It all seems like the kind of thing only a total dick would complain about. And that's the idea; behind many of them are big-money interests trying to hijack your goodwill for their own, usually greedy, purposes.

Not a day goes by that you won't hear an ad or message from some well-meaning group called the "Council for (insert good cause here)" or "Concerned Citizens for (whatever) or "The _______ Committee for Responsible ________." They sound like charity groups, and they're always advocating for some kind of common-sense cause, from stopping littering to quitting smoking.

6 Operation Make America Even Fatter

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

Billed as a libertarian-style group supporting the free choice of consumers, The Center for Consumer Freedom runs websites and ad campaigns opposing food-related attacks on our liberty. So for instance, when other groups concerned about childhood obesity push to ban toys from Happy Meals or ask the Girl Scouts to sell healthier snacks, The Center for Consumer Freedom is the one who jumps in and says people should be able to eat what they want, dammit. So it comes off as kind of a group of regular dudes restoring some common sense to a politically correct world. Seems pretty reasonable.



"The Center for Responsible Use of Nachos" didn't have the same ring to it.

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

And it's a big deal -- it pressured the government's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to lower its estimate of 400,000 yearly obesity-related deaths in America down to just over 100,000, and it's often referenced as a group of experts in mainstream news sources.

Wait, something's not right here ...

They're basically paid shills for the restaurant industry.

That picture gets a littler clearer when you realize they also run ObesityMyths.com, which corrects common "myths" about obesity, like "being really fat might make you die" and "eating a lot can make you gain weight" (these ridiculous falsehoods are apparently spun by pro-dieting groups in order to profit from weight-loss drugs and diet plans). And that's not all. According to The Center For Consumer Freedom, high-fructose corn syrup is actually pretty cool, mercury in fish is overhyped and compulsory warning labels on foods are for sissies. So who would pay big money to lobby for that?

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

The Center for Consumer Freedom receives most of its funding from the restaurant, food and gaming industry, including Coca-Cola, Wendy's and Outback Steakhouse. And also Monsanto, which might have something to do with why it thinks that groups against genetic engineering are "anti-choice nannies."



"The faster we get mutant food, the faster we get real mutants."

Basically, restaurants want you to think that eating their crap without knowing what's in it is just awesome, and they know that using a nonprofit group as a front is more effective than getting a guy in a burger costume to crash Congress.