One of the points that is so hard to get over about the classical liberal beliefs is that governments and bureaucracies can and do fail. It isn’t enough to say that the market, or private actors, or companies, have failed or could do better. We also need to show that government or bureaucratic action would be better, for they fail just as much, perhaps more often.
Here’s The Guardian complaining about the way in which the food labelling scheme promoted by private companies relies upon unrealistic portion sizes to give misleading information about dietary guidelines.
But the new industry labels, which tell shoppers how much sugar, fat
and salt products contain as a percentage of their total "guideline
daily amount" (GDA), use figures that are "misleading", the National
Heart Forum says.
Tesco, Nestlé and Kellogg’s are among the food giants criticised for
their labelling by the report, which includes accusations that industry
daily amounts are based on arbitrary portion sizes and lead to products
appearing healthier than they are.
In
one example of what the health group report calls "misinformation"
adult guideline amounts are routinely being used on products targeted
at children, even though children’s targets are different to those for
adults.
Here’s what the bureaucracy did when evaluating foods that would be banned from being advertised on children’s TV. The list of foods banned is here, the why here.
Yes, the bureaucracy used unrealistic portion sizes to give misleading information about dietary guidelines. Like a 3 ounce serving of Marmite to show that it had too much salt.
So, what should we do? Praise the food companies for copying our Lords and Masters? Or say that, as those private companies only seem to be out by a factor of x2 or x3, whereas the bureaucrats were out by x20, do we once again applaud the ability of spontaneous organisation to get things closer to reality than bureaucrats widdling away our tax money?
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