U.S. Department of Agriculture economists reported last week that by assessing the price of a food by weight or per-serving rather than per-calorie, healthier items are cheaper than the more calorie-dense. Put more plainly, they found that people can get more satiety (fullness) for less money with fruits and veggies.

This should also put the lie to another food activist talking point. During the rollout of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) report earlier this month on how to employ aggressive public policy measures against obesity—we said its title should have been the “Social Engineer’s Manifesto”—we caught the broader “public health” activist community engaging in rhetorical sleights of hand.

Personal responsibility is the only possible solution to a problem caused by personal irresponsibility. But in addition to attacking its defenders as bigots, our would-be masters in Atlanta, Washington, and New Haven have an additional insidious line of attack against our right to choose cheeseburgers, soda, and potato chips. Apparently, we’re just too weak to make the “correct” decisions in what activists call the “toxic food environment.”

Our betters then claim that all the nanny state has to do to nudge us in the proper direction is to change the “default” option to the one they prefer. They offer to do this with the classic formula of sin taxes, “virtue” subsidies, and mandates. That way, we allegedly retain consumer choice. But our eventual choice is—to borrow from the Newspeak of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four— doubleplusgood, “for the children.”

Of course, as anybody who enters a grocery store knows—even if that person lives in a “food desert,” which each passing study reveals to be little more than a mirage—healthy choices already exist and are prominently visible. And now, we have more evidence that they are affordable and filling. (Don’t tell Mark Bittman.)

So, will the activists accept our decisions and lay off our choices? If their other choice-destroying theory, namely that food is just tasty heroin, is any indication, the answer is not a chance.

Of course, the claim that love handles are shortening our children’s life expectancies was debunked long ago. As our Senior Research Analyst told the Syracuse Post-Standard:

Even [the article’s] co-authors have downplayed it, with one calling it a mere ”plausible scenario.” Science magazine reported that another admitted that the ”life expectancy forecasts might be inaccurate.”

There’s also evidence that getting moving is more important to living longer, healthier life than just losing weight. One commentary found, “Obese men who were moderately/highly fit had less than half the risk of dying than the normal-weight men who were unfit.” Another study in the European Journal of Epidemiology found that leisure-time physical activity is associated with a lower risk of early death in middle-aged men, independent of body-mass index.

The claim that life expectancies will fall in the future despite probable advances in food technology, more effective medical treatments, and improved adoption of healthy habits should be cast aside for the bunk that it is. Brownell has written that “society does not have the luxury to await scientific certainty” before adopting obesity policy. That mentality seems to double for activists’ obesity talking points.

Needless to say, the godfather of the Twinkie Tax is ecstatic. He called the action “quite forward-looking” from his high perch at Yale. But his glee pales in comparison to the rhetoric of tax-touting Richmond city councilman Jeff Ritterman, who channeled Robert “Toxic Sugar” Lustig when he argued that soft drinks are “poisonous.”

Fortunately, there’s some sanity in San Fran. The San Francisco Chronicle editors panned the ballot initiative almost immediately, noting that if the tax passes, people won’t be any thinner. They’ll find ways around it—the easiest being “buy[ing] in bulk in neighboring towns.”

That barely skims the surface: Research has shown that consumers, especially the poorest consumers, are likely to switch to equally caloric beverages under any soda tax regime, removing any purported health benefits to the invasive tax. And the weight losses the soda tax is projected to cause are vanishingly small, topping out at about one pound over a year.

Ritterman knows that consumers will shop with their feet if it comes. What’s his solution? Expand the tax radius. He told the Contra Costa Times that other municipalities will take up Richmond’s torch. (He didn’t say what he’d do about those who switched to fruit juice or milk, which contain just as many calories.)

Of course, since it takes a battery of guilt-trips and a bait-and-switch to get the appearance of support for soda taxes, that torch might be snuffed out in Richmond, to say nothing of other cities. After all, even San Francisco’s city council—not exactly a brain trust of savvy policymakers—took a pass on a soda tax. If the diet-dictating social engineers can’t win on what should be home ground, where can they win?

The study is silent on whether or not these sinful dishes in the hands of angry food police actually hurt anybody’s health. The authors’ only goal is to gauge compliance with arbitrary standards devised by federal bureaucracies. Of course, if their study offers notorious dietary scold and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention boss Thomas Frieden an opportunity to engage in his favorite pastime — poking into restaurant kitchens with his regulatory pen — they’d probably see that as (low-salt) gravy.

So, were these “96%” dishes 2,000-calorie behemoths with pounds of bacon stacked high alongside plates of home fries? For the most part, no. The authors took the total daily allowance for salt, calories, fat, and saturated fat and divided by three, as if people ate three identical meals per day. So a person could easily eat one of these entrées and have no problem coming under their total calorie allowance if they ate less at their other meals or compensated with exercise. That is, of course, exactly what a study by economists from UC Berkeley and Northwestern found that people do.

For now, the IOM report recommendation doesn’t come with the force of law backed up by trial lawyers with subpoenas. However, if the case of the “voluntary” advertising guidelines is any indication, “voluntary” dietary guidelines could become regulations if not enough diners and restaurants “volunteer.”

He stops short of proposing a federal organic beef ration, but just barely. And not surprisingly, he backs up his claim that animal agriculture is boiling us alive by citing the UN report Livestock’s Long Shadow that was thoroughly debunked by University of California-Davis researcher Frank Mitloehner. Mitloehner found that the UN report authors “charged” more tangential emissions to animal agriculture, rather than to other economic activity like driving cars — so the report’s claim that livestock were worse climate villains than anything else was a “classical apples-and-oranges analogy that truly confused the issues.”

So what’s the real picture? The Environmental Protection Agency found that animal agriculture accounts for less than four percent of American greenhouse emissions (nowhere near the 18 percent the debunked UN report proposed). All agriculture together was responsible for just six percent.

Bittman also lays the blame for deforestation on the backs of meat-eaters. There’s a small problem with that as applied to American meat: We aren’t chopping down forests to graze our animals. Bittman is applying a third-world standard to our first-world bacon.

How does modern American agriculture do relatively well? It’s not by going “organic.” A Stanford University study suggests that industrialization has made agriculture much more efficient. One of the authors even proposes, “We find that funding agricultural research ranks among the cheapest ways to prevent greenhouse-gas emissions.” You read that right: Modernizing agriculture prevents emissions by making food production more efficient, rather than causing “the absolute destruction of everything.”

Of course, when you’re an apostle of the economically illiterate local food movement like Bittman, recognizing that modernization can increase environmental friendliness would destroy your whole worldview. As long as federal regulators don’t take his mythmaking to heart, Bittman is more than free to join British organic movement leader Peter Melchett and the rest of the activists who have nothing to “go on” but “feelings.”

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.

That perception could hardly be further from the truth, but it’s not surprising given HSUS’s advertising, which relies heavily on dogs and cats. We conducted a review that showed that 85 percent of the animals in HSUS TV commercials were in fact cats and dogs. That’s definitely deceptive when one considers that less than one percent of HSUS’s $130 million budget is shared with local animal shelters. That got us thinking: What do HSUS’s donors think of HSUS’s misleading appeals?

Now we know. We conducted an online poll of self-described HSUS donors and found that 90 percent didn’t know how little of their gifts HSUS gives to local pet shelters. Armed with the truth, 80 percent agreed that HSUS “misleads people into thinking that it supports local humane societies and pet shelters.”

That shouldn’t be surprising. Before telling the surveyed donors how little HSUS gives to local pet shelters, we asked their primary reason for giving to HSUS. The vast majority donated to help shelter pets: 40 percent said they gave to “help HSUS care for homeless dogs and cats in animal shelters and humane societies” while another 36 percent gave to “reduce the number of animals put down in shelters each year.” They aren’t the first pet-loving HSUS donors to be shocked by the truth.

And there’s a whole lot more truth to share with HSUS donors. When HSUS isn’t factory fundraising, stockpiling pension funds, or propagandizing children, it’s lobbying to take meat, dairy, and eggs off the table, just like PETA. We have to wonder what these HSUS donors think about their doggie dollars going to a radical animal rights agenda. And we know an easy way to find out.

To alleviate public confusion, HumaneWatch.org launched a new online video, “HSUS: Lawyers in Cages,” which parodies the deceptive fundraising practices of HSUS. HSUS’s advertisement featuring actress Wendie Malick employs images of downtrodden cats and dogs to pull at the heartstrings and wallets of America’s pet lovers.

“The Humane Society of the United States intentionally uses manipulative ads to raise money on the backs of abandoned and abused dogs and cats, yet it gives just one penny of each dollar it raises to local pet shelters,” said CCF Senior Research Analyst J. Justin Wilson. “While the video is tongue in cheek,HumaneWatch.org wants to ensure that America’s pet lovers know full well just what their donations are funding: a PETA-like agenda, not pet shelters.”

After learning that the HSUS did not spend a majority of its funds assisting local hands-on pet shelters, 80 percent of HSUS donors polled believed the group engaged in deceptive fundraising practices, with nearly 50 percent reporting they are now less likely to support the group.

“Think of how many more abandoned and abused pets could be saved if HSUS donors knew to give to their local shelter directly,” Wilson continued. “HSUS actively participates in duplicitous fundraising practices, using its classic bait-and-switch manipulation—reeling people in with pictures of sad-looking puppies and kitties, while funneling their donations to a radical animal rights philosophy.”

For a copy of the complete poll, visit HumaneWatch.org.

Without lean finely textured beef, or LFTB, the price of manually recovered lean beef trimmings have skyrocketed while the price of fatty trimmings (the raw ingredients for LFTB) have plummeted. As a result of the scare, 650 American workers have been laid off and US beef imports from Australia, New Zealand, and Uruguay have skyrocketed.

So what are Americans seeing at the supermarket? Retail ground beef prices hit a record high in March. Taking the equivalent of 1.5 million head of cattle out of the food supply won’t help ease that strain. (Not using LFTB wastes the equivalent of 1.5 million cows’ worth of beef over the course of a year.)

It’s also a divine irony that one of the prophets of the local-food movement, Mark Bittman, helped fuel the “pink slime” scare. Now, instead of consuming more meat from each U.S.-raised animal, Americans will get more of their ground beef from the Southern Hemisphere. When elitist food myths face off, it’s survival of the smuggest.

Food snobs may think that LFTB was the “lowest common denominator” (to quote Marion Nestle), but the evidence suggests that mindlessly bashing food processors isn’t helpful. Americans want their ground beef and buy it in spite of the scare. Unfortunately, they’ll have to pay more for it — while hundreds of other Americans have already lost their jobs.