German professors Dr Andreas Hahn and Dr Moritz Hagenmeyer […] compiled what they assumed was an uncontroversial statement in order to test new laws which allow products to claim they can reduce the risk of disease, subject to EU approval.
They applied for the right to state that “regular consumption of significant amounts of water can reduce the risk of development of dehydration” as well as preventing a decrease in performance.
However, last February, the European Food Standards Authority (EFSA) refused to approve the statement.
A meeting of 21 scientists in Parma, Italy, concluded that reduced water content in the body was a symptom of dehydration and not something that drinking water could subsequently control.
Now the EFSA verdict has been turned into an EU directive which was issued on Wednesday.
Do these people have no clue how absolutely stupid they sound? If you’re British – run like hell from these fools.
What?
Really? Someone needs to push the “reset” button on Europe, the UK included!
When I saw this yesterday or the day before(?), my reaction was: How stupid do you have to be to fall victim to a stupidity test? This stupid, apparently.
I just don’t know what else to say…but the EU and the UN are both turning out to be failed experiments.
“Someone needs to push the “reset” button on Europe, the UK included”
Is that the red one next to the letters LAUNCH.
YES.
You don’t need to go that far for governmental regulatory lunacy. Wasn’t it only a decade ago that quebec controlled the colour of margarine: that is, it had to be that delicious, brilliant, day-glo yellow and not a more butter-like hue?
Not that anything like this comes as a surprise from the most regulated province in the country… but still.
mhb23re at gmail d0t calm
Hey, I got some smart pills for sale.
Who are these people!!!!?? And why has not a program of “Implemented Darwinism” be proclaimed?
It about time!
A meeting of 21 scientists in Parma, Italy, concluded that reduced water content in the body was a symptom of dehydration and not something that drinking water could subsequently control.
Do you suppose any of those 21 scientists drank some water during the meeting in Italy? Now why would they have done that??
What was that about monkeys running the zoo.
foobert, smart pills indeed.
Only a committee and their lefty cheerleaders could twist themselves into knots debating the validity of what is, effectively, a tautology. If you want a real hoot, check out the link in the article to another article in the Guardian. Liberalism and Socialism are mental derangements.
Can’t wait to see the effects once these all powerful bureaucrats outlaw gravity.
This reminds me of the petition started some years ago to ban “dihydrogen monoxide” as a lethal chemical compound that kills thousands every year. Fools were lining up to sign the petition. The only problem is that dihydrogen monoxide is really water.
You can still see the petition here:
http://tinyurl.com/34daqca
If memory serves me, this is the same bunch that decided that children under the age of 14 should not be using balloons. Never mind that a 12 year old can obtain an abortion without the parents ever knowing. The world is indeed being run by crazy people – the Eurozone is collapsing around them but they still manage to come up with the most asinine decisions. Common sense and reality are two places they do not inhabit.
Ah yes, European bureaucracy, nothing else like it anywhere else in the world…although Obama is trying hard to change that.
But if it saves just one iceberg,,,or one glacier ,,,(praise be to Gaia)
And
I want a research grant.(ie.The effect of humans drinking water on the biosphere.)
Are Al Gore and Suzuki behind this ? The intelligence behind this new edict matches perfectly.
But it seems quite reasonable. The eminent researcher into the matter, Dr. William C. Dukenfield, concluded as early as the 1930’s that water was dangerous. Subsequent to his findings he refused to drink it. He cited the the alarming presence of fecal and reproductive detritus from fish.
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn.
What is truly horrifying about a story like this is that the EU, to use an unfortunate but unbeatable cliche, is becoming Orwellian, in that they are trying to undo the very threads of common sense and logic — water, the absolute foundation of life, does not do what history, science and millenia of human empiricism has shown it to do. Because we say it doesn’t. This is no different then O’Brien screaming into Winston Smith’s face that 2+2=5.
This is what happens when civilizations begin to decay. Like a rise in antisemitism, this tyranny of the minutia is like a wound that won’t heal or a cough that won’t go away. There is something much bigger at work here, something rotten deep in the core. Instead of focusing on big picture issues they cannot control, or will obviously hasten the descent of if they do attempt to control, they focus on the mundane. You can see this dysfunction at work in poorly-managed companies where sloth and corruption are legion, but one can be fired for using the wrong color ink in a report. Communist societies were exemplars of this, and so is Obama’s America. The EU is the ne plus ultra
The Tyranny of the Minutia. I don’t know if I just came up with this phrase (I doubt it) but remember it. I’m pretty sure it’s only going to get worse, and in ways so staggeringly absurd you can’t even imagine.
“He cited the the alarming presence of fecal and reproductive detritus from fish.”
Remember a sign above a tap on the wall of a gasplant out in the boonies.
“Don’t drink the water, fish F… in it.”
It was straight out of the river
Remember this gem?
It was a JOKE though….
http://www.dhmo.org/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/19/dehydration-story-wrong/#more-51382
“http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/19/dehydration-story-wrong/#more-51382”
I am not sure that this changes anything. The process is part of the stupidity as is the conclusion. I guess we should offer congrats that it only took 3 years.
mhb:
The reason margarine was such a god-awful colour in Quebec was the dairy farmers’ lobby. They wanted oleo to look awful and artificial, so that people and restaurants wouldn’t use it.
Nowadays, they’re content to just let us pay 50% more than our American friends do for butter. Doncha just love ’em?
I suppose they only drink saline solution.
Raskolnikov, speaking of Orwellian, here’s a quote from the man himself which I think applies here:
“There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.”
Perhaps “intellectual” should read “intellectual, politician, or bureaucrat”.
I think what happened here is that no one wanted to fund a study that after so many years and so many millions of euros boldly stated that drinking water could eliminate the effects of dehydration, thereby exposing themselves to justifiable ridicule at such a waste of time and resources. Far better, after spending all that money, to announce a conclusion that flies in the face of thousands of years of common human experience, thus proving that the study had been necessary, and that they’re way smarter than you.
Just think of all the -Canadian- regulations there are that are as dumb as this.
Not a European problem. Its a Big Government problem.
This is the fecal matter of the self perpetuating organism known as leviathan, asphalt on the road to serfdom, regulatory bother for its own sake. This is the aspirational end-game of modern public education idealism. This is a good indicator of imminent societal collapse from statist toppling over a shriveled, ambivalent citizenry. The Europeans that inhabit the contitnent under future Islamic domination can blame their predessors for willingly exchanging their reason and culture for free health care, and pensions, and daycare, and…….ad infinitum.