But despite his repentance, Bittman simply can’t resist the urge to scaremonger again. After decrying scaremongering, Bittman states that “hyperconsumption of added sugars may lead to more deaths each year than gun killings and will soon lead to more than lung cancer.”

Does he present an iota of evidence to support this radical claim? No. So, while appearing to condemn the fever-dream scaremongering of his “food movement,” Bittman engages in the same habit. It’s as if he’s the columnist version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

And the record shows that evidence doesn’t really drive Bittman much. When confronted with evidence that his caterwauling against meat for causing all sorts of environmental problems was based on false premises, Bittman said it didn’t matter. Bittman’s last screed against sugar, which got the Times snob a ticking off from a Yale dietary scold, was so hyperbolic and filled with errors that the Times was forced to run a correction that basically said the whole premise of the article was wrong.

Given the source, it’s remarkable that the IOM team acknowledged that redoubling the anti-salt crusade wouldn’t help. Instead, the team found based on new, more rigorous evidence that people should aim for the 2,300 milligrams of sodium per day currently recommended by the Dietary Guidelines for Americans for people not at risk. The team members noted that there simply isn’t any evidence that on a population level making everybody eat less than that amount of sodium actually helps anyone be healthier.

The New York Times             , a University of Pennsylvania professor, who says, “As you go below the 2,300 mark, there is an absence of data in terms of benefit and there begin to be suggestions in subgroup populations about potential harms.” So, not only are excessive reductions in salt not helpful for the population, they might hurt some people.

So much for a cocaine-like “deadly white powder.” The lesson on salt, like so many other food issues, is moderation, not prohibition, is key.

According to British author Damian Thompson, whose book was recently picked up by an American publisher, just about anything that is remotely modern is essentially heroin for our brains. And, of course, food makers are supposedly nefariously turning the public into junkies. To him, cupcakes are a particular evil and supposedly the cause of bulimia. Huh?

And food scolds seem to like to scold any food. He writes:

Anyone with a rolled banknote up their nose knows that — so long as their dealer hasn’t ripped them off — they’re about to experience the effects of a mind-altering substance. […] In contrast, the tubby young man who demolishes a packet of chocolate digestives while watching the football doesn’t suspect that his eating habits have left his brain unusually sensitive to stimulation by sugar; he just knows that, once the packet’s opened, the biscuits disappear.

Actual scientists disagree with this characterization. Cambridge University researchers found that “criteria for substance dependence translate poorly to food-related behaviours” in a recent investigation. Meanwhile, the author also claims that the iPhone game “Angry Birds” should also fall into the tobacco/alcohol realm. When the idea of “food addiction” was first proposed, a psychologist warned that “The word ‘addiction’ is perilously close to losing any meaning.” Her warning hasn’t been heeded, and while the only winner so far has been the publishing industry, the trial lawyer industry is certainly looking to get in on the fun.

Dr. Oz first used his column in last month’s Success magazine to freak people out about hormones used in meat production. Before debunking the scare, it is worth noting that the not-so-good doctor didn’t even bother to get his facts right. Dr. Oz asserts:

We know that children consuming the most animal products are more likely to enter puberty seven months sooner than the group consuming the least. Scientists mainly attribute this to hormones such as estrogen and testosterone injected into cows, pigs and chickens, meant to increase weight or milk production.

That’s all very interesting, scary-sounding, and wrong. First, it is actually illegal to use hormones in pork and poultry production. Only cattle and sheep may be treated with such hormones, and the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates veterinary drugs, sets toxicology-based limits on hormone supplementation at a level that is expected to cause no effects on people eating meat from those animals. And there’s no conclusive evidence that any food causes early puberty, Oz’s oddly specific declaration to the contrary (we note that he provided no citation or reference for the claim).

Dr. Oz also hosted Bittman on his television program so the Times columnist could plug his new book, Vegan Before 6, which says we shouldn’t eat meat, fish, dairy, or eggs before dinner. We note, for starters, that Bittman has praised effusively eggs—including ones eaten at, er, breakfast—produced in a fashion acceptable to his posh sensibilities.

Inviting the latest non-scientific fad diet shill on the program is one of The Dr. Oz Show’s stocks-in-trade: In the last 6 months, Oz has sat down with a kook who thinks wheat is literally poisonous, an animal liberationist and former PETA Foundation president who thinks that veganism will somehow eliminate Alzheimer’s Disease, and others who push the dubious hypothesis that foods are just tasty crack.

So we’d say that even though he’s a crank, Bittman fits right in on Oz’s program. And as long as Bittman’s ilk find succor from the good doctor, one can expect more and more people to join a group that already includes commentators from The New Yorker and Slate in wondering if the show promotes more pseudoscience than real medicine.

But shouldn’t activists instead promote the personal responsibility that has made progress and ask for more of it? Of course, if they did that they might have to recognize that their anti-food campaigns are abjectly failing at their supposed goal of reducing obesity in the absence of relying on personal responsibility and physical activity first and foremost. Recall the statement of former CDC obesity boss William Dietz from a few months ago in response to reports that children’s calorie consumption had declined (with our emphasis):

The only way that we can explain the decline in calories and the increase in obesity in boys, flat in girls, is that physical activity has declined. And if that’s the case, that’s a real concern, because physical activity plays a major role in the prevention of chronic diseases, including obesity.

The anti-food campaign is failing because it doesn’t sufficiently acknowledge the role of physical inactivity in causing obesity and fails to empower people to take responsibility for their own lives. By demanding even more government intervention to take choices away rather than educating people to make smarter choices about eating and exercising, the sugar scolding movement will not reduce America’s waistlines. And if their latest tactic, declaring foods the equal of real drugs like cocaine and heroin, is any indication, the scare-and-regulate activists haven’t learned any lessons.

The lesson of the pyramid is one that home kitchens and restaurant line cooks have heard for years: Handle food correctly and cook to the proper temperatures. (You don’t have to become a militant vegetarian to avoid food poisoning, and recent outbreak evidence suggests that going veg might not even help avoid foodborne illness.) The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) provides guidance on proper handling of food that can reduce the risk of food poisoning. Either way, the U.S. food system is still very safe: Since the CDC began monitoring food poisoning infections in the mid-1990s, infections caused by the six key pathogens are down over 20 percent.

What’s more interesting is what’s at the base of the pyramid (the lowest risk): Sausages, ham, and chicken nuggets. What do these humble meats have in common? Processing, which has been the bane of the foodie’s existence since foodies first appeared.

Indeed, food safety and preservation (safer food generally keeps longer) is a key reason to process, which is why every meat-eating culture since time immemorial has developed sausages  and why companies tried to make ground beef (which CSPI lists as “Highest Risk”) safer. One processor used a misting process with an ammonium hydroxide solution generally recognized as safe for food use by Food and Drug Administration regulations to effectively kill pathogens before the ground beef left the factory. It was a clever idea that freaked out the foodies, who ginned up a scare and a gross-sounding name to de facto ban it, much to the delight of Aussie and Uruguayan beef exporters. (So much for “eating local.”)

So, did CSPI defend beef processors for reducing risk against anti-science snobs? Nah. Instead, CSPI looked on the foodies’ sloganeering with envy. It—and the rest of CSPI’s record—is enough to make someone think that CSPI has an anti-food-pleasure agenda.

Case and point is this month’s issue of the journal Biological Psychiatry, which is publishing a series of articles purporting to prove “food addiction.” Headed by a letter from Kelly “Big Brother” Brownell and a colleague, the journal lists articles providing “evidence” that some foods are basically crack. According to the authors of the articles, since the human brain releases a chemical called dopamine in both drug administration and eating, eaters can be food addicts (unless they’re eating kale). So, are people hiding in the back-alleys behind restaurants jumping fry cooks on grease-disposal duty for another hit of fat, sugar, or salt? Not exactly.

The chemical dopamine is the leading brain chemical associated with any pleasurable experience. Having sex? Yep, that releases dopamine.  Listening to music? Same thing—dopamine releases in the brain. Shoot, even watching football? Indeed—more dopamine.

So, does that provide a clear and convincing case to seize every satellite T.V. dish, every copy of Madden NFL, and every replica jersey from kids under 21? Of course not. The immediate effects of real addictions are well-established and destructive; foods cause no such things (neither does watching sports). That—and inconsistency in the brain scan results—caused Cambridge University neuroscientists to restate a warning not to engage in policymaking based on unproven and conflated claims of “addiction.”

The European Food Information Council recently released a synopsis of two Cambridge University efforts to scrutinize the existing data ostensibly supporting the theory, which we have noted before. The researchers’ overwhelming conclusion is that the theory that foods are little more than socially acceptable heroin is full of holes. The more recent Cambridge article is available for free here, if you’re inclined to read the whole thing.

These articles are yet more evidence that people are beginning to question the “war on food” that has characterized the anti-obesity movement over the past decade. We noted a recent article in a policy journal that expressed skepticism that blaming food companies would reduce obesity.

Since that plan, long advocated by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), Kelly “Twinkie tax” Brownell, and Marion Nestle, isn’t panning out, activists who would regulate anything we eat or even do need a new tactic. Many of them think “food addiction” is the key. But while they hope it will “change the legal landscape” to enrich their trial lawyer pals, it hasn’t changed the scientific one.

In fact, the study doesn’t claim how many people are killed by their meat-caused gut bacteria or what the actual increased “death risk” is. Despite the noise from vegan activists, long-term studies with noted methodological problems — good luck recalling what you ate 6 months ago, as some surveys ask — show that the alleged risk of eating meat is actually far lower than a relative risk level the National Cancer Institute cautioned is “small and […] usually difficult to interpret.”

There’s a reason we make fun of “latest study” hysteria — the “latest studies” often conflict, when they aren’t outright shoddy. This one goes in the “studies conflict” file: A recent study in the American Heart Association journal Circulation found that red meat consumption was not linked with cardiovascular disease.

Rather than rushing to judge particular food items as “superfoods” and others as basically poison, sound dietary advice follows the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics’s “total diet approach” which states, “[…] the total diet or overall pattern of food eaten is the most important focus of healthy eating.” We don’t expect that to stop the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) — a.k.a. the PETA acolytes in lab coats who seem to show up anytime somebody suggests eating meat might not be good for you — from making hay of this research and claiming that veganism will cure everything from cancer to the common cold. When vegans propose that the evidence of the “latest study” will unleash a sirloin-flavored plague of the firstborns on the non-vegan 99 percent, it’s a safe bet that they’re blowing things well out of proportion.

One author, from the Boston University School of Public Health, acknowledged some of the procedural and political problems that culminated with Judge Milton Tingling’s ruling and the peevish mayor’s appeal. Bloomberg didn’t go through the City Council and his regulation was so riddled with political loopholes that Jon Stewart of The Daily Show could easily mock the boneheaded ban by saying, “It combines the draconian government overreach people love with the probable lack of results they expect.”

However, another author from Columbia University demanded that the journal’s readership shoulder arms in Bloomberg’s continued crusade. In typical activist fashion, the ridiculous analogies flow like liquid into a Big Gulp. Apparently, soft drinks are now to be considered “industrial pollution,” as if drinking a perfectly safe, refreshing beverage is going to give people a third arm.

This sort of anti-choice thinking and hyperbolic argument is typical for the Journal. Much to the chagrin of activists who predicted in its pages that fatness would lower the average lifespan, that hasn’t happened, and we continue to live longer and better than ever. The Journal also published research preposterously claiming that obesity could be passed on second-hand, as if food decisions were germs and people helpless to do anything about “catching” an obesity “contagion.”

A cartoonist (whose work we republish here) once referred to a “New England Journal of Panic-Inducing Gobbledygook.” With each passing scare from the Journal’s pages, the line between reality and satire gets ever more blurry.