The press release drips with dread: “Attention, college students cramming between midterms and finals: Binging on soda and sweets for as little as six weeks may make you stupid.”

So, was this a survey of students’ performance on their final exams after drinking some cola? Maybe it was a randomized controlled trial of a sugar-reduced diet on performance on a standardized test? Wrong and more wrong. No, this study — that a university press office said should lead students to reconsider cola and chocolate — was a study of rats in isolation running mazes. Strike one.

Additionally, the press office’s basic scientific literacy was awful. The press release says that the researchers “zeroed in on high-fructose corn syrup, an inexpensive liquid six times sweeter than cane sugar, that is commonly added to processed foods […].” Of course, the only part of that that’s true is that high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is a fairly inexpensive liquid ingredient.

Oddly for a study ostensibly examining its effects, the terms “high fructose corn syrup” or “HFCS” don’t appear in the full text of the article. A quick read of the experimental methodology shows that the rats were given fructose solution, not high-fructose corn syrup (which is not pure fructose, but 42 or 55 percent fructose, comparable with table sugar). The AFP notes that the authors gave no estimate of the human-equivalent amount of fructose the rats were fed. Strike two for the press office.

And then strike three: the claim that high-fructose corn syrup is “six times sweeter than cane sugar.” The high fructose corn syrup used in soda (the 55-percent-fructose kind) is formulated to be only as sweet as cane sugar (sucrose). It makes sense when you think about it, since the two sugars are almost chemically identical. You’d think they’d have learned from columnist Kathleen Parker.

The real takeaway from the actual study is that a diet high in omega-3 fatty acids is good for memory. Of course, that’s been common knowledge for some time, which is why Americans are encouraged to eat their fish. (Seafood is a good source of dietary omega-3 fats.) But restating stuff people already know isn’t going to snag headlines. Striking out sometimes does.

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.

If a bake sale is going on, it’s reported to administration and it’s taken care of […]. You can’t sell Girl Scout cookies, candy, cakes, any of that stuff.

We don’t know if MeMe Roth will be offering this bureaucrat a commission in the Junior Anti-Sweets Leagues or if Robert Lustig will commend her for services to the No-Sugar Party, but we can predict how parents and students will tend to respond to this kind of diktat: poorly.

When Los Angeles adopted school lunches praised by the vegan activists at Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, students rejected the “nasty, nasty” dishes en masse. In Austin, Texas, entrepreneurial students responded to a sweets ban by trading and selling candies they brought from home. The Austin American-Statesman called it “Willy-Wonka-meets-Casablanca.”  Businessweek tells the shocking story of a “napkin sale” in Colorado: Students peddled napkins with sweets in them, at least until Big Brother caught them.

Adults also think these bans go too far. One parent in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. responded to a ban by making cupcakes at home “for the first time in her life.” Students hardly need to wait for their parents to crack open the cookbook. As one Massachusetts man told Businessweek: “Who’s going to line up to buy apples and granola, he says, ‘when you can go right down the street and get Dunkin’ Donuts?’”

No surprise then that a survey found that “weight gain has nothing to do with the candy, soda, chips, and other junk food [students] can purchase at school.” Not that policy ineffectiveness has ever stopped a food cop.

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.

Lustig didn’t say anything he hasn’t said before. But is his view part of mainstream scientific thought? Hardly. When his original commentary came out in February, responsible researchers and commentators pooh-poohed it.

A professor of pediatrics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine noted that “there is no evidence that … [obesity and diabetes] … are caused by a particular food or nutrient.” A dietician at Sydney University in Australia was “disgusted” that the piece was published. An American Dietetic Association spokesperson noted that obesity has causes on the “calories out” side of the equation, too. Cornell University researcher Brian Wansink noted, “Restrictions on behavior often lead to unintended consequences.” Sure enough. Remember Prohibition?

Additionally, research published in the Annals of Internal Medicine completely refutes the “fructose is poison” hypothesis that undergirds Lustig’s policy agenda. Fructose isn’t the culprit; using fewer calories than you ingest is.

Even Marion Nestle, who initially dubbed Lustig’s commentary a “wake up call,” doesn’t buy the headline-grabbing theory. While arguing for more labeling disclosure in a new U.S. News and World Report piece, she concedes, “Sugars—plural to include all forms of caloric sweeteners—are not poison.” When the queen of the food cops thinks you’ve gone too far, you probably have.

There’s Kelly Brownell, an obesity expert and professor of psychology at Yale. “He thinks a penny-an-ounce soda tax will reduce consumption. I don’t,” says Lustig. […] There’s Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University, and author of Food Politics: “she isn’t necessarily for regulation”.

We’ll set aside that we haven’t seen a regulation that these two didn’t like, along with the fact they respectively said that Lustig’s Orwellian commentary “helps confirm what people tell you anecdotally [about sugar being addictive]” and amounted to “a wakeup call.”  Those are hardly objections to a Ministry of Sweets.

In fact, Brownell and Nestle stand to benefit from the Lustig commentary, whether they back it explicitly or not. Lustig’s proposal to card kids at the candy counter makes the massively unpopular Twinkie Tax look tame by comparison, making it easier to sell as a “moderate” step. It’s the same dynamic we see with PETA and the Humane Society of the United States. Once Brownell has his foot in the door with a small tax on sugar-sweetened drinks, what’s to say that a man who openly compares soda to tobacco won’t throw that whole book of regulations at everything from chocolate milk to sports drinks?

The answer, of course, is nothing. Brownell may not openly say that he’d create the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, Explosives, and Soda, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t happen in his perfect world. He’s just more patient than to claim the sky is falling.

As a nation, we’ve long had a fixation with “good” and “bad” foods. Butter was bad, eggs were bad, acai was good, fat was bad, carbs were bad. Salt has been called a “silent killer.” Now, according to public health activists, Pixy Stix are, basically, flavored cocaine.

What have they been smoking?

Writing in the British journal Nature, three researchers with UC San Francisco recently stated that sugar is “toxic” like alcohol or tobacco. Therefore, we need a strict government regime to impose sugar control – including age restrictions on soda, “sugar-free” zones around schools and candy taxation.

The researchers caution that they’re not accusing natural sugar, found in fruit, of being bad – they’re just claiming eating everything from apple cobbler to cotton candy is akin to smoking cigarettes.

Curiously, new research in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that Americans are eating 3.5 percent fewer calories today than they were in 2000 and have cut their sugar intake by six teaspoons per day. That’s a voluntary change – which blows apart the notion of sugar’s “addictiveness.”

Fundamentally, the sugar-is-booze argument reflects the further cheapening of dietary information.

The trash heap of food recommendations is littered with bogus claims that once seemed reasonable. Remember when eggs were cholesterol bombs? Now they’re a nutrient-packed health food. Remember when butter was marginalized? People as a result ate more margarine, which has harmful trans fats.

We’re always looking for that one “superfood” or one simple rule to build our diets around. There actually is one simple rule, but it’s not about a specific food or ingredient. It’s about balancing calories.

If the number of calories you consume from food and drink exceed the calories you burn off, you will gain weight. Want to lose weight? Burn off more than you take in.

Recent research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests that the obesity “epidemic” seems to have leveled off the past few years. It’s not necessarily easy to lose weight, but people can do it.

On the other hand, we have researchers who compare candy with vodka. It’s great for getting your name in the news. But it does the public no good.

Consider also the case of salt. For years, the conventional wisdom has been that we’re eating too much salt and that it contributes to the risk of heart disease. Recently, though, the hyperbole has reached a new level.

“Salt is the single most dangerous ingredient in the food supply,” warns the often-hysterical Center for Science in the Public Interest. Similarly, CDC chief Thomas Frieden warns that “if you just eat the food that’s in front of you, will end up with high blood pressure.”

Looking at recent research, though, should make us wonder if our blood pressure isn’t affected more by these doomsday prophecies than salt.

A review of 167 studies published last fall in the American Journal of Hypertension found that sodium reduction was associated with significant increases in both cholesterol and blood triglycerides (fat) – both risk factors for cardiovascular disease. And a study in the same journal released in the summer used data from 6,500 patients and found that even a 50 percent salt reduction was not associated with a significant decrease in the risk of dying or cardiovascular disease.

The American Dietetic Association rejects the idea of good and bad foods, noting that “the total diet or overall pattern of food eaten is the most important focus of a healthful eating style.” That’s what responsible professional advocates should focus on – eating in moderation.

With studies leading researchers to preposterously speculate that ice cream is “addictive” and with “public health” activists looking to regulate every morsel,  we wonder how long it will be before we see this.

Unfortunately, her warning wasn’t heeded. MSNBC.com reports today that you “maybe” can get addicted to ice cream. Researchers found that adolescents who drank more milkshakes over a week showed less evidence of pleasant brain chemicals after drinking one than those who drank fewer milkshakes over a week. (All the subjects were healthy weight, so apparently none of the kids experienced “addiction” to ice cream, candy, or anything else yummy before they got in the brain scanner.)

Of course, that didn’t stop Kelly Brownell protégé Ashley Gearhardt from proclaiming that these “changes in the brain” amount to “food addiction.” That conclusion even went too far for the researcher who conducted the study, who stated, “I personally do not say food is addictive.” After all, nobody’s mugging people for cash to get a “fix” down at the Dairy Queen or getting the shakes from taking a day off of the stuff.

Just like the absurd “toxic sugar” rhetoric of Robert Lustig, this “food addiction” claim is all about making consumers feel like they aren’t responsible for their actions (and holding somebody else responsible). As a professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York wrote in USA Today: “Part of any empowerment process means owning up to what’s really happening and accepting some responsibility for what we do.” The only people who clearly benefit from the “addiction” claim are trial lawyers who have been trying to sue food companies for as long as the idea has been around.

And if we start down the “food addiction” path, where does it end? A Wall Street Journal op-ed writer gives us a harrowing (and tongue-in-cheek) vision:

If your daughter hosts a slumber party, you’ll need to sleep with one ear open. If you hear giggling from the kitchen at 2 a.m., be ready to sit up in bed and holler, “You girls better not be baking cookies down there!”

The fact is food may cause a feeling of well-being, but comparisons to alcohol or cigarettes are ludicrous.