An apple a day keeps the doctor away [Title banned by the trading standards office]
Anyone who doubts that free markets and supermarkets are better friends of public health than governments should read this.
ASDA (the British arm of Walmart) labelled its vegetables, explaining that people who eat certain types of vegetable have a lower chance of developing certain forms of cancer.
ASDA was promptly prosecuted and punished. It seems that 'making health claims' is not legal in Britain.
With all the controversy over the banning of advertising fatty foods, you would think this sort of thing would be welcomed by everyone - if advertising really does so much harm when it recommends junk food, then the advertising of positive properties in fruit and vegetables can't half be a good thing.
Apparently not.
One can can't help but think that there is something simply aesthetically displeasing to the social democratic busybody about the organic emergence of a voluntary solution - it all whiffs too much of conservatism and capitalism, and too little of nannyism and interventionism. They'd rather see an ineffectual nannying solution to the problems that they identify imposed by force than see a good solution come about without their efforts.
