Now we know MeMe’s not alone, and we don’t even need to “help.” In yesterday’s Los Angeles Times, one columnist laid out his contempt of consumer choice:

I know, I know: People should be able to eat whatever they want, and government officials have no business passing nanny-state rules that meddle in basic notions of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, blah, blah, blah.

If only it were that simple. The harsh reality is that millions of Americans can’t be trusted […].

Since we “can’t be trusted,” what does the columnist propose be done to our choices? Joining Robert “We I.D. For Soda” Lustig, he says, “I think it’s time that food and drink received the same level of regulatory oversight as tobacco and alcohol.” Prepare to be carded for that morning doughnut.

Apparently the columnist didn’t get the memo: To the “sophisticated” food cop like Kelly “Twinkie Tax” Brownell, Americans are victimized “food addicts,” not children. (Although Brownell hasn’t called himself an “addict” despite being less than svelte.)

Nevertheless, those four words—“Americans can’t be trusted”—signify a lot. In politics, pundits call that sort of saying a “Kinsley gaffe,” a secretly held truth that isn’t supposed to be expressed. We’ve long suspected that the food police mentality stemmed from a lack of respect for Americans’ ability to make their own choices. Now we know that lack of respect is right at the heart of the food-police mentality.

There’s also a superficially clever bit of activist strategy going on here: By convincing Americans that they are “McVictims,” to borrow one physician’s phrase, the activists turn Americans’ concentration from improving their own health to punishing bogeymen. Of course, the game only works if people trust that activists are motivated by something other than contempt for those who would make their own choices. On top of claims that beliefs in personal responsibility are “prejudicial attitudes,” this columnist’s assertion that we “can’t be trusted” throws that contempt into stark relief.

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.

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.

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.”

While the new poll might hearten Kelly “Twinkie Tax” Brownell and Robert “Sugar Is Poison” Lustig, it doesn’t reflect what Americans actually think about punitive food taxes. A recent national poll conducted by Harris Interactive found 62 percent of respondents opposed the soda tax as a way to improve health.

We’re not surprised that soda taxes aren’t very popular. When research into the effects of the tax shows repeatedly that people will reduce their calorie intake by less than one percent of a daily intake, citizens are right to suspect that soda taxes are really a state cash-grab.

Presumably to alleviate any cash grab or “nanny state” concerns, the California pollsters told respondents that soda tax money would fund anti-obesity programs. This is bogus. Governments made similar promises about tobacco settlement money and lottery revenues. Sure enough, the U.S. General Accounting Office reported that only two percent of the tobacco settlement money went to fund smoking cessation. (The majority patched state budget shortfalls.) And the “education lotteries” in many states don’t necessarily increase education expenditures.

So California poll respondents were offered a guilt-trip followed by a bait-and-switch. It’s no surprise that many said they supported the soda tax. The fact that it took two slick marketing tactics to get that result should speak volumes about a soda tax’s real (lack of) support.

Noted food-industry scold Marion Nestle recently reviewed the report and liked what she saw. That’s not surprising: The report called for fat taxes, food-ingredient regulations and advertising crackdowns. (Heard of the First Amendment, Marion?) Of course, all those policies come with complications that neither Nestle nor the UN bureaucrats considered.

Take the call for taxes on soda and so-called “HFSS” foods (foods high in saturated fat, trans fat, sodium, and sugar) to subsidize fruits and vegetables. Of course, if a saturated fat tax is anything like Denmark’s, omega-3 rich salmon and even cashews might get hit with penalties. Soda taxes too have drawbacks: They punish poorer consumers to yield insignificant weight loss—estimated by researchers to be about one pound over the course of a year.

Ingredient restrictions are another perennial favorite of the food police. Sure enough, the bureaucrats repeat the call to ban the use of trans fat and replace it with other oils. Of course, this can lead to unintended consequences—as the Girl Scouts found out when they replaced partially hydrogenated oil with palm oil and incurred the disapproval of the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), which had previously demanded the switch away from partially hydrogenated oils.

The Rapporteur also calls for draconian restrictions on food advertising. Even disregarding the effects those regulations might have on free speech, there’s no conclusive evidence advertising bans do anything to make people skinnier. In countries where bans on advertising have been tried (like Sweden) the obesity rates after many years were comparable to countries that had no bans. Remember, it’s not like Howdy Doody and Roy Rodgers flacking for sugary confections made 1950s kids fat.

The big problem is how the Rapporteur defines “right to food.” It’s not just having enough calories to eat, it’s having an “adequate diet providing all the nutritional elements an individual requires to live a healthy and active life, and the means to access them. States have a duty to protect the right to an adequate diet…. companies also have a responsibility to respect the right to adequate food.” In practice, this “right to food” is really a “right” to pay higher taxes, to allow government to dictate the ingredients of foods, and to silence companies based on dubious anti-corporate claims—so that citizens make the dietary choices that governments (or the UN) want them to make. Americans, however, have a history of resisting foreign attempts to regulate their food and beverage choices. We certainly hope that a little “revolutionary spirit” will help defend consumer choice against the global food cops.

We hope that the mayor’s newfound fiscal restraint is sincere. His go-to proposal, a 24-cent tax on every can of soda, has been rejected twice by the City Council, and the Pew poll showed that Philadelphians are not clamoring to see their drinks taxed.

They shouldn’t be eager to hand over their hard-earned money to the city every time they want a sip: The tax’s purported “upside”—supposedly making residents healthier—wouldn’t have worked out anyway. Studies consistently show that despite the hype, soda taxes don’t affect obesity rates. One study found that a high soda tax would reduce consumption by an insignificant 12 calories per day. Other studies have found similarly weak effects: People buy fewer taxed drinks and buy more untaxed beverages that have the same amount of calories instead. When it comes to weight loss, a calorie is a calorie, whatever food or drink it comes from.

It’s good to see that at least one soda tax devotee has apparently given up his quest for this ineffective dietary regulation. If only others would follow suit.

CCF Senior Research Analyst J. Justin Wilson sat down with NBC Nightly News to inject some common sense into the sugar debate. He told NBC, “We need more personal responsibility and giving people the honest truth … calling sugar toxic does not actually get us to a healthier society.”

Unfortunately, calling sugar toxic makes for spectacular headlines and gets the researchers making this radical claim a wide audience. It’s also irresponsible, as it promotes hyperbolic conclusions rather than sound science.

With “public health” the justification for “Twinkie Taxes,” a “war on salt,” and even hauling fat kids into foster care, it’s time somebody told the activists to knock it off. Watch the whole segment at the link.

However, The Oregonian - the largest paper in the state - is skeptical that the tax could slim down residents, and an NPR food blogger also questions the real-world effects of such a tax. The skeptics certainly seem to have it right: A recent study found that a nationwide penny-per-ounce tax on sugar-sweetened beverages would only reduce consumption by just nine calories per day, and according to the National Cancer Institute only six percent of the average person’s daily calories come from sugar-sweetened beverages.

The lack of concrete evidence in favor of the tax - and the recent failure of similar legislation to pass in California, Illinois, Philadelphia, and Rhode Island, to name a few - should be a clear signal for the food police and lawmakers to reassess the tax’s merits instead of listening to outdated advice.

• Twinkie Tax inventor Kelly Brownell advocates “slapping high-fat, low-nutrition food with a substantial government ‘sin’ tax.” According to him, certain foods are too “convenient, accessible, good-tasting … and cheap.” Brownell has also called for taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages at the local, state, and federal levels.
• California State Senator Deborah Ortiz introduced the “California Soda Tax Act” in 2002, a measure that threatened to impose a nine-cent tax on every two-liter bottle of soda sold in the state. Senator Alex Padilla, chair of the state’s Select Committee on Obesity and Diabetes, held a hearing in 2009 to explore the link between sugar-sweetened beverage consumption and obesity and argued, “We cannot ignore however that while sugar-sweetened drink consumption has increased…so has the rate of obesity in California and throughout the nation.”
• Legislators in Washington State, Washington D.C., and Colorado approved legislation in 2010 that would slap extra taxes on all “carbonated beverages” and candy. Governor Deval Patrick of Massachussetts and Governor David Paterson of New York also advocated similar policies, but were met with resistance.
• Under the guise of trimming waistlines, New York State Senator Felix Ortiz proposed legislation to tax not only “fatty foods” but “movie tickets, video games and DVD rentals.”

What does the research say? Scientific evidence suggests that a tax on certain ingredients would miss the central contributor to obesity, namely physical inactivity.

• Steven Blair of the Cooper Institute for Aerobics Research wrote in 2005: “The obesity epidemic is driven, in my view, more by decreases in average daily energy expenditure than by increases in average daily energy intake. Unfortunately we do not have data on average daily energy expenditure or on changes in this variable, and the data we have on average daily energy intake are questionable. Therefore the fundamental cause of the increases in obesity prevalence observed over the past several years cannot be determined.”
• A fat tax attempts to change the so-called “toxic food environment.” But it doesn’t exist. In 2005 The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) found that overall consumption of “good” foods, such as fresh fruits, is increasing.
• Taxing so-called junk food while subsidizing “healthy” food makes little sense when the latter is already affordable. According to the USDA: “Among the 69 forms of fruits and 85 forms of vegetables included in the analysis, more than half were estimated to cost 25 cents or less per serving in 1999, and 86 percent of all vegetables and 78 percent of all fruit cost less than 50 cents a serving.”
• A 2008 analysis concluded: “A ‘fat tax’… is a relatively inefficient tool for fighting obesity and will cause a lot of allocative losses for consumers.”
• In February 2006, a study found that low-fat diets had the same correlation with death rates with those who paid no mind to reducing fat consumption. Epidemiologist Barbara V. Howard told The New York Times: “We are not going to reverse any of the chronic diseases in this country by changing the composition of the diet.”

What’s the bottom line for me? Fat taxes and other taxes on so-called “junk foods” are blunt, unpopular, and ultimately feckless instruments. They would unfairly raise prices and, unlike physical activity, do nothing to fight obesity.

• Fat taxes hold no cure for obesity. They are just another example of a broad agenda to restrict what Americans eat and drink.
• All restrictions have unintended consequences. By limiting competition, banning certain restaurants and raising the prices of certain foods will adversely hurt the poorest consumers without properly addressing the other causes of obesity.
• Fat taxes miss the real obesity culprit: physical inactivity, which has seen a dramatic decline in the last few decades. Even an infamous food cop has lamented that “we’ve engineered the last physical activity out of our life.” Inactivity, even with fat taxes implemented, is still inactivity.
• A 2010 CBS News poll found that 62 percent of Americans oppose a junk food tax, and 72 percent believe that a tax on junk food would not help people lose weight.