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Is junk food the next tobacco?

In 2000 435,000 people died from tobacco use, and 400,000 died from poor diet and physical inactivity according to the Journal of the American Medical Association. Left unabated it is predicted that deaths from poor diet will overtake those from tobacco in a few years.

During my lifetime we have really cracked down on the tobacco companys. We sued the shit out of them, banned them from TV, banned them from advertising to children, banned them from billboards, and we told that stupid camel to take a hike. In some states we have banned smoking in public areas, and in California its illegal to smoke at the beach.

But what about junk food? With the death rate from junk food virtual the same as tobacco why havent we cracked down on the junk food companies. 95% of the ads for food on TV are for junk food. Countless studies have shown that most junk foods are addictive and McDonalds brags about there success in marketing to children. There mascot is a clown and they make special toys just for there young customers to addict them at an early age. Pepsi spends 700 times as much money selling junk food as the government does marketing nutritional information.

Why dont we ban mcdonalds from TV, boot out the clown, shut down the play places, and tax the shit out of them. In NY a pack of cigarettes costs over $5 with all the taxes added in. Shouldnt a big mac cost $5 to. Maybe then less kids would eat them, that is after all the logic used to justify the tax on cigarettes.

Fun facts about fat.
Each day, 1 in 4 Americans visits a fast food restaurant

French fries are the most eaten vegetable in America

In the U.S., we eat more than 1,000,000 animals an hour

Obesity has been linked to: Hypertension, Coronary Heart Disease, Adult Onset Diabetes, Stroke, Gall Bladder Disease, Osteoarthritis, Sleep Apnea, Respiratory Problems, Endometrial, Breast, Prostate and Colon Cancers, Dyslipidemia, steatohepatitis, insulin resistance, breathlessness, Asthma, Hyperuricaemia, reproductive hormone abnormalities, polycystic ovarian syndrome, impaired fertility and lower back pain

Most nutritionists recommend not eating fast food more than once a month

McDonald's distributes more toys per year than Toys-R-Us

The World Health Organization has declared obesity a global epidemic

A double quarter ponder with cheese meal and a shake for desert contains your entire daily allowance of calories, sodium, cholesterol, and carbohydrates and enough saturated fat for more than 2 days.

60% of all Americans are either overweight or obese

I have always wanted to learn XSLT so today i did... and wrote this

 


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?>


<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">


  <xsl:template match="/">


    <div id="menu">


      <ul id="menuList">


  <xsl:apply-templates/>


       </ul>


     </div>


</xsl:template>


  <xsl:template match="Menu/Item">


    <li id="{CSSID}">


      <a href="{Link}" title="{Title}"></a>


    </li>


  </xsl:template> 


</xsl:stylesheet>

all that just to translate my XML menu into XHTML. XSLT rocks though.. now my menus are compleatly XML driven and render genericaly. Style and transparent images are added with CSS so the entier system is updatable without modifing any code on the actual pages or writing a sperate control to draw the menu. Over kill... probebly... Fun definatly