attracted a bit of respect last time, which was wonderful. Much as I would rather blog than work, being self-employed means I have to be careful as far as time is concerned, and I know I have been reckless at times.

I’m sure there is more I can do, but I reckon that if I implement these three measures (especially nos 2 and 3), I should save at least an hour every single day (several hours some days) for the rest of my life.

I have also filed this post under ‘addiction’!

Prohibition of alcohol, like any other drug, does not work…

One possible solution could be an entitlement card that people would carry and swipe when every time they buy Alcohol or Tobacco and record their usage. Is that too radical? I don’t think so. For a long time the Government have controlled motorists with a system of licences where people enjoy the right and freedom to drive – as long as they conform to certain rules. (My emphasis)

Is that too radical, asks he?

Yes.

It is no secret that I am an alcoholic (nearly 12 years since successful detox), but I don’t agree with my long-lost relative.

For one thing, you shouldn’t just turn off the supply of booze to alcoholics. It’s their medicine, which sadly, also aids their destruction. Binge drinking troublemakers might be a different case, but how are you going to tell the difference? They would get someone else to buy it for them anyway.

I don’t know what the answer is. Alcoholism is a truly desperate and horrible thing. I don’t know what to advise short of everyone repenting and turning to the Lord.

They don’t call it the demon drink for nothing. Those devils don’t mess around.

BEHIND the third barstool at the Portland Arms in Shettleston, a small brass plaque is fixed to the bar. “Davie Gerthy’s Spot,” it reads.

He was, locals recall, a man who worked hard for his family. But when the work dried up, his life became measured in pints.

The Glasgow area was once, not so long ago, a major producer of just about everything you could imagine. From ships, locomotives and cars to encylopedias, textiles and Penguin biscuits!

I happen to believe that one of government’s primary concerns is employment. I don’t mean the creation of millions of non-jobs à la New Labour, but rather to help ensure there are jobs in industry, agriculture and tourism.

Portland Arms regular Andrew Wallace, 49, bemoans the loss of jobs in the area.

In every pub you’ll find skilled tradesmen, drinking away their lives because there’s nothing else. You get up, go out, and then what?

But lack of work isn’t the only problem. Another drinker in the Portland Arms says,

I grew up in a good household, where my parents both worked hard for their family. But at the weekend, it was as if they tried to fit five days worth of drinking into two. Every relative was giving you a drink, making sure you were topped up. That’s the environment I grew up in.

For those who don’t know, I was an alcoholic myself, saved from ten years drinking by the grace of Almighty God. With me, I was in work when I started. I often felt tense, so a couple of drinks at home in my tiny bedsit of an evening felt like a good thing to do. Only I became very quickly dependent.

I became very ill in 1998 and had to be detoxed. I am sure this saved my life. I have never returned to drinking.

The Scottish Government is planning various draconian measures to force people to drink less. They want prices to rise. From my own experience this won’t help. Alcoholism takes over. It’s like a disease. Many think it is a disease. If the prices rise then people will just go without food or heating. I did and that was with relatively low alcohol prices.

A few years ago, I set up Truth, which was meant to promote proper education on alcohol matters. After my own escape, I was keen to help others, but to be honest, I’m still unsure of the best way. For certain, having useful employment to go to is a major benefit and successive governments have betrayed the people of Shettleston and many other communities.

Glasgow was the Empire's Second City, made strong by trade and industry