So it’s all over then, no?

Alas, bureaucrats, regulators and their elite allies have not yet begun to food-fight. A Reuters “Insight” piece reports extensively on the next front in the war on food, and it’s a direct, open assault on the very concept of consumer freedom.

You see, Reuters conducted a poll that showed that when people were “[a]sked to identify the main cause of the epidemic, 61 percent chose ‘personal choices about eating and exercising’; 19 percent chose the actions of food manufacturers and the fast-food industry.” That sounds like a victory for common sense. But consider what the Reuters writer said just before stating that result: “A new Reuters/Ipsos online poll […] captures some of the prejudicial attitudes [emphasis added].” You read that right: Our betters have decided that trusting the American people to make their own decisions is a “prejudicial attitude.” How insightful.

Of course, when the linchpin of your agenda, the reviled soda tax, polls 18 percent support, it’s easier to expel spittle than convince policymakers. Rebecca Puhl of Yale is happy to lecture us:

As long as we have this belief that obese people are […] lacking in discipline, it will be hard to get support for policies that change the environment, which are likely to have a much larger impact than trying to change individuals.

We’d expect no less from Kelly “Twinkie Tax” Brownell’s colleague. (After all, he thinks we are “addicted” to food. But what about he himself?) The motives are transparent: Classify personal choice supporters as bigots and shut them up, using the law if necessary. (It’s not like activists hold the First Amendment in any high esteem.)

The editors of The Wall Street Journal warned against this political science: “Beware of scientists who moonlight as politicians. A case in point is this week’s Institute of Medicine obesity report that endorses far more regulation.” The paper noted that “[activists] envision a government-led transformation ‘across all levels and sectors of society,’” concluding judiciously: “It’s never a good omen when planners use such language.”

To the social engineers, we are giant lab rats playing in a maze. Forgive us for thinking more highly of the American people.

That sounds like awfully providential news. And now, thanks to an op-ed in Newsday, we know a little bit more about how, in spite of falling added-sugar consumption and a leveling off of obesity rates, this result was generated. The authors note:

The assertion, however, is as reliable a predictor as a Magic Eight Ball. It’s based on projections like the number of fast-food restaurants likely to be built over the next two decades. Wall Street analysts can’t predict such things five years out. […] That’s about as nutty as predicting obesity based on Internet access.

And sure enough, that’s what the researchers did. The researchers also assert that their “projections assume that […] parameters […] from past data will continue to hold in the future,” failing to consider that since 2008 (when their data was generated) the restaurant and food landscape (to say nothing about the rest of American life) has changed. As consumers have demanded healthier options, for instance, restaurants and food companies have provided those options.

So if this projection isn’t an accurate reflection of the future of America’s health, what is it? One need only look at where the projections were announced. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, now run by former New York City Health Commissioner and would-be dietary dictator Thomas Frieden, is holding its “Weight of the Nation” conference to build support for anti-obesity social engineering.

In order to serve the engineers’ ends, the food police are pulling out all the stops: Wild projections, manifestos for dietary central planning, ludicrous comparisons of food to tobacco, and even a week-long HBO documentary.

They’ve even proposed mandating the content of restaurant menus because they don’t think people are smart enough to make their own choices. Our Senior Research Analyst went on National Public Radio’s Diane Rehm Show to respond to this implicit insult:

Well, recommendation two [of the manifesto] is specifically related to the government’s attempts to make concerted efforts to reduce unhealthy food and beverage options. This is  [...] a sea change in government policy-making with respect to the government’s ability to tell us what we are allowed to eat. And I see it as really troubling and, frankly, very paternalistic. You know, no one seems to be questioning: At what point did it become legitimate for the government to tell us how much we’re allowed to weigh?

What’s missing in all this? Any acknowledgement that personal irresponsibility played a role in the causes of obesity and that only by restoring personal responsibility can we fix the problem. As we told USA Today:

Personal irresponsibility is to blame for obesity; personal responsibility is the only viable solution. We shouldn’t promote policies that serve only to diminish it.

And with an ear to activists’ new crusade to diminish the role of personal choice by concocting the notion of narcotic-esque “food addiction,” Reuters reports that the IOM declared that “people cannot truly exercise ‘personal choice’ because their options are severely limited.” Of course, as evidence on expanding access to healthy foods shows, you can lead people to healthy food, but you can’t make them eat it. It’s up to them to make good choices.

As for the other policies that IOM proposes, the evidence for the soda tax projects everything from mere failure to possible counter-productivity. (Perhaps soda is merely the thin end of the centrally planned diet wedge.) Marketing regulations didn’t help Quebec or Sweden buck the trend of expanding waistlines. And restaurant zoning bans are based on a false premise.

When it comes to children’s menu item regulation, it’s probably not even necessary as both chain and quick-service restaurants have responded to consumer demand for healthier products for their kids. Not to mention that parents can and should exercise appropriate veto power over what their kids eat. (What a concept.)

But the IOM didn’t pass up the opportunity to bash adults’ choices either. The “broccoli mandate” might be a thing of legal hypotheticals for now, but the IOM called for the creation of “strong nutritional standards” and ensuring that foods that meet them “are available in all places frequented by the public.” Does that mean movie theaters must serve carrot sticks—even if nobody buys them?

Of course, the report only suggests that the recommendations hold the force of law in government procurement. But we heard similar things recently said about “voluntary” advertising guidelines. True to form, the IOM now calls for those guidelines to be made mandatory if there aren’t enough volunteers. How far off can a national menu czar be? Let’s hope it isn’t Cass Sunstein.

Fundamentally, the IOM panel and its supporters in “public health” think that Americans are lemmings incapable of exercising restraint. (Were it 1899, they might have said we were “half devil and half child.”) Treating Americans as children or “McVictims” is only a recipe for fat-fighting failure.

Washington, DC – Today the nonprofit Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) is refuting the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) new report, “Accelerating Progress in Obesity Prevention: Solving the Weight of the Nation,” which misguidedly calls for the government and industry decision-makers to actively reduce the number of choices Americans have when they sit down to eat.

The IOM report proposes to improve the food environment by taxing sugar-sweetened beverages, creating restaurant zoning laws, and giving breaks to those building grocery stores in “food deserts.” Yet, in a recent study of America’s food environment conducted by Drs. Charles Baum (Middle Tennessee State University) and Shin-Yi Chou (Lehigh University), environmental factors like food prices and restaurant location were shown to play a minuscule role in America’s current obesity rates. The study found a lack of personal responsibility is making Americans overweight. Fundamentally, the key to maintaining a healthy weight is what it always has been: striking a balance between calories taken in (food) and calories expended (exercise).

“The Institute of Medicine and other food nannies are no longer just calling for Americans to reduce their consumption of certain foods,” said J. Justin Wilson, CCF’s Senior Research Analyst. “They’re flatly arguing against consumers having any choice in their snacks and meals. It is arrogant and absurd to suggest that Americans are too stupid to make their own food choices.”

The IOM proposal comes as data from the National Center for Health Statistics recently showed obesity rates in the United States to have slowed or possibly even to be leveling off. Many public health zealots and legislators are quick to champion heavy-handed government policies, such as taxing soda and sweets. However, what’s working for Americans is what always has, personal responsibility and consumer choice. Restaurants and food companies, meanwhile, have recognized changing consumer tastes by offering more options and smaller-portioned meals and snacks. Companies are responding to consumer demand by expanding their menus, not limiting them to low-sodium crackers and water.

“Increasing consumers’ options on menus and store shelves is the real key to curbing obesity,” Wilson continued, “not imposing one-size-fits-all policies that completely ignore the importance of personal responsibility.”

We hope Kelly “Twinkie Tax” Brownell didn’t get his hopes up, because the council decided not to adopt the drink tax—at least not yet. Chicago already puts Illinois’s maximum sales tax on soft drinks. And now the Chicago Sun-Times has weighed in and said that that maximum sales tax is more than enough “sin” taxing:

[...] a big tax on sugary drinks isn’t the answer.

That’s a nanny-state solution, one that says government must protect us from ourselves, one that doesn’t harness the power of everyday Americans to solve [weight problems] for themselves.

When the food activist community is trying harder than ever to convince people that they can’t solve their weight problems because they’re hopeless addicts, this dose of common sense is a genuine relief.

The supposed “solution” of the soda tax isn’t a solution at all. (It is the nanny state, but that’s another matter entirely.) Studies consistently show that a significant soda tax would reduce daily calorie intake by less than one percent of a daily intake. The real tax-and-spend motivation for the soda tax has little to do with cutting calories and everything to do with fattening government bureaucracy.

Of course, Brownell, who may be the tax’s most enthusiastic pusher, has said that “society does not have the luxury to await scientific certainty” before enacting his preferred obesity cures. As evidence and political will continues to mount against it, we eagerly await an admission that this supposed cure is just public-health snake oil.

Well, it seems like the “absurd” New York ads weren’t the only misspent money in the anti-obesity slush fund. The Washington Examiner reports that in Nashville, Tennessee CPPW money was used to–wait for it–spay and neuter dogs and cats.

Why would they claim that neutering pets could fight obesity? Supposedly strays deter exercisers. Now, encouraging exercise and lifestyle physical activity are better than some possible alternative uses for the CPPW grants, but this particular grant strikes us as silly. (Personal responsibility should apply to pet ownership too, after all.)

At least spending federal money on snipping pets so people might be more apt to go for runs is merely silly and wasteful and not a threat to our choices. With public health researchers (and the usual vegan suspects) lining up to put colas, cheeseburgers, candies, and milkshakes under the “addictive” umbrella with drugs and alcohol, neutering pets seems mostly harmless considering what else the grants might fund. One way or the other, aren’t you glad to see your money hard at work?

So, is cutting out the white mineral the secret to long life? Hardly. Despite big-government busybodies and activist groups clamoring to drive a basic taste from restaurant menus, the evidence for sodium reduction at the population level is mixed at best and potentially harmful at worst.

If CSPI’s position ends up giving them a black eye, it wouldn’t be the first time. In the late 1980s, CSPI’s own Nutrition Action Healthletter concluded that “[a]ll told, the charges against trans fat just don’t add up.” After changing their tune and declaring trans fat a killer about twenty years later, the scramble to replace trans-fatty partially hydrogenated cooking oil led to complaints from CSPI that the substitutes harmed orangutan habitats. Small wonder CSPI’s dietary ideology has been termed “perpetual Lent.”

Given the vigor of CSPI’s opposition to practically anything tasty, it shouldn’t be surprising that salt is in the line of fire. But we suppose it could be worse. New York Mayor and member of the Forbes 400 rich list Michael Bloomberg, the nation’s top salt cop, may back CSPI’s salt purge, but Hizzoner’s view seems to be “salt for me but not for ye.”

We’ve questioned “food deserts” before, and we’re glad Brownell seems to be coming around. But it’s a curious statement from him given that in the past he reportedly supported a federal tax subsidy program for businesses in so-called “food deserts” that made significant revenue from selling fruits and veggies. He also told the Center for Science in the Public Interest’s Nutrition Action Healthletter that “we […] have too little access to healthy foods.” But now, with evidence mounting that “food deserts” aren’t the major factor in obesity that some think they are, Brownell apparently has given up the carrot.

The question now becomes how long he can maintain the myth of the effective stick. Recent studies have shown the much-vaunted soda tax he endorses will reduce daily calorie intake by nine, twelve, or even as many as three calories per day. (For those keeping score at home, all those effects are fractions of a percent of the typical adult’s dietary energy intake.)

It’s wishful thinking to imagine that attacking only one of the many causes of obesity will solve a complex problem. But it’s simply blind to think that a policy that research consistently shows will not solve the problem will in fact solve the problem. Brownell has claimed that “society does not have the luxury to await scientific certainty” before adopting obesity-fighting policy. The “scientific certainty” appears to be in on healthy food access, and it didn’t go Brownell’s way. We eagerly await (but aren’t holding our breath for) Brownell’s similar realization that the soda tax won’t “change obesity.”

Two of the studies the prosecuting contributor presents rely on providing subjects with extreme levels of sugars, specifically fructose (which Lustig calls “poison”). One study provided subjects with 200 grams of fructose per day (that’s 800 calories, more than a third of a typical 2000-calorie diet); in the other, subjects received “25% of their calories from either fructose or high-fructose corn syrup.” (It’s important to note that both high-fructose corn syrup and table sugar are comprised of about half fructose and half sucrose.) These levels are well above average compared to typical dietary intakes: Research published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that Americans get only 14.6 percent of their total calories from all added sugars combined (a six-teaspoon-per-day decline from 2000, we would add).

It shouldn’t be surprising then that University of Minnesota in St. Paul nutrition professor Joanne Slavin told the Times that “Sugar isn’t a poison — diet is more complicated than any one single villain.” (Hmm, that sounds familiar.)

There’s also plenty of evidence that sugar in and of itself isn’t a problem. One Annals of Internal Medicine meta-analysis found: “Fructose does not seem to cause weight gain when it is substituted for other carbohydrates in diets providing similar calories.” An Australian study found that significant sugar reductions in that country didn’t make people skinnier. In layman’s terms, a calorie is (still) a calorie, and if you eat more than you use, you gain weight.

Unfortunately, food scolds like Lustig find it much easier to spread fear of particular ingredients rather than to promote balanced diets and exercise. Of course, there’s evidence that exercise can help people manage diabetes (among other benefits), but don’t expect that to stop the activists who can plaster themselves across the papers by trashing our favorite treats.

We said from the beginning that the idea that toys make kids fat was frivolous, and not surprisingly, we have company in that view. One columnist for an Arizona paper compares kids’ meal toys to the little trinkets in Cracker Jack packages, noting, “I ate the Cracker Jack treat because I liked it, not because it had a toy in it.” (That distinction may not matter to CSPI: They have a history of attacking foods people admit to liking.)

And in today’s Wall Street Journal, George Mason University law professor Todd Zywicki presents more evidence that activists who want to ban food marketing to kids are barking up the wrong tree. He offers a finding that few “public health” groups consider: Most advertising is aimed at turning consumers of one product to a similar product, like one soft drink brand to another.

Ads are not primarily creating new soft-drink drinkers or snack eaters. Thus, it shouldn’t be surprising that restricting advertising doesn’t make people stop drinking soda or eating snacks. Just ask Sweden and Quebec, which have obesity rates comparable to similar countries despite enacting ad bans.

We can think of other reasons why advertising bans fail to make people skinny. For one thing, ad bans don’t make kids actually get off the couch (that’s the “calories out” side of the weight-gain equation). Also, bans on advertising to kids forget that parents ultimately decide what their kids eat. (What a novel idea.)

Additionally, marketing bans have a chilling effect on the First Amendment. It’s no surprise that the recent federal proposals are called “voluntary,” but Zywicki notes that federal regulators have promised identical regulations if there aren’t volunteers. And if that day comes, activists will be happy to serve as the government’s Food Thought Police.