By Gene Ayres,
Your Consumer Curmudgeon

If you listened to NPR last weekend you may have heard the interview by Scott Simon with a major general of the U.S. Marine Corps, talking about recruitment and retention problems in the ranks. It's not that Americans are less patriotic—far from it. But we're less able to serve because we are basically, too many of us anyway, seriously out of shape. The Army is trying to cope by whipping as many overweight recruits as they can muster into some degree of fitness. But that won't cut it for the Marines, and all of the services are now in serious danger of not finding enough literally “able bodies” to fill the ranks. Roughly 15,000 young potential recruits fail their entrance physicals every year because they are too heavy, and a recent report by Mission: Readiness, an organization made up of retired admirals and generals, found that 75 percent of young people are unable to join the military, and the number one reason why is obesity.

If you are a peacenik or otherwise opposed to the continuing domination of our economy by the Military Industrial Complex, you may think this is actually a good thing. But the ramifications go way beyond not having enough soldiers available to occupy Kabul. We've just seen the bloodbath in Washington over healthcare. But if anybody bothered to ask, the AMA would be the first to tell you that obesity is also our number one healthcare problem: that being overweight is seriously bad for your own personal security, health wise, and one of the biggest causes, literally, for our incredibly expensive healthcare system.

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By Gene Ayres, Your Consumer Curmudgeon

Well, a day late and, as always, a dollar short, but here we are, almost St. Paddy's Day (is this the origin for the term, “paddy wagon” perchance? Feel free to contribute to that scholarly query). Be that as it may, it's time for another Beer Issue. Even if I’m still not a big beer drinker, but then, I'm also not Irish. So I have an excuse.

However, I must admit that back when I resided in the Tampa Bay area, my favorite pub was an Irish one, called Four Green Fields (a story from Irish mythology, which of course is rampant this time of year, along with The Ides of March). I always went there off-season because the beer was cheaper then than now, it was way less crowded, and they had the same beer. Except the green beer. For green beer, you hafta go, like, tonight.

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By Gene Ayres,
Your Consumer Curmudgeon

In case you missed the special report on MSNBC courageously admitting that watching TV—including MSNBC—is, well, bad for you, I want to reopen the case, as it touches on many of my prior pieces. As a consumer advocate I have long taken issue with the products pushed on TV, as well as what the so-called Entertainment Industry (“The Industry” to insiders) has always referred to as a “product” as well, namely their programs. We literally “consume” what TV has to offer, and, if the sponsors have their way, which history shows to have been very much the case, we consume all the crap they are selling, both internally and externally, as well.

But now research into this insidious beast has uncovered whole new levels of peril. Starting with the least harmful first, people who watch TV tend not to talk to each other. Families sit in silence munching their Papa John’s and staring blankly at the screen. There is no interchange, no conversation (God forbid you should interrupt that cool Quiznos ad!), no wisdom is being shared, in short, no interaction or communication between the Watchers. And you know what that makes those who do such things on a daily, hourly basis? As my stepdaughter would say, “Borrrriiiinng.”

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By Gene Ayres,
Your Consumer Curmudgeon

This week I feel the need to pass on a report from the Center for Science in the Public Interest about truth in advertising, or lack thereof. I previously wrote about the so-called “Smart Choice” food labels the big corporate processors are putting out, all in the name of further enhancing their bottom line (and probably your waistline). It gets worse.

What CSPI has done is to isolate a list of flat out lies now commonplace in corporate processed food labeling. I guess with so many friends in high places, they do this because they can, and that leaves it up to you and me to sort out the truth from the fiction.

For starters, there is the not-so-small matter of sugar content. We are a nation of sugar addicts, and small wonder, given the power those pushers have, from the lowliest congressman to the highest Supreme Court justice on their side, to help get sugar into everything from ketchup to cheese.

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