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.

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.

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.

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.

But the animal liberationists at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) shouldn’t put down the puppy-killing needles to celebrate the “vegan nation” yet. Economic stresses, namely the ongoing long stagnation and the drought that killed much of the nation’s feed-stock, are responsible for much of the decline in meat consumption. If those pressures lift, expect Americans to resume normal, meaty dinner service.

It’s clear that even if we’re eating a little less meat, Americans aren’t falling in line with Humane Society of the United States Food Policy Director and ex-PETA flack Matt Prescott’s repulsive view farmers are running concentration camps. Meat is more expensive and consumers have less money, so they’re scrimping and saving. At the same time, cheese consumption is nearing record highs. Certainly, if people want to be vegetarian it’s their free choice, but it doesn’t look like the PETA/HSUS lifestyle is calling the masses to the vegan sliver of society.

• Our objections to the Center for Science in the Public Interest’s (CSPI) report attacking restaurants for their kids’ meal offerings received wide coverage. The Los Angeles Times and CNN.com both reported our criticism of CSPI’s “blame game,” as did numerous local NBC affiliates.
• The Daily Mail reports that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ (PETA) campaign to propagandize children may have recently crossed another line, as if trying to cram its animal liberation ideology into school curriculums, to “traumatize” children with graphic displays, and featuring convicted arsonists in its former kids’ magazine weren’t enough. When a 14 year-old Louisiana boy offered a cow in a raffle to go on a school trip to Ireland and the United Kingdom, PETA responded by sending the kid images of the group’s “lettuce ladies” that the boy’s father characterized as “wildly inappropriate.” Supporters of PETA’s animal liberation agenda went further and reportedly bullied the kid online, including sending hopes that the raffle winner would choke to death. You can read our report on PETA’s child-propaganda campaign from a few years back for more information on how PETA tries to manipulate impressionable kids.
• Are people beginning to realize that the “public health” community—which we have criticized for its habit of expanding its control from public concerns beyond citizens’ individual responsibility to private habits that are individuals’ choices—has the wrong model for dealing with obesity? A recent article in Breakthrough that received favorable coverage at The Week and The Daily Beast suggests that the commentariat is beginning to ask serious questions of the CSPI/Kelly Brownell/Michael Bloomberg blame-food-first axis. The author proposes that by drawing the wrong lessons from past crusades and blaming food corporations alone for obesity, the anti-obesity movement doomed itself for failure. Read the whole thing.
• CCF in the News: After a Daily Mail report on PETA’s animal-killing hypocrisy, we appeared on the Mark Levin radio show to warn the conservative dog-lover’s listeners that the animal liberation group kills nearly 90 percent of the dogs and cats in its care. The truth about PETA was also reported on PETA’s hometown NBC affiliate and at Yahoo! News.

The article even claims that the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and the American Association of Pediatrics endorse veganism for kids. They don’t — they actually say a vegan diet can work if properly planned — and they refrain from endorsing it for very good reason. Without Vitamin B12, found almost exclusively in foods of animal origin, kids can suffer severe nutrient deficiencies. In some cases, nutrient deficiencies in vegan-raised kids were reportedly fatal.

The article’s errors go on. The reporter attempts to cite polling by the Vegetarian Resource Group (VRG) — an advocacy organization for vegetarian eating — as evidence that more kids are turning vegan. However, the article doesn’t get the numbers right. While the paper states that 3 percent of kids in a 2010 survey were vegan, VRG’s website states the actual number was 2 percent. Additionally, the paper claimed that in a 2012 survey, VRG found that 5 percent of U.S. adults were vegan. Not true: VRG’s website says the true value was 1 percent.

And, in a lesson from 4^th grade geometry, you have no evidence of a trend in kids without two data points. So the claim of “growing popularity” is simply asserted without evidence — the lame attempt at justifying it is quoting a VRG spokesman who says he “suspects” there’s a higher number of vegan kids.

Putting aside the errors, let’s remember that we’re still talking about 1 or 2 percent of the population being vegan. Whoop-tee-doo.  We see stories all the time about celebs who “went veg” giving it up and going back into the meaty fold. (In recent weeks, Ozzy Osbourne and R&B singer Ne-Yo have rejoined the 99 percent after a vegan experiment.) Maybe the real question should be, after all the years of propaganda from PETA, the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), and other vegan animal liberation activists, has the public concluded that it just doesn’t agree?

The 1,647 cats and dogs PETA employees killed last year bring the animal rights group’s total body count to 29,398 since 1998. PETA has committed this slaughter despite the fact that the group’s president, Ingrid Newkirk, has claimed that “We could become a no-kill shelter immediately.” The self-described “press sluts” are more interested in lettuce-clad “lobster liberation” and offending Holocaust survivors than finding adoptive homes for the pets in its care. PETA even bought a walk-in freezer to store the bodies. That’s probably not the “forever home” most people would hope for.

What makes it scarier for pet owners is that this highest of hypocrisies isn’t completely out of character for PETA. Newkirk has said that in her ideal world, “companion animals [what the rest of us call “pets”] would be phased out.” A PETA staffer wrote in a Florida newspaper that the community should become “no-birth,” putting puppies and kittens on the path of the dodo bird. And — perhaps desperate not to be shamed by the performance of city dog catchers — PETA stood in the way of an ordinance to reduce pet killing in its hometown.

If you are outraged by PETA’s shameful, lethal behavior, please go to PETAKillsAnimals.com and sign our petition asking the Commonwealth of Virginia to strip the group of its status as an animal shelter.

Surprised? HSUS is a vegan activist organization that doesn’t run a single pet shelter, not your local humane society. It does, however, employ PETA alumni, including the brains behind the disgusting “Holocaust on Your Plate” campaign and a lettuce lady face of “Lobster Liberation.” That’s why we started Humane Watch — a project to get out the facts about HSUS’s radical anti-animal agriculture agenda, awful charity ratings from respected watchdogs, and deceptive advertising.

And many of those finger-snacking football fans might be falling for HSUS’s deception. Recent public polling shows that over 70 percent of Americans mistakenly believe that HSUS is a pet shelter umbrella group — in reality, HSUS gives less than one percent of its budget to local pet shelters. So to help them make informed donation decisions, we will air an ad during the football celebrations warning viewers of HSUS’s deception.

If you happen to see it on Sunday night, feel free to go to our Facebook page and share the clip to tell your friends the facts about HSUS’s deceptive fundraising, vegan agenda, and oft-criticized management practices.

• British newspaper The Guardian brings us a gem of unintended consequences from the so-called “sustainable” food movement (that wins a striking lack of converts). Vegans and vegetarians looking for meat substitutes have turned to a South American grain, quinoa, and that decision has made life difficult in Bolivia, where quinoa is a staple. The increased interest in quinoa from “ethically conscious” Western one-percenters has apparently caused ruinous food inflation. Some ethical consciousness. Next thing you know, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) will be killing animals. Oh, wait.
• The New York Times’s resident herald of the limp “food movement” (and sometimes very amateur epidemiologist) Mark Bittman is not happy with Coca-Cola’s advertising addressing obesity. You see, Bittman knows that Coke “makes its money selling sugar-sweetened beverages” and is “still selling them.” Of course, Bittman’s most famous book, How to Cook Everything — no stranger to high-calorie meals, including a hamburger more loaded than a Big Mac — is still for sale. So, Mr. Bittman, before criticizing soft drink companies, shouldn’t you renounce cheese and all its works (since your epidemiology-by-Internet-commenter says that it’s evil) by taking that book off the market and offering full refunds to anybody who bought it?
• Our Senior Research Analyst is telling Alabamans and Coloradans that they should make a New Year’s Resolution to use personal responsibility, rather than government regulation, if they want to lose weight. He writes, “Food activists seem to think that a little tax here, a warning label there, and a few banned appetizers will make us resemble swimsuit models by summer. But the research demonstrates that diet ‘nudges’ can have the exact opposite effect.”
• CCF in the News: Our Executive Director is calling out the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) for getting itself embroiled in an alleged racket with donors’ doggie dollars in the New York Post and Washington Examiner. Our Senior Research Analyst is criticizing the self-commissioned food police Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) for attacking “life’s simpler pleasures” for Baltimore and Los Angeles readers and PETA in its hometown for killing over 90 percent of the pets in its care. He also sat down with Reason TV to discuss a Washington, D.C. suburb’s misguided proposal to use the zoning code to reduce food choices.
• CCF This Week: In our daily posts this week, we’ve taken PETA to task for posing as a shelter pet advocate while killing pets left and right, objected to CSPI attacking restaurant dishes while ignoring that restaurants offer healthy options, used Coca-Cola’s new ad campaign as a teachable moment for activist goalpost-moving, and looked into the election returns to find that food freedom is a bipartisan desire.