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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

Just last Thursday we wrote in the Las Vegas Review-Journal to debunk claims that sugar is the new cocaine. Instead of following food fads and sugar scares, we recommended following the only proven method of losing weight – expending more calories than one takes in.

As he told Las Vegans:

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 number of calories you burn off, you will gain weight. Want to lose weight? Burn off more than you take in.

Of course, balancing calories isn’t as easy as dieters might like, so there will always be a market for the next “superfood” fad or “bad food” list. Unfortunately, scares over foods detract from the truth that “calories in” have to equal “calories out” to avoid weight gain.

We also debunked scaremongering about the other white stuff that the Center for Science in the Public Interest calls the “deadly white powder you already snort”: salt. While activist groups like CSPI call for what one researcher deemed “an experiment on a whole population” in salt reduction, research is too often finding that salt reduction isn’t the miracle cure it’s purported to be. We wrote:

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. 

Once again, the food police have allowed their agendas to get ahead of the scientific evidence. It’s not the first time, and unfortunately won’t likely be the last.

CSPI put out a reckless press release yesterday claiming that 15,000 cancers will be caused by a chemical in caramel coloring called 4-methylimidazole (4-MEI). Actual experts, however, have different views. A Food and Drug Administration spokesman told Bloomberg News that the agency has no reason to believe that caramel colors pose any danger to consumers. Likewise, European and Canadian regulators — who are no strangers to regulations — have found no reason to be concerned by the levels of 4-MEI in the coloring.

The FDA spokesman estimated that a person would have to drink over 1,000 cans of soda per day for life to achieve the dose linked to cancer in one rodent study.  (A Vanderbilt University biochemistry professor made the same estimate when CSPI first trumpeted the scare.) The dose makes the poison, even if the harmful dose spoils a good food scare.

Of course, overblown hype should be expected from CSPI. This group called fettuccine alfredo a “heart attack on a plate” and even said “the charges against trans fat just don’t stand up” before later changing its tune. Likewise, CSPI promoted a cancer scare about the sugar substitute saccharin and kept it up even after the sweetener was struck from the National Toxicology Program’s list of possible carcinogens.

What does CSPI stand to gain? Well, CSPI has a history of backing lawsuits against food companies (and failing to win them). With California activists preparing to sue soda manufacturers over 4-MEI under California’s Proposition 65 and trial lawyers in position to reap the whirlwind, perhaps CSPI is looking for some “expert” witness retainers.

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.

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.