Illustration: Food criminals by Linas Garsys for The Washington Times

When private advertisers use creative ads to sell a product, the government steps in to take it off the market. But, what happens when it is the government who is producing blatantly false advertising? We know health czars are overriding their own experts and advisors, approving marketing campaigns against food and drink products where “going viral was more important than going accurate.”

Walter Olson, in a Washington Times op-ed, writes about the latest installment of Hizzoner’s (Mayor Bloomberg) war on salt:

Incredibly, New York City’s latest ad, on salt in processed foods, is even worse. It shows a can of soup bursting at the seams with table salt, whole mounds and piles of it. The city’s underlying point is not 100 percent off-base – healthful in most other ways, conventional canned soup is a relatively salty food – but the actual amount of salt in a can is more like 1 teaspoon, not the third of a cup or more depicted in the city’s ridiculously exaggerated photo. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Bloomberg soup ad is built on a visual lie.

What would happen if a private advertiser tried to get away with imagery as misleading as this? Well, in 1970, in a case still taught in business schools, Campbell’s got caught manipulating the soup pictures in its ads; its photographers had put marbles at the bottom of the bowl so that the pleasing vegetables would be more visible on top. The Federal Trade Commission filed a deceptive-advertising complaint to make the company stop.

If you’re expecting today’s federal government to chide New York City for its graphic falsehoods, think again. Last month, the federal Centers for Disease Control – headed by

Bloomberg’s own Dr. Frieden – announced a $412,000 grant to assist the city in its anti-salt efforts. For everyone’s own good, of course.

Here at My Food. My Choice! we’ve documented the wasteful spending habits of big government with our tax dollars. But this latest episode, may be harder for some to digest: the government agencies, i.e., departments of health, CDC, and FDA, we expect to be fair and objective are not telling us the truth. Motivated by their own agendas and relationships with the Food Police activists, it is important that we take everything they tell us with a grain of salt.

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