With the activists looking to whip up a whirlwind against the pleasures and conveniences of modern food, in steps economist and university professor Jayson Lusk with a dollop of common sense. In his book The Food Police, Lusk challenges the mythmaking of Michael Pollan and his so-called food “movement” (that doesn’t win many converts or ballot-box contests, we would add).

Whether the foodies and their allies want to make everyone eat “organic” or “local” foods, to ban or severely restrict the use of biotechnology in food production, or enact “fat taxes” to make foods they don’t like cost more, Lusk stands athwart the effort to reduce choice. Using economic thinking, Lusk debunks claims that the food elite’s views of health, food fashion, and people’s inability to choose should be extended by law to everybody.

The problem Lusk describes isn’t that some people like to eat organic food, avoid GMOs, or not drink cola. Instead, the “food movement” wants to use the law to make people who have different preferences and make different choices follow those same preferences. To a regular reader here who has followed the developments in food cop politics over the past decade it might be a re-hash, but to newcomers who want the story of how a few cranks took over how a country thinks about food, The Food Police provides an excellent primer.

This returns us to a legislative question from a Washington biotech labeling hearing that we highlighted yesterday: “I mean, why should I care?” No credible scientific evidence has shown harm from consuming foods produced using genetic engineering processes, so it isn’t health. A study from last year that purported to show horrific effects from consuming biotech corn was trashed by national science academies, the European Food Safety Authority, and 700 scientists who demanded to see all the data.

Instead, we have unscientific snobbishness that activists would see codified as law. Every major newspaper in California endorsed a “No” on Prop 37, but that didn’t stop Berkeley foodie prophet Michael Pollan from praising it as a vehicle to bring a “food movement” into being. (Whoops.) New York Times columnist and certified food Luddite Mark Bittman waged holy war against pro-biotechnology commentators even as biotechnology researchers strive to improve nutrition throughout the world.

The costs of biotech labeling, if ever adopted, will be pulled from the pockets of consumers in grocery checkout aisles. That might not matter in Pollan’s and Bittman’s respective haunts, but in less fortunate places it does. Additionally, taxpayers might have to foot the bill to defend a law that might violate the First Amendment (quite often not an anti-food activist’s friend, it seems). All sorts of costs and no benefits: Another ingredient in activists’ “secret recipe.”

• The 90 percent doctor-free animal liberation group Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) is trying to capitalize on the minor stir it created with a study that claimed that supermarket chicken was contaminated with poo. Despite widespread criticism from responsible food safety experts from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the University of Georgia, PCRM wants the Agriculture Department to place warning labels showing a chicken going number two on every package of chicken sold. We don’t expect these PETA-types in labcoats to demand similar warnings on leafy green vegetables, which the Centers for Disease Control find are the leading cause of foodborne illness. (That’s no excuse to pass on the salad—just wash it first.)
• Washington State is considering a measure (Initiative 522, or I-522) that would require that many foods produced with biotechnology be labeled despite reputable scientific authorities finding such labels unnecessary. And like its defeated California cousin, Proposition 37, it contains a trial lawyer “bounty hunter” provision that could open a lawsuit floodgate. A Seattle Times columnist reports that at a legislator got to the heart of the pointlessness of such mandates by asking an activist: “I mean, why should I care?” The columnist concluded that the measure looks “like an organic-food industry effort to impose a label on its competitors.”
• The latest example of anti-food activist goalpost moving comes from the Center for Science in the Public Interest, whose chief lobby-scold Margo Wootan responded to a candy maker’s changing policies on marketing to youths by demanding more stringent regulation of in-store placement. (We told you they wanted alcohol-style controls like this; we were right.) A commentator responded by following the confectionery to the end of the activist rainbow: “Lawyers will smell a PayDay, tell some Whoppers and seek redress of far more than 100 Grand. Cash-strapped states will see the confection business as a Life Saver, impose Powerhouse “sin” taxes, and do a Butterfingers job of handling the funds.” Well said.
• CCF in the News: The downfall of New York City’s soda ban (at least for now) has dominated the headlines, and we’ve rejoiced to the Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times while warning Fox Business viewers that the fight for food freedom doesn’t end with Judge Tingling’s ruling. We’ve also criticized proposed soda taxes in Vermont, Hawaii and Texas and debunked Nevada’s proposed boneheaded 5-cent surtax on certain fast food meals.

Abolishing the Food Industry Entirely: In an article for The Atlantic, one activist with an anti-corporate ax to grind claims that “The food industry is an oligopoly that has transformed not only what we eat but how we eat it, and what we think of food.” His solution is to get rid of industrial food production, saying that would make us “dream ourselves freer still.” Sorry, but most of us don’t want to be subsistence farmers. The comforts of modern civilization demand modern farming practices. Give up one, and you necessarily lose the other. That’s no dream.

Banning the All-You-Can-Eat Buffet: In the journal Preventing Chronic Disease, an in-house publication of former top NYC regulatory scold Thomas Frieden’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, two researchers explored alcohol regulation as a possible model for total food control. The summary table supplied at the end of the article lists a series of possible bans and controls, and the death of the Smorgasbord is mooted. Now, it might not be wise to eat at an all-you-can-chow bar every day, but a few feasts a year never hurt anybody.

Banning the Sale of Soda to Teens Under 17: An article published in February that became an instant classic in the genre of totalitarian fantasizing in the name of “public health” raised a such a stir that NBC Nightly News invited CCF’s Senior Research Analyst on to shoot down the crazy ideas. Perhaps the worst was proposing that “We I.D.” policies be extended to soft drinks. Whatever happened to parental responsibility? Should we throw kids in jail for having a soda? Other researchers proposed extending this horrible idea to any food that is controlled in school. In an ideal world of “public health,” it might mean goodbye, birthday cake.

Limiting the Size of Hamburgers to ¼ Pound: When Mayor Bloomberg announced big-ish soda prohibition in New York City, many wondered what Bloomberg would regulate next. Many of us worried that soda was merely the thin end of the diet-regulating wedge. But one political commentator for The Daily Beast expressed hope that it would lead to more intrusion, saying, “Eight- and ten-ounce burgers are sick things.” He proposed expanding the ban to theoretically any food, and members of Bloomberg’s Board of Health employed similar reasoning in debating the measure. Start hoarding your favorite treats now, New Yorkers.

Cap-and-Trade for Sugar: In a US News and World Report article, a writer speculated that a cap-and-trade system for added sweeteners — sugars — would improve public health. (Cap-and-trade is a policy that sets a national limit on some negative thing — usually an environmental pollutant — and requires that people buy allowances to use it.) Such a system would drive up food prices and be a massive government overreach. And that assumes that such a system would work—after all, fruits are mostly sugars. Mexican and Canadian shopkeepers might be the only people pleased that this plan exists: Dodging would be rampant. (Remember Prohibition?)

We won’t feign surprise that Bittman was sloppy in his personal attacks, as Miller explains. More interesting to us were Bittman’s errors on science. According to Miller, GM crops can have fewer mycotoxins—harmful fungal secretions— than conventional crops, improving human and livestock health; reduce prices of staple crops, improving food security; and reduce the amount of carbon emissions required to cultivate a given amount of food. Perhaps these reasons and others might have motivated every major daily newspaper in California to balk at Prop 37. Or, you know, you could just choose to believe Bittman’s presumed vast conspiracy of shadowy moneymen.

Of course, this isn’t the first time Bittman has let himself get ahead of the facts in pursuit of a fever dream. Recall that earlier this year the columnist with a fancy for cheese took on the medical establishment’s conspiracy of Big Doctor, Big Pharma, Big Hay, and Big Cow with a scathing expose on how evil dairy products are. Never mind that Bittman’s “evidence” was anecdotal stories from the last refuge of bankrupted Nigerian royalty and incoherent yelling — that is, e-mailers and Internet commenters. His fight against food must advance on all fronts.

Facts have also been Bittman’s foe when he said that the Northeast could become its own breadbasket once again. Consider just one problem, the number of mouths to feed: New York State’s population has doubled, Connecticut’s has trebled, and New Jersey’s has increased four-fold since 1900. He’s wrong about the practicality of subsidizing or taxing individual items in the typical grocery store, which on average number nearly 40,000. He’s also wrong about the desirability of taxing soft drinks, which won’t fight obesity effectively. He’s wrong about the humaneness of raising pregnant pigs in individual maternity pens, which the American Veterinary Medical Association finds provide for animal welfare.

Indeed, it seems like we might be able to make a “food rule” — to borrow from Bittman’s fellow foodie Michael Pollan — out of all this. Put simply: If Bittman takes a position on a food issue, take the other. You’ll probably be on the right side.

Voters in El Monte and Richmond, California were asked to approve a Kelly Brownell-style one-cent per ounce tax on sugary sodas. Not only did they defeat the taxes, they defeated them overwhelmingly. In El Monte, where one newspaper editor was confident enough to consider what sodas should be served at the opponents’ victory party a week in advance of the vote, the tax fell by a margin of about three to one.

Activists held out greater hope in Richmond, but food freedom prevailed there as well. A fawning interview of an activist city councilman by Bittman was not enough to convince voters to support the tax. It went down by a margin of two to one.

Michael Pollan hoped that passing Proposition 37 would “change the politics of food not just in California but nationally too.” Now that the votes are tallied, we hope he’s right. California may have a history of adopting poorly designed ballot measures that lead to unintended consequences, but unnecessary biotech food labeling won’t be part of it. Based on last night’s returns, Prop 37 failed. Perhaps the politics of food will now be guided by forward-looking science rather than sentimentalism or a Luddite view.

So common sense prevailed against foodie activism. Let’s hope that other jurisdictions give power to the people and not unelected bureaucrats. As for Pollan and Bittman, they can drown their sorrows in some over-priced organic chardonnay.

· The California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act (Proposition 37): This measure would mandate the labeling of many foods produced using biotechnology (animal feed would be exempt as would restaurant food, among others). We have been skeptical of labeling biotech food products for a long time, and nothing Prop 37 supporters have said has convinced us to change our position. The American Association for the Advancement of Science finds that the scientific evidence proves biotech crops are safe and sees no reason to alter current labeling practices. The American Medical Association also holds that labeling biotech food is unnecessary.

If the measure passes, organic activists, like osteopath and FDA-warned natural foods hawker Joseph Mercola, expect to gain. So do trial lawyers, as the proposed law contains a “bounty hunter” provision similar to that of Prop 65, the California ballot measure that required cancer warnings on everything from fishing rods to parking garages.

California newspapers have been widely skeptical of the measure: The Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Sacramento Bee are just a few of the many editorial boards that have opposed Prop 37. The latest poll from Pepperdine University shows the measure in trouble, with 51 percent opposed.

· City of Richmond Tax on Soda (Measure N): This measure would enact Kelly Brownell’s one-cent per ounce tax on sugary soft drinks purchased for sale within the city of Richmond, California. The measure is administratively odd, as it would not apply at the point of sale but rather as a surcharge to the business license fee of businesses selling soft drinks. This has led some to speculate that the costs of paying the tax will be borne by consumers of all grocery items, not just soda. Also, the tax will be easy to avoid as it will only apply within Richmond city limits.

Activists hope that the initiative will reduce obesity, but as we have noted before, evidence suggests that meaningful reductions are unlikely (predictions that the tax will result in a cut of less than 1 percent of daily intake count as optimistic). The San Francisco Chronicle has taken a dim view of the soda tax, twice editorializing that voters should reject it.

· City of El Monte Soda Tax (Measure H): This measure, modeled on the Richmond proposal, would institute the one-cent-per-ounce tax on soft drinks in the city of El Monte, California. The problems with the measure are the same as those with Measure N, and that has led the Los Angeles Times to endorse a no vote. One newspaper editor is so confident that the measure will fail that he has already proposed drinking exotic sodas to celebrate.

• The San Gabriel Valley Tribune editors joined their colleagues at the Contra Costa Times, the San Diego Union-Tribune, and the Las Vegas Review-Journal in balking at local soda taxes in California. The San Francisco Chronicle editorial board also hasn’t been convinced by the tax campaign: They restated their opposition this week. When studies predict that people will only reduce their calorie intake by less than one percent of a usual day’s total, opposition shouldn’t be surprising.
• A Los Angeles Times columnist characterized a widely rejected study on biotech food as “weapons-grade junk science” in a column on California’s trial lawyer-enabling food labeling proposition. The columnist notes that the researcher who conducted the study, Gilles-Eric Seralini, might have had a motivation to engage in practices the European Food Safety Authority characterized as “insufficient scientific quality”: “the release of [Seralini’s] anti-genetic modification book and film, ‘Tous Cobayes’ (loosely translated: ‘We Are All Guinea Pigs’), coincided with the publication of the paper.”
• CCF International: Our efforts to fight the bogus notion of “food addiction” got our Senior Research Analyst on the BBC’s Newsnight, and a typical “press sluts” campaign against Pokémon by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (that they aren’t killing) led CCF to declare on Canada’s Sun News: “If PETA were a television show, it’d have been canceled at this point.” (We can’t cancel PETA, but you can sign our petition to strip the group of its animal shelter status.)
• CCF in the News: In Tacoma, Washington we’re objecting to claims that soda is a unique cause of obesity and local media are covering our objections to a Washington, D.C. suburb’s proposed regulation to “reduce detrimental food and beverage consumption” with the zoning code. Meanwhile, our HumaneWatch project serves as a resource for authors, state legislators, and agriculture media who want to get out the truth about the Humane Society of the United States (a vegan group not affiliated with your local pet shelter).
• CCF This Week: We expressed skepticism that there’s any “food movement” like Michael Pollan thinks exists, warned that schools banning “Flamin’ Hot Cheetos” might set a precedent for regulating supposedly “addictive” foods (namely, foods people like), and called out PCRM advisory board member and soda prohibitionist extraordinaire Andrew Weil for his dubious views on “integrative medicine,” which many doctors call bunk.