About Rationally Speaking


Rationally Speaking is a blog maintained by Prof. Massimo Pigliucci, a philosopher at the City University of New York. The blog reflects the Enlightenment figure Marquis de Condorcet's idea of what a public intellectual (yes, we know, that's such a bad word) ought to be: someone who devotes himself to "the tracking down of prejudices in the hiding places where priests, the schools, the government, and all long-established institutions had gathered and protected them." You're welcome. Please notice that the contents of this blog can be reprinted under the standard Creative Commons license.

Tuesday, March 05, 2013

Who’s responsible for the obesity epidemic?


by Massimo Pigliucci

There is no question that we are in the midst of an obesity-related health crisis. The numbers are staggering and keep getting worse every year. The current situation in the United States is hard to believe: one third of adults are clinically obese, and so is one fifth of all children; a whopping 24 million Americans are affected by type II diabetes, usually the result of a poor diet. And the numbers are getting worse in much of the rest of the developed world as well. This is going to cost a lot in terms of lives, pain and suffering, and of course financially, to the nation as a whole. It’s a good question to ask ourselves who bears responsibility for all this, and the answer is not at all obvious or simple.

The New York Times has recently published a long, fascinating article by Michael Moss (author of the forthcoming Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us) on the relationship between the food industry and the obesity epidemic. Yeah, I know, the first time I heard of someone blaming McDonald’s instead of its customers for their bad eating habits I too thought “oh c’mon,” but that was the same reaction many had when the tobacco industry began to be blamed for the health problems caused by smoking, and nobody’s laughing dismissively at that any more.

Before we proceed, let me warn the reader that this post is going to be largely about the sins of the food industry, but this doesn’t mean I don’t think other actors bear responsibility. Indeed, I’ll make the case by direct analogy with smoking by way of a very personal experience: my father died in 2004, aged 69. He got hit by four primary cancers in the span of five years or so, survived the first three, got killed by the last one. The ghastly and eventually lethal sequence — which ruined the last several years of his life and likely significantly shortened the time he had to spend on earth — was very likely the result of his life long habit as a heavy smoker. Do I blame the tobacco industry for his death? You bet, and I’ve got well established evidence to back me up on that, from their sneaky advertising tactics to their purposeful campaigns of addiction to augment their customer base. But I also blame my father. At some point in his life, well before the onset of his first cancer, he was well aware of the risks posed by smoking, but he ignored them and never looked for help. He paid a high price for it, and so did our family.

So, yes, personal responsibility pretty much always plays some role in human decisions. But it would be naive to the utmost degree — given the available evidence — to think that the food industry doesn’t bear some, likely even a great part, of the blame as well. And when we talk about responsibility we also usually talk about punishment and regulation, which means that what Moss is arguing in his article and book is literally worth billions of dollars.

Moss begins with the recounting of a high level meeting of major players in the food industry which could have been a game changer but, tragically, wasn’t. The meeting took place on April 8, 1999 at the Minneapolis headquarters of Pillsbury, featuring 11 people — just 11 individual human beings — who controlled most of the food companies in the United States. The meeting was called as a way to analyze and perhaps preemptively react to the first serious suggestions of a link between processed foods and obesity that were beginning to be advanced at the time. That was when the words “obesity epidemic” started to be used by politicians, health officials and the press.

The first speaker — according to Moss’s reconstruction of the event — was Michael Mudd, a Kraft Vice President who gave a lengthy presentation at the end of which he drew the parallel everyone was dreading: the one between processed food and cigarettes. He quoted Kelly Brownell, a Yale professor of public health, as saying: “As a culture, we’ve become upset by the tobacco companies advertising to children, but we sit idly by while the food companies do the very same thing. And we could make a claim that the toll taken on the public health by a poor diet rivals that taken by tobacco.” Ouch.

Mudd must have been an uncharacteristically idealistic industry insider, as his goal was to put industry scientists in the service of figuring out what was causing the epidemic, and eventually establish a code guiding the nutritional aspects of the products and the marketing strategies of the companies. Yeah, right. The second speaker was one Stephen Sanger, at the time, head of General Mills. His response effectively killed the meeting and any serious effort by the industry to police itself. Among other things, he said: “Don’t talk to me about nutrition, talk to me about taste, and if this stuff tastes better, don’t run around trying to sell stuff that doesn’t taste good.” End of story, beginning of tragedy.

The rest of the article in the New York Times is made of a series of brief sketches, presumably illustrating the bulk of Moss’s book and his contention that what he found “over four years of research and reporting, was a conscious effort — taking place in labs and marketing meetings and grocery-store aisles — to get people hooked on foods that are convenient and inexpensive.”

I will mention briefly only one of these sketches, concerning a former Coca-Cola director, Jeffrey Dunn. In 2001 Dunn was tasked with exploring the marketing of coke in poor and vulnerable markets, like New Orleans in the US, and Brazil. The question he and his colleagues were driven to answer was “How can we drive more ounces into more bodies more often?” During an exploratory trip to Brazil, Dunn had an epiphany, realizing that poor people in Brazilian favelas needed a lot of things, but most certainly coke wasn’t one of them. He went back to headquarters and attempted to steer the company toward a more, ethical strategy, for example, stopping the marketing of its products in public schools. He was soon fired.

The interesting point of these stories, I think, is that they put the issue of responsibility in a different perspective from the simplistic “nobody’s putting a gun to your head” emphasis on personal choice. And they do so in a way that is somewhat parallel to the issue of smoking and the tobacco companies, as we have seen.

Certainly people are at least in part responsible for what they choose to do, be that smoking known harmful substances or eating crap that is likely to make their lives shorter and more miserable. But certainly an exception ought to be made in the case of children, who are simply not equipped with the rational decision making tools of adults. And it is most certainly no accident that both big tobacco and big junk food go after children so intensively.

But I think there is an even broader issue at play here. Those who put an emphasis on personal responsibility — even in the case of adults only — are making an assumption that is equivalent to that of complete rational agency and full access to information in classical macroeconomics. An assumption that is obviously mistaken for pretty much the same reasons it is mistaken when used as the basis for economic theory.

Ever since the invention of marketing it has clearly been the case that consumers are systematically misled and kept in as much ignorance as possible about the ill effects of what they consume. So the idea that people can just look up stuff and figure out what to do or not to do is naive and dangerous. More importantly, though, it is the suggestion that people are, or even approximate, rational agents that is clearly mistaken.

Never mind the obvious fact that one third to one half of Americans believe in all sorts of pseudoscientific notions (ghosts, astrology, creationism) that should’t appeal to an even approximately rational individual. There is much research in cognitive science showing that human beings rely on all sorts of flawed heuristics for their decision making processes, rarely slowing down to inform themselves, critically analyzing the available information, and arriving at the best decision compatible with the latter. And of course marketing companies know this all too well. After all, the very idea of marketing started (much earlier than in the period so fascinatingly depicted in the television series MadMen) when Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays came to the United States and began a highly successful career as a consultant on how to sell pretty much everything to people, regardless of whether it was good for them or not.

Which brings us to the third actor: regulatory agencies. A lot of Americans hate the whole idea of regulation, to the point of embracing in great numbers obviously oxymoronic notions like that of “self-regulation” (would you apply that to thieves and murderers, I wonder?), and there have been interesting discussions regarding the wisdom and scope of governmental paternalism. But contra popular opinion, the actual discussion isn’t about whether the private sector (including the tobacco and junk food industries) as well as individual behavior should be regulated, but rather about the extent to which it makes sense to do so. (Clear examples of regulation that few people could reasonably argue against: seat belts and motorcycle helmets for individuals; the nuclear power industry.)

This is a classic example of a balancing act among conflicting values. We do want to keep a viable market of innovative, varied and affordable products for the public, which means that we don’t want to overdo it in the regulation department. At the same time, as a society we have an obligation to protect consumers (especially children), particularly when we know that many of them do not have the tools to make even approximately rational decisions and that they are actively being misled by the industry. This doesn’t mean that I endorse New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s recent ban on large soda drinks, for instance (that one does seem to me to cross the line), but I would, as an example, endorse higher taxes for those same drinks, which could be used both to discourage consumers (especially the most vulnerable and poor among them) as well as to recover funds that can be redirected toward balancing the long term health care costs inevitably caused by the consumption of those products. There is no magic bullet here, and an ethically sensible, evidence-based approach is the only way to go. But please don’t fall into the vicious trap of automatically blaming the victims.

56 comments:

  1. Great article, Massimo. I had already read the NYT story.

    Per the growing antipathy toward regulation, this research reported by the Washington Post, which says, at the state govt level, legislators in general think their districts to be more conservative than they are, and wingnuts think them FAR more conservative, gives some background: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/03/04/one-study-explains-why-its-tough-to-pass-liberal-laws/

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  2. >But contra popular opinion, the actual discussion isn’t about whether the private sector (including the tobacco and junk food industries) as well as individual behavior should be regulated, but rather about the extent to which it makes sense to do so.

    I couldn't agree more; what we need is paternalistic government intervention. But it needs to be done correctly and cleverly. The recent Danish experience is a good example of how easily these things can go wrong.

    For example,

    >...but I would, as an example, endorse higher taxes for those same drinks, which could be used both to discourage consumers (especially the most vulnerable and poor among them)...

    To speak economics for a second, my (falsifiable) suspicion is that the demand for soft drinks among poor people is price-inelastic. I.e., they will be willing to pay exorbitant prices and demand will not fall very much (c.f., alcohol). So what you will end up with *in effect* if not in intention, is basically a highly regressive consumption tax.

    I don't actually know the answer to this conundrum, but there has got to be a smarter way of playing with incentives here.

    One really difficult complicating factor is that we are trying to disincentivize obesity, but doing that by focusing on food itself gets you into bizarre situations. Everybody knows that people are getting fat from too many hamburgers, not too much foie gras. But if you try to ban a certain fat density, or something like that, then your law ends up applying to foie gras as well.

    The reason it doesn't work is because (contra what foodies often say) there's really nothing much wrong with a hamburger as opposed to some "classier" (yes, this definitely has a class dimension) food like a souflé. The problem is that people eat too damn many hamburgers, that's all.

    So the most productive approach looks like it might focus on individuals rather than foods. At least that's how it seems to me based on what I know now.

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    1. I suspect sugar is somewhat inelastic, but not totally so, Ian. Good points on possible class-based issues.

      That said, contra Massimo, Bloomberg's max cup size may be a better approach than some alternatives. But again, that's just for one item. It would be overreach indeed to apply that across the board.

      The issue needs to start in schools and on children's advertising regulation. Current adults may be, to some degree, "lost," but that doesn't mean the future is.

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    2. Ian,
      your intuition on soft-drink price elasticity ran counter to mine, so I did a quick search: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=10853536
      Soft drinks prices actually are very elastic.

      Cheers
      Chris

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    3. >Soft drinks prices actually are very elastic.

      Cool! I wouldn't have expected that.

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  3. The suggestion you make regarding adult capacity for rational thought makes me uncomfortable. If I interpreted this correctly, you're saying many adults don't have the capacity for enough rational thought to take personal responsibility when there are parties attempting to influence them to do things that aren't ultimately in their best interests. Isn't that really what this and many other issues boil down to? Whether or not a more rational external agent has to make decisions for and shape the environment of such people in order to counterbalance those negative influences? Even when you talk about children here, it feels like you're implying they are free to act as they please but for the guiding hand of government regulation. I suppose if you subscribe to the first assertion, that parents need to be protected, then it naturally follows. It's certainly possible all of that is the right thing to do, but what are the rules for regulating the regulation? For instance, why is Bloomberg's soda cup ban overreaching?

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    1. >If I interpreted this correctly, you're saying many adults don't have the capacity for enough rational thought to take personal responsibility when there are parties attempting to influence them to do things that aren't ultimately in their best interests.

      There is a more sophisticated claim which I think Massimo was making but didn't spell out, which is that people are akratic; i.e., they may be capable of seeing the right thing to do (not buy another hamburger) but find themselves unable to do it.

      In such situations people may actually thank a regulator for forcing them to do what they already agree is the right thing to do anyway (c.f., Beeminder).

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    2. Thanks. I was afraid I might be stepping into a minefield of implied sophistication packed into many of these statements. I think my main question would remain the same though, regardless of the source of individual weakness. Can there be rules for forcing behavior or is this just a matter of feeling and needs to be left to democratic pushing and pulling for continual adjustment?

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  4. I'm leery of comparisons with tobacco, because I think there is such a thing as nicotine addiction, but am not sure that particular foods can reasonably be considered similarly addictive. Everyone will prefer to eat food that tastes good. But unless we can say that good-tasting food is addictive in the sense that nicotine is addictive, comparing manufacturers or retailers of certain food to tobacco manufactures doesn't seem appropriate, especially in the consideration of legal regulation.

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    1. It's not the food itself, but rather the additives that brings it into the realm of possible addictiveness. Given that e.g. glutamates are neurotransmitters, that seems a reasonable assumption, although I am not aware of any conclusive studies in that direction.

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    2. Is there any actual evidence for this? I'd have thought it would be very easy to ban food products if they contain addictive chemicals. No one would defend the food industry on that.

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  5. Besides "the sins of the food industry" other things are to be considered as Massimo correctly points out.
    One is the important interaction of income and education as factors of overeating. At low levels of income (usually accompanied) by low education, as is usual in poor countries, people crave energy-rich food (chiefly sugars and fats) because food is scarce for them. As income grows, consumption of sugars tends to stabilize, while fats keep increasing. At higher levels of average income, education also rises and makes people more sensitive to health advise. People in affluent countries, with not much of a budget problem to buy food but without the education to do it wisely, tend to be the most obese.
    Culture is also important. Excessive sugar consumption is much more prevalent in the US than in Europe (including Eastern Europe, where obesity is worst). In fact, it has been falling in some rich countries while it rises in the US. Income growth was followed by increased consumption of fats in Latin America (as well as the US) but not in China or India where fat and sugar consumption remain low in spite of rapidly rising income.
    Craving for sugars and fat beyond what is immediately needed by the body is, of course, a genetically conditioned inclination. Genes conditioning those cravings have probably been favored by natural selection during our hunter-gatherer past (99% of our lineage as a species since diverging from the lineage of chimps). Faced with unlimited access to food of all kinds, many people tend to indulge those natural tendencies. But as mentioned before this is mediated by culture (and, in the case of South and East Asia, possibly also by genetic specificities not yet identified).
    The food industry works on these bases, helped by insufficient regulation; but it is based on real cravings; no ad campaign will make people eat grass or relish the taste of manure. Advertising works on existing cravings, modulating them to the needs of industry.

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  6. Obesity is higher in richer countries, but is also a mounting threat in poorer areas of the world.
    It is interesting to learn than in many poor, developing countries with high rates of malnutrition, obesity is trumping excessive thinness. For instance in Bolivia (the poorest country in South America, with relatively high malnutrition figures) overweight is six times as large as wasting (i.e. thinness, or low weight for height) in children under five, including the traditional rural population (mostly very poor) as well as both rich and poor people living in urban areas. Still poorer Haiti has the opposite situation: excessive thinness is more frequent than overweight among children under five; but then again, Bolivia has an income and education level far above Haiti's.

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  7. Ian,

    > my (falsifiable) suspicion is that the demand for soft drinks among poor people is price-inelastic. I.e., they will be willing to pay exorbitant prices and demand will not fall very much (c.f., alcohol). <

    My comment was meant as a possible example, and you are correct, it is certainly a falsifiable one, on empirical grounds. Then again, taxes are pretty much the only thing known to have reduced smoking, before the culture turned against smokers so that it has now become very uncool to smoke.

    > The problem is that people eat too damn many hamburgers, that's all. <

    Well, that’s part of the problem. There are such things as healthier and less healthy diets, and I don’t think I would qualify hamburgers under the “healthy” category in the context of any diet.

    And yes, I was indeed thinking of akrasia.

    Leon,

    > It's certainly possible all of that is the right thing to do, but what are the rules for regulating the regulation? For instance, why is Bloomberg's soda cup ban overreaching? <

    Good questions. The issue is difficult, as there is no such thing as a completely rational agent, individual or government. My response would be that we need to have society-wide conversations about our values (i.e., we have to talk about moral philosophy), based on the best empirical evidence provided by science. And we keep adjusting things according to what works and how our actions reflect our values. Bloomberg’s attempt is likely not to work and it smacks so much of paternalism that it is likely to backfire. But his ban of transfats from New York City’s restaurants seems more targeted and likely to work.

    Ciceronianus,

    > I think there is such a thing as nicotine addiction, but am not sure that particular foods can reasonably be considered similarly addictive. <

    Yes, that was my initial reaction too. But there is an increasing amount of research that actually strengthens the parallel, particularly looking at the industry’s strategy to hook young children.

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    1. >There are such things as healthier and less healthy diets, and I don’t think I would qualify hamburgers under the “healthy” category in the context of any diet.

      Right, I agree. But a hamburger is not a diet, it's "part of a complete diet" as the hackneyed phrase goes. Bracketing questions of animal ethics, there is nothing wrong with eating a hamburger per se (just like there is nothing wrong with foie gras per se), as long as the rest of your diet *compensates* in one way or another.

      This is what makes a fat tax such a blunt instrument: it might be quite reasonable (given my diet and health levels) for *me* to have a hamburger (or some fatty food without low-class stigma, like brie). But I still have to pay the fat tax on it. Mind you, if it really reduced obesity substantially then the tradeoff could easily be worth it.

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    2. >There are such things as healthier and less healthy diets, and I don’t think I would qualify hamburgers under the “healthy” category in the context of any diet.

      Maybe you should use "fast food" instead of "hamburgers". A home-made hamburger is essentially the same as the meat of the same type that isn't ground, health-wise.

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  8. Massimo,

    good post (as usual), and a topic we have discussed a lot among friends and family. As foodies ourselves (my wife is in the business of high quality food) we are constantly amazed at our countrymen who on the one hand are outraged at the every food scandal (you probably heard about the horsemeat/beef story, probably less about the bio-egg and the livestock feed scandal), on the other hand refuse to see that quality has its price and that it's impossible to produce high quality beef for 1.99 Euro per kilo.

    I am not sure regulation would really help. As Ian pointed out, the Danish fat tax was a failure because of substitution and circumvention. The problem is: what exactly would you regulate? Much of the "awareness" regulation, like spelling everything out on the label, makes life harder for the small scale, high quality producers, without actually changing behavior. You could try banning e.g. flavor additives like monosodium glutamate, but I bet food chemists would come up with a substitute faster than the law could be passed.

    Plus: even if we banned all the unhealthy stuff and people only ate "good" food, we'd still be overweight. (I am the proof of that ;-) )

    So: the devil really is in the details on regulation? What would actually work? It probably would be market conform solutions, i.e. making "bad" food too expensive to buy.

    Cheers
    Christian

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  9. While corporations that deviously push non-essential high-sugar products such are "soft drinks" are surely part of the problem, they may be a small part. The actual problem might be more economic. It may be that to make food affordable to the bottom economic tier, it must be mass produced and have a long shelf life - getting preservative-free fresh food to market is I assume far more expensive - and sugar/corn syrup works as a preservative. Further note that the cheapest sorts of foods, such as pasta, noodles, and cheap bread are basically refined flour, which is somewhat closely related to sugar. If one's budget to feed a family is very low, one will be forced into this high sugar/flour realm. This is what makes people obese I suspect. Now a question is what the food system could do to deliver healthier diets to the poorest when getting rid of preservatives (viz. sugar) and moving to wholer grains raises costs substantially. Might we say obesity is due to wealth inequality, "overpopulation," or some other economic imbalance that is not immediately within our power to fix? At any rate, I don't think intentional ill-practices are a major source of the problem. Diabetes might be akin to the way animal populations shed "excess" population. In saying this, I don't mean to be callous but rather to make the point that obesity might be part of a kind human ecological process: there's not enough healthy food to go around and there's little we can do about it directly.

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  10. I'm not sure faulty heuristics and ignorance can account for obesity. Faulty heuristics are most apparent in solving logical problems in a short amount of time, obesity is a situation that arises over many accumulating decisions with the benefit of feedback (you can see your stomach grow).

    Understanding of which foods are unhealthy is also quite embedded in the culture now.

    Choices of meal are also not a "purely logical" (as in the mathematical sense) proposition as you have mood and taste to account for, value you attach to personal health etc, so it's some what difficult to look at a choice and say "this is the wrong answer, the correct answer is salad".

    I don't think people who err on the side of personal responsibility necessarily depends on perfect rationality (although it would obviously be a better situation if it existed) but rather an axiomatic choice about which flawed arbiter is preferred.

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  11. Ian,

    > This is what makes a fat tax such a blunt instrument: it might be quite reasonable (given my diet and health levels) for *me* to have a hamburger (or some fatty food without low-class stigma, like brie). But I still have to pay the fat tax on it <

    Well, yes, but you know, we can’t Ian-tailor our tax and health policies... ;-) Besides, your hamburger-tax won’t amount to much if your consumption of the tasty stuff really is “part of a complete diet”...

    Christian,

    > As Ian pointed out, the Danish fat tax was a failure because of substitution and circumvention. <

    I’m not convinced. The failure of one attempt doesn’t mean taxes don’t have effect on consumption. Indeed, the data for cigarettes indicate exactly the opposite, as I already mentioned.

    > even if we banned all the unhealthy stuff and people only ate "good" food, we'd still be overweight. <

    Let’s not allow attainable perfection to be the enemy of attainable improvements.

    > What would actually work? It probably would be market conform solutions, i.e. making "bad" food too expensive to buy. <

    Well, taxes help doing just that.

    Paul,

    > I don't mean to be callous but rather to make the point that obesity might be part of a kind human ecological process: there's not enough healthy food to go around and there's little we can do about it directly. <

    While you certainly make valid points, the fact remains that the obesity problem has started and has become particularly widespread in the single country in the world where the food industry has the most freedom from regulations, both in production and in advertising. Coincidence?

    downquark,

    > Faulty heuristics are most apparent in solving logical problems in a short amount of time, obesity is a situation that arises over many accumulating decisions with the benefit of feedback <

    I really referred more broadly to a wide class of cognitive biases that show that the assumption of a rational consumer is just as bad as the assumption of a rational homo economicus. Yes, obesity does result from a long chain of bad decisions, but each of those remains an individual decision that people make because of a disconnect between their long-term health and the immediate gratification they have within easy reach. It’s Aristotle’s eudaimonia vs akrasia all over again.

    > I don't think people who err on the side of personal responsibility necessarily depends on perfect rationality ... but rather an axiomatic choice about which flawed arbiter is preferred. <

    But part of my point is that that choice is a false dichotomy. We can blame (and work on) *both* individual choices and industry practices.

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  12. Massimo,

    > I’m not convinced. The failure of one attempt doesn’t mean taxes don’t have effect on consumption. Indeed, the data for cigarettes indicate exactly the opposite, as I already mentioned.

    that's not what I was trying to say here (badly, I admit) - taxes do work to change consumption even though they are a "second best solution". My point was rather: what do you tax? Sugar? As somebody pointed out, sugar is an preservative that is important in high quality (low chemistry) food production. Fat? Not all fats are equal, not even all saturated fats. The times when nutrionists said "all fats are bad" are long over. Taxing any one food group would produce (proabably undesired) substitution effects. It's not all as easy as the transfats.

    Then you could try taxing caloric content, that would get around the substitution issue, and would probably have the most effect on obesity. But could be sure everybody gets enough calories, then?

    The difference between food and cigarettes is that we actually need food, and that overeating is a natural response to the plentitude of food. One of the scary possible conclusions in our private discussion of the topic is that a free society might actually not be able to solve the issue of obesity...

    Cheers
    Chris

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  13. Government efforts to get Americans to eat less fat and more carbohydrates succeeded, unfortunately.

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    1. C. Van -

      >Government efforts to get Americans to eat less fat and more carbohydrates succeeded

      I think that's over simplified. Amoung other things, the USDA recommendations in 1977 sugest :

      "Increase consumption of complex carbohydrates [e.g. whole grains and vegetables] and 'naturally occurring sugar' [e.g. fruit] and reduce consumption of refined and processed sugars"

      And the paper you link to, like the USDA recomendations, sugests that to avoid obesity in children we should reduce over refined and processed sugars, and include 'ample' complex carbohydrates in their diets :

      "It is proposed that high-glycemic-index diets lead to excessive weight gain as a consequence of postprandial hyperinsulinemia. Low glycemic-index diets lower postprandial insulin levels and insulin resistance. It seems likely that diets restricted in sweetened sodas and noncitrus juices and containing ample whole grains, vegetables, and fruit could have a major impact on the prevalence of pediatric obesity."

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  14. Massimo,

    Thanks for making the case for shared responsibility when it comes to obesity and other behavioral health problems.

    A possible trump card that could be played by hardline proponents of personal responsibility (e.g., the food industry) is that an individual could have resisted the impulse to consume tobacco or sugar or junk food or whatever, but simply chose not to, so is ultimately at fault for his cancer, obesity, addiction, etc. (This card has been played by tobacco companies seeking to avoid responsibility for smoking-related illnesses, see http://centerfornaturalism.blogspot.com/2006/12/big-tobacco-and-free-will-defense.html ). Of course whether an impulse is resisted or not is a matter of its strength compared to the countervailing internal impulse control resources possessed by the individual that are elicited by the actual situation she's in. The proponent of ultimate personal responsibility - UPR - will say that she could have chosen to deploy more of those resources in that situation, so it's ultimately her fault. But there's no scientific basis for this claim, since the choice to exert however much of one's impulse control resources is determined by the present state of the individual in the actual situation. She could not have done otherwise in the actual situation given who she was at the time.

    However, many (most?) folks think that we *could* have done otherwise in the actual situation and so have UPR. So long as this belief is in place, it’s always open to the food industry to claim that they bear *no* responsibility for obesity since no matter how clever their marketing and food design, the individual has the (contra-causal) freedom to resist the impulse and so could have resisted it.

    Should a fully scientific understanding of behavior gain acceptance (unlikely, but you never know), then it will be uncontroversial that the food industry bears considerable responsibility for obesity since people often can’t resist consuming what tastes so good and is so cleverly marketed and widely available. And it will become commonsense that *of course* the food environment (marketing, availability, types of foods, etc.) needs regulation to help minimize temptation and unhealthy foods, since everyone now understands that peoples’ impulse control resources are limited, not contra-causal.

    But, since normal individuals *do* have impulse control resources and since the food environment can’t be regulated to eliminate all risks and temptations (an impossibility, plus we don’t want to live in such a tightly regulated society), they can and must be held responsible. They could be warned as follows by the mentor (not nanny) state:

    “As a society, we’ve taken all democratically enacted, reasonable steps consistent with having a wide range of personal freedoms to minimize your risk of becoming obese by regulating the food industry and the food environment. But there are still risks *and* they are usually contingent on your own behavior. If after our best collective efforts to help you do the right thing, you *still* end up obese and suffer health problems from eating more than is good for you, or the wrong foods, it is our declared public policy that you will bear responsibility for any disabilities, disphoria and costs beyond what your insurance benefits can address. This personal responsibility policy works as an incentive for you to behave in healthy ways, for instance to adopt a healthy diet and get enough exercise. Achieving maximum behavioral health in an open society is only feasible by holding individuals, as well as the food industry, responsible.”

    Wondering if something like this works for you.

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  15. I think you have to distinguish between things that are actively poisonous, or cancerous (like cigarettes) and issues of balance and moderation in diet or lifestyle.

    I'm pretty sure there aren't any actual units of "nutritional value" we can apply to individual food products (unless we are talking about calories, which is not at all what people mean here). Good nutrition is about getting a balance of various components in your diet. And not grossly overeating, whatever food you eat.

    Junk food is a pretty meaningless, perjorative term, partly based around class prejudices (it's the food of the urban poor). But expensive, high class diets can be unhealthy too.

    I consider myself a liberal but I can't see why this isn't an issue best dealt with by free markets and free speech. Of course false advertising should not be allowed (it's fraud) and people need to be informed of food-related health issues. But otherwise let people have the freedom to enjoy the food they like and let the corporations compete to give them what they want (including "healthier" food if they truly want that).

    What's the alternative view - that food should not be too pleasant in case some people eat too much of it?

    ReplyDelete
  16. Chris,

    apologies for the misunderstanding.

    > My point was rather: what do you tax? Sugar? As somebody pointed out, sugar is an preservative that is important in high quality (low chemistry) food production. Fat? Not all fats are equal, not even all saturated fats. <

    Right, I guess I was thinking of taxing specific products based on a number of health-related criteria.

    > The difference between food and cigarettes is that we actually need food, and that overeating is a natural response to the plentitude of food. <

    Agreed on the first point, but not the second one. Several human societies, including many contemporary ones, have had plentitude of food without developing an obesity epidemic. All the evidence really does to point to highly processed foods as one of the major culprits.

    Van Carter,

    > Government efforts to get Americans to eat less fat and more carbohydrates succeeded, unfortunately. <

    And why on earth would that be “unfortunate”?

    Tom,

    > an individual could have resisted the impulse to consume tobacco or sugar or junk food or whatever, but simply chose not to, so is ultimately at fault for his cancer, obesity, addiction, etc. <

    Yes, they could take that line, but the available evidence does not support such a simplistic (and highly convenient, for the industry) conclusion.

    > many (most?) folks think that we *could* have done otherwise in the actual situation and so have UPR. So long as this belief is in place, it’s always open to the food industry to claim that they bear *no* responsibility <

    I don’t see why that follows. Assuming I could have done Y instead of X doesn’t translate into the idea that I am solely responsible for doing X. As I indicated in the post, human volition is influenced by many factors, and there is no reason to think that personal will power and/or rational decision making are always overwhelming compared to other causes.

    > the individual has the (contra-causal) freedom to resist <

    Oh no, I’m not talking about “contra-causal,” that would lead us into a discussion of free will, which I have treated elsewhere. This is applied ethics, not metaphysics.

    > since normal individuals *do* have impulse control resources and since the food environment can’t be regulated to eliminate all risks and temptations (an impossibility, plus we don’t want to live in such a tightly regulated society), they can and must be held responsible. <

    We do have some capacity for impulse control, but the evidence is clear that it is limited, and subject not just to luring strategies by the industry, but to downright false information propagated by said industry (like the idea that eating artificially low-fat processed foods is somehow healthy). And, again, responsibility is a matter of degree, not all/nothing.

    > If after our best collective efforts to help you do the right thing, you *still* end up obese and suffer health problems from eating more than is good for you, or the wrong foods, it is our declared public policy that you will bear responsibility for any disabilities <

    Fair enough. Just like one bears responsibility if one willfully disobeys a seat belt law. In the latter case, by the way, I believe there are additional penalties, for instance the insurance may not pay you because you were in violation of a safety law.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's unfortunate because eating less fat and more carbohydrates led to greater obesity. The government promoted the wrong diet.

      Delete
  17. Chris,

    > I think you have to distinguish between things that are actively poisonous, or cancerous (like cigarettes) and issues of balance and moderation in diet or lifestyle. <

    Sure, but that distinction is, again, a matter of degrees. Some food additives are “poisonous” in the sense of being detrimental to one’s health.

    > Junk food is a pretty meaningless, perjorative term, partly based around class prejudices <

    I disagree, I think most people can make a perfectly good distinction between junk food (McDonald’s cheeseburger and fries) and healthy foods (store bought fruits and vegetables). The fact that sometimes the distinction is a matter of degrees doesn’t imply that there is no meaningful distinction.

    > I can't see why this isn't an issue best dealt with by free markets and free speech. <

    Because they don’t work, by themselves, for the reasons I have outlined in the post.

    > otherwise let people have the freedom to enjoy the food they like and let the corporations compete to give them what they want <

    Again, there is plenty of evidence that that doesn’t work, because legal (i.e., non fraudulent) marketing strategies can still be deceptive, and because people are far from being rational agents. Same reasons why “market solutions” are rarely, if ever, the panacea that libertarians paint them to be.

    > What's the alternative view - that food should not be too pleasant in case some people eat too much of it? <

    That’s a caricature of my position. I assure you that I heat plenty of very pleasant food, and yet it’s healthy.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Hello Mr. Pigliucci, this is the unknown reader from several months ago who asked for a recommendation on reading material about higher education. I have been a stable reader of your blog for some time and I really like the refreshing topics you and many of your fellow co-bloggers tackle, especially when it comes to dealing with the naive( I hope I am not being presumptuous) scientism that inhabits many atheistic thinkers today. To note I am an apathetic agnostic who is a staunch secularist.

    But I'll jettison the irrelevant praise and get to the topic at hand, obesity. As I was reading your entry, I felt reenforced in my belief that unregulated, pure self-interested capitalism is more of a hindrance to society than it is a boon. Many of the heads of the companies you talk about are simply driven by money for themselves and their immediate cohorts, not for society as a whole. This constant selfish( contra Ayn Rand) behavior is not something I see as a virtue and if taken too far can be quite dangerous to humanity as a whole. I'll certainly take a look at the article.

    Note to any other bloggers here, use Gabe to address me.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Massimo,

    In the summary of “Association of All-Cause Mortality With Overweight and Obesity Using Standard Body Mass Index Categories - A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis,” by Katherine M. Flegal, PhD; Brian K. Kit, MD; Heather Orpana, PhD; Barry I. Graubard, PhD, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA, 2013;309(1):71-82,) we find the following surprising sentence: “Grade 1 obesity overall was not associated with higher mortality, and overweight was associated with significantly lower all-cause mortality.”

    So people that are presently classified as moderately obese are as healthy as “normal” people, while “overweight” people are actually healthier. The debate about obesity is not complete without noticing that the present standards for obesity are wrong. The have been changed in recent years, so that normal people are now overweight and slightly overweight people are now classified as grade-1 obese. The new standards neglect the fact that being overweight is protective from death in some situations (like infectious diseases,) while the health problems caused by being overweight can be easily controlled by medications. You are more likely to die if you follow the “best” medical advice than if you don't.

    I have an anecdote about my father, too. He lived to be 90+ and had a very good quality of life to the very end. He drove his C1 (a Citroen car,) until the last week of his life, he walked around town and needed no nursing care. However, he had a very high cholesterol level, and he used Lipitor since it was introduced in the late 90's until his death in 2012. (He also used powerful blood thinners for 30 years.) My father lived in Italy, but no “Mediterranean diet” for him. He lived in Parma, so butter-based dishes and Parma prosciutto (an exquisite kind of ham) were standard fare. He refused to diet and drank a bottle of wine every day. Possibly, the Lipitor bought him 10+ years of good life (the wine might have helped too.) Incidentally, my father was an MD.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Massimo,

    > Agreed on the first point, but not the second one. Several human societies, including many contemporary ones, have had plentitude of food without developing an obesity epidemic. All the evidence really does to point to highly processed foods as one of the major culprits.

    we could quibble about what percentage constitutes an epidemic, but I think you are overoptimistic on the "several" - if you check the WHO Global Infobase IMO the only developed country that qualifies is Japan. Even in Japan, there are many overweight people (defined as BMI > 25), and both overweight and obesity have markedly increased over the past decades. (Childhood obesity is increasing by 8% annually) The platform might be burning hotter in the U.S., but if you do the regression analysis I'm certain you'll find a pretty high correlation between wealth and population weight problems. Childhood obesity is increasing everywhere.

    I am not arguing that highly processed food is not a big factor - I am arguing that regulating it doesn't get rid of the problem. When you just look at Europe, the French are probably the country which most cares about "good" food, yet even in France 50% of men are overweight and 9% are obese - increasing. The less a culture cares about food, the higher these numbers get...

    Cheers
    Chris

    ReplyDelete
  21. [Well, I just managed to delete a long comment, so here I go again. I hope I get everything across.]

    After having read Gary Taubes 'Why We Get Fat' he has pretty much convinced me the problem is carbohydrate (CH) overconsumption, and fat underconsumption. There is no-one 'responsible' for obesity, not really.

    Its just that CH based food is easy to grow and is wrongly considered healthy, the products it goes into are easy to sell, meat is expensive and fat is denigrated.

    Taubes makes a convincing case on both the history and science:

    Obesity used to be regarded (pre-WW2) as a form of malnutrition, the research community knew it was caused by CH consumption, though researchers (almost exclusively in Europe) did not know why.

    The war destroyed this community and gave rise to America and American moralising in particular.

    Ancel Keys regarded obesity as a moral problem, and had the 'calories-in-calories-out' (CI-CO) concept to prove it. He was the most prominent nutritional researcher in America until the late 80's, and he was wrong. CI-CO does not work, mostly because it treats all calories as the same, regardless of source.

    But this is not what the science tells us:

    Carbohydrates are very, very easy for your body to convert into blood sugar (glucose), this rapidly becomes toxic (type 2 diabetes) so your body pumps out insulin to pack it into fat cells. Insulin also has the effect (for some reason) of preventing muscles (the primary energy consumer) of using glucose to fuel themselves. Your body will also build up a resistance to insulin. This creates a vicious cycle if you keep consuming CH, with more insulin preventing existing fat reserves being used to fuel the body whilst constantly adding to it.

    Fat on the other hand, does not provoke the insulin response. It can also stay in your system for longer and is your muscles favoured fuel source. Fat is also responsible for triggering the 'I feel full' sensation, too. And there you have it.

    So, as I see it there is no-one to blame. It's just bad science (the current research community believes in CI-CO) and bad economics (wheat/sugar is cheap compared to meat). Topped off with the weight loss industry being a form of fashion.

    I hope I've made sense, it's late here.

    ReplyDelete
  22. Speaking of responsibility,
    Did you know the main regulator controlling the flow (manufacture, distribution, and sales) of alcohol, tobacco, and firearms, substances that kill and injure millions of Americans every year is the US Department of ATF., which is a subsidiary department of the IRS.
    Its all about money!

    =

    =

    ReplyDelete
  23. The pure libertarian would probably say, "Don't bite the invisible hand that feeds you."

    But of course we don't really want just the "invisible hand" of megacorporations and advertisers feeding (and maybe killing) us. We want some regulations (some via taxes), I think.

    ReplyDelete
  24. Van Carter,

    > It's unfortunate because eating less fat and more carbohydrates led to greater obesity. The government promoted the wrong diet. <

    Ah yes, as opposed to the infallible markets, right? The government will promote the best diet compatible with the available evidence. Since scientific conclusions will always be tentative, we’ll just have to deal with the uncertainty, and the occasional mistake, won’t we?

    Filippo,

    > The new standards neglect the fact that being overweight is protective from death in some situations (like infectious diseases,) while the health problems caused by being overweight can be easily controlled by medications. <

    I think the conclusions you refer to need to be taken with a somewhat large grain of salt. Yes, certainly the standards have changed, and it appears the case that slightly overweight people are actually better off (which, incidentally, shouldn’t really be that surprising). But there is a lot of research on the negative health effects of actual obesity, and remember that meta-analyses are likely to underestimate them, since they average over a lot of crap. A small number of well conducted studies trumps a typical meta-analysis any time. As for medications, why would you want to control a problem via medications (they are expensive, and typically have side effects), rather than through healthier eating?

    Chris,

    > Even in Japan, there are many overweight people (defined as BMI > 25), and both overweight and obesity have markedly increased over the past decades. <

    The obesity problem in most Western societies is far from the level of the US. And moreover, all of this is pretty recent — even in the US — certainly post-dating the availability of abundant food. On the other hand, both in the US and in other countries, obesity levels track very nicely the availability of cheap processed food. Still seems to me to be the biggest (no pun intended) culprit.

    troika,

    > After having read Gary Taubes 'Why We Get Fat' he has pretty much convinced me the problem is carbohydrate (CH) overconsumption, and fat underconsumption. There is no-one 'responsible' for obesity, not really. <

    I’ve read that book as well, and it has not convinced me at all. There are some devastating reviews of it in the literature, including, if I remember correctly, a detailed one by Harriet Hall (the “SkepDoc”).

    Philip,

    > The pure libertarian would probably say, "Don't bite the invisible hand that feeds you." <

    Yes, and I hope you know what I think of pure libertarians... ;-)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Massimo,
      > The obesity problem in most Western societies is far from the level of the US. And moreover, all of this is pretty recent — even in the US — certainly post-dating the availability of abundant food.

      food hasn't been abundant for wide parts of the population very long, certainly not more than 50 years, and some time lag is to be expected, so I'd say both are pretty recent.

      > On the other hand, both in the US and in other countries, obesity levels track very nicely the availability of cheap processed food. Still seems to me to be the biggest (no pun intended) culprit.

      Would be interesting to see some statistics that back that up. My (purely subjective) experience, going through American (44.2% male obesity), German (22.9%) and French (9.0%) supermarkets is that the absolute volume of highly processed food is very much the same in all three, with the main difference between US and Germany being that the US has sodas, Germany beers, and the French hypermarche is bigger overall so that processed foods are a smaller percentage of overall shelf space.

      The much stronger factor, as I mentioned above, is the attitude toward food - which, as a cultural factor, regulation will have a hard time changing.

      Delete
    2. Generally, packaged food is healthier in Europe that it is in America. Here packaged food has a much higher content of both sugar and salt. Even junk food is healthier in Europe. For instance, Coca Cola in Italy uses beet sugar rather than high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS): much better tasting and healthier too (HFCS has more calories for the same added sweetness.) Mexican Coca Cola that uses cane sugar is even better. Americans get the junkiest of the junk food.

      This is, in part, due to government regulations. The very unhealthy HFCS is a byproduct of gasohol production. The regulations imposing 10% alcohol in gasoline clog the injectors of my M3 and my arteries at the same time.

      Delete
    3. The government promoted unhealthy dietary changes based on no real scientific evidence, something to keep in mind while urging more government interventions.

      Delete
  25. Massimo,

    > As for medications, why would you want to control a problem via medications (they are expensive, and typically have side effects), rather than through healthier eating? <

    You have to consider medications in any plan to live the longest possible good life. It is not “natural” to live well when you are over 60 (depending on your genetics.) One of the reasons why life expectancy is increasing in advanced countries is the availability of effective medication for hypertension. The new kind have no serious side effects. There is nothing “morally wrong” in using medication, instead of trying the drastic (and generally futile) diets that would be necessary to reduce your blood pressure to safe levels, if you are genetically predisposed to hypertension.

    ReplyDelete
  26. Massimo,

    > and remember that meta-analyses are likely to underestimate them, since they average over a lot of crap <

    Averaging over a lot of crap is what making rational decisions in real life is all about.

    ReplyDelete
  27. chbieck,

    > food hasn't been abundant for wide parts of the population very long, certainly not more than 50 years, and some time lag is to be expected, so I'd say both are pretty recent. <

    I disagree, and there is the evidence from people from a different culture, not exposed to junk food, who move to the US and quickly develop weight problems. In that respect the human body is extremely plastic, it doesn’t take long at all.

    > The much stronger factor, as I mentioned above, is the attitude toward food - which, as a cultural factor, regulation will have a hard time changing. <

    I really don’t see those as mutually exclusive, just like in the case of cigarettes. But as in that case, the regulation came first, the cultural attitude change only later.

    Filippo,

    > Averaging over a lot of crap is what making rational decisions in real life is all about. <

    Maybe so, but when we are talking published scientific papers it works differently.

    > Coca Cola in Italy uses beet sugar rather than high-fructose corn syrup: much better tasting and healthier too. Mexican Coca Cola that uses cane sugar is even better. Americans get the junkiest of the junk food. This is, in part, due to government regulations. <

    Precisely.

    > There is nothing “morally wrong” in using medication, instead of trying the drastic (and generally futile) diets that would be necessary to reduce your blood pressure to safe levels, if you are genetically predisposed to hypertension. <

    Who said anything about morality? And who was objecting to medications being taken by people genetically predisposed to hypertension? But normal healthy individuals can maintain good health without medications, which do often have side effects, and even when they don’t send a lot of money into the pockets of Big Pharma. Why not send it to your local grocery store instead?

    Van Carter,

    > The government promoted unhealthy dietary changes based on no real scientific evidence, something to keep in mind while urging more government interventions. <

    One more time: science is fallible and its conclusions always tentative. Got a better method?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Massimo,

      > Who said anything about morality? <

      You are right, you did not. I assume that people that talk about healthy food have a sanctimonious attitude. I apologize.

      > One more time: science is fallible and its conclusions always tentative. Got a better method? <

      Right again, but the example I mentioned (the indirect subsidy of HFCS by mandating alcohol in gasoline) has no scientific, economical or any other justification, except for the lobbying of agribusiness groups. HFCS should be banned. (I also hate E10 gasoline because it damages the engines of European sportscars!)

      Delete
    2. Filippo,

      you are correct about the HFCS stuff, but that comment from me was in response to Van Carter, not you...

      Delete
    3. There is no valid reason for HFCS to be any different than sucrose in the way that it affects your body.They are both nearly identical in their composition, containing roughly half fructose and half glucose. They are both nearly identical in the way they are metabolized by your body.

      Delete
    4. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
    5. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
    6. Filippo Neri said,
      > Coca Cola in Italy uses beet sugar rather than high-fructose corn syrup: much better tasting and healthier too. Mexican Coca Cola that uses cane sugar is even better. <

      Massimo replied,
      > Precisely. <

      Except that as far as Coca-Cola goes, that’s not accurate.

      UK = 139 cal per 355mL (0.39 cal per mL)
      US = 140 cal per 355mL (0.39 cal per mL)
      Mexico = 149 cal per 355mL (0.41 cal per mL)
      Italy = 105 cal per 250mL* (0.42 calories per mL)

      *I couldn’t find stats for Italian Coke by can on Coca-Cola’s website, only by bottle, that’s the reason for the calorie per milliliter breakdown.

      There may be something to the idea that HFCS behaves differently in the body compared to other sugars (there’s some suggestive data), but most mainstream nutritionists contend that even if there is some metabolic difference it’s not significant enough to matter much. For the most part, sugar is sugar, and Coke is Coke and it’s inconsequential which regions Coke is “healthier.” If we’re really comparing which Coke is healthier, the conversation on obesity has already taken a bad turn.

      Here’s a fun taste test between US and Mexican Coke.
      http://goo.gl/fRLqB

      > Half of the tasters seemed to have no real preference between American and Mexican Coke, while the other half of the tasters unanimously chose American Coke as their favorite for nearly every test, regardless of the vessel it was served in. <

      So, tastes “better” is subjective and irrelevant.

      Filippo Neri said,
      > Americans get the junkiest of the junk food. <

      It’s probably less of a case of having the junkiest, but just variety and plentitude. The United States originated much of food processing and food marketing and other technologies and institutions; disassembly and assembly-line (food) production, television, TV dinners, microwaves, cars and fast-food (they go together), supermarkets, Twinkies, Tang, Coke, Pepsi, Kellogg’s, Kraft, Betty Crocker, General Mills, Campbell’s etc. Made in the USA. Europe came to the party later and all they gave us was Marmite and Nutella. Okay, Nestlé is a fairly big processed food player.

      Americans have had an abundance of processed food choices that we’ve long embraced and have been consuming for a while now. Europe’s culinary traditions are more ingrained.

      There are other social factors like the changing role of women that happened rapidly in the United States, a good thing, but not without some trade-offs society is still trying to figure out.

      Filippo Neri said,
      > This is, in part, due to government regulations. The very unhealthy HFCS is a byproduct of gasohol production. The regulations imposing 10% alcohol in gasoline clog the injectors of my M3 and my arteries at the same time. <

      Saying that HFCS is a byproduct of gasohol makes it sound like they are scooping it as leftovers from the refinery. Really, a byproduct of ethanol goes back to feeding livestock.

      Production of HFCS predates the bulk of the United States’ ethanol production. America grew corn to fatten livestock since before there was a United States. May as well make sweetener out of it too instead of growing sugar beets that serve one purpose or being beholden to importing cane sugar. Corn grows well in the US, it’s native to the continent and has diversity of uses.

      I’m for eliminating farm subsidies (well, gradual reduction), their purpose is to prop up animal agriculture more than anything. When grain prices go up, as they did recently with the droughts, it’s meat, milk, and egg prices that go up, and the general public complains vocally about it like gas prices. So that’s our elected government official’s incentive to keep those prices stable through continued subsidies.

      With HFCS, it’s not so clear cut that it’s altogether dependent on subsidies or that removing them would necessarily make cane or beet sugar a cheaper alternative. It probably wouldn’t make much difference swapping out HFCS with cane sugar without addressing overall sweetener consumption.

      Delete
    7. Van Carter said,
      > The government promoted unhealthy dietary changes based on no real scientific evidence, something to keep in mind while urging more government interventions. <

      Massimo replied,
      > One more time: science is fallible and its conclusions always tentative. Got a better method? <

      I wouldn’t cede so easily to this notion that nutritional science got it all wrong. This meme, that there is “no real scientific evidence” for nutritional recommendations is on par with the same accusations leveled at climate science. They are both complex sciences that garner controversy over specifics in public policy. There’s plenty of gaps in knowledge and questions concerning action, but yes, actual science with reasonable judgments have been undertaken to reach the mostly correct conclusions.

      It’s nutritional science that makes it measurably clear as to why Lunchables aren’t healthy. Government nutritional experts don’t endorse these sorts of foods (unless they are coerced or partnered with industry, which does happen.) It could be argued that government policy, what food is subsidized, doesn’t match nutritional policy, but that’s less of a fault with the sciences.

      Delete
    8. After reading Michael Moss’s article, my first reaction is to point out that it’s narratives like that why the general public dislikes scientists and science. Scientists come across as amoral manipulators for hire. Bare this in mind when speculating against the seemingly irrational backlash against the blend of science and cooperate power associated with agribusiness and GMO biotech.

      On topic. We don’t need to get too concerned whether the government is being paternalistic through regulation. The government is already involved.

      Part of why US food availability is the way it is, is due partly due to government sponsorship of crop subsidies and alliances with certain food industries. These programs and relationships are so entrenched, with very little political will to reverse such inertia, that you end up with local governments like New York City doing what can be done. You get Bloomberg’s beverage size limit, and even then food lobbyists and the general public cry foul when it’s really not a big deal at all.

      I dislike the term soda “ban,” because anyone can sell or buy all the soda they want to, there’s just a regulation on size per container in certain establishments, it’s a “large container ban” if anything. The measure addresses a specific behavioral issue without infringing all that much on anyone’s God given rights to drink soda or risk some of the drawbacks of a sin tax.

      To refer to the cigarette analogy, it is unlawful to sell cigarettes individually. They must be sold in a minimum pack of twenty in New York State. Also, there are limits on how much cold medicine can be sold to a customer at one time. That may be a better example, because the purchase limit deters a certain activity (making meth) without jacking up the price of cold medicine for everyone.

      There’s good, positive science to support limiting beverage sizes to help check a social behavioral issue, yet so many people are against it on some hallow principal of “freedom.”

      Michael Moss described how some foods illicit a response to the brain of not having been consumed, and liquid calories in soda fit this model. A reasonable way to cut off the mindless consumption is just to limit the container size. Psychologically, most people aren’t going to go bother with buying two sodas up front or getting another after they finished the first.

      No, the soda limit won’t solve obesity, but it’s these sorts of “invisible” nips and tucks that will be needed to actually reverse the obesity trend since it’s a social problem. Baby steps like beverage size limits makes sense, it’s not going happen all at once with the grand waving of a magic wand.

      Delete
  28. Probably the best book I've read on the role of government is Michael Huemer's The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the Duty to Obey. It's a libertarian book.

    The main point there is, okay, you think the government has a right to regulate your food. So why not your next-door neighbour (who is a Nobel Prize winning biologist who had done some pioneering work on food and nutrition)?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You lost me at "it'a a libertarian book." Sorry.

      Delete
    2. Oh, I'm sorry, it's not libertarian. It's Machiavellian. The point is still the same.

      Huemer is a careful thinker, and his book isn't a fundamentalist, and obviously flawed book like Atlas Shrugged. This isn't a book about natural rights. The question he asks is very simple. If something is wrong for an individual to do, what makes you think that it is okay for the government to do it? What makes you think the government knows what's best for you when you don't think your next door neighbour knows what's best for you? He doesn't ask this as a rhetorical question. He's not saying that it is never okay for the government to coerce people under any circumstance. He's just showing that such circumstances are very rare.

      Suppose that you're on a boat, and the only way to save the passengers is to point a gun at them and get them to bail water. Unlike some libertarians, Huemer accepts that coercion in this case is moral. Then he questions how often this is the case in real world scenarios. He writes,

      "Your entitlement to coerce is highly specific and content-dependent: it depends upon your having a correct (or at least well-justified) plan for saving the boat, and you may coerce others only to induce cooperation with that plan. More precisely, you must at least be justified in believing that the expected benefits of coercively imposing your plan on the others are very large and much larger than the expected harms."

      When I think about this obesity problem, I cannot see the expected benefits of regulating food being large and much larger than the expected harms. You are giving the government the authority to decide what people eat. That doesn't look good to me. It's not as if governments have a good track record of knowing what's best for their people except in few rare cases like the civil rights act.

      And since we are not that good at calculating expected benefits and harms we need principles. It might seem like a good utilitarian idea to push the fat guy in front of the trolley. But no utilitarian actually does that. There are certain boundaries they don't cross precisely because they are human, not utilitarian AIs.

      Now all that is written in a much better way in that Machiavellian book I mentioned.





      Delete
    3. brainoil,

      > If something is wrong for an individual to do, what makes you think that it is okay for the government to do it? <

      That sounds libertarian to me, not Machiavellian. At any rate, none of this is new at all. John Stuart Mill (one of the founders of utilitarianism!) was the first articulate libertarian (indeed, the term "libertarian" is related to Mill's famous "On Liberty"), though it put it much more coherently than most modern libertarians.

      There is a huge literature on this topic, and of course as a separate discussion it is well beyond the scope of this post. I have written before on RS on libertarianism, you'll find several posts if you use that keyword in the search box.

      Delete
  29. How about we just stop allowing food companies to advertise their processed crap?

    ReplyDelete
  30. It's the wrong law indeed. http://socraticgadfly.blogspot.com/2013/03/bloomberg-anti-sugar-idiot.html

    ReplyDelete
  31. People are getting fat not just because of that sugary drink. But also from lack of physical work. All the time they eat, drink and play video games on their computers. This is a very bad habit. It doesn't mean government should ban soft drinks consumption. Law should be made that everyone should go for a morning walk instead.

    Thanks for the article!
    Finn Felton
    Kopi Luwak

    ReplyDelete

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